Electronic Arts this week releases Dante's Inferno, a computer game based on the Italian's most famous work. But what does it bring to Dante studies?

The Inferno was ­written in mid-life by a ­disappointed politician. Dante Alighieri found himself on the wrong side of the in-fighting in medieval Florence and was exiled by triumphant opponents. Frank Field could have written it. Strip away the poem's torments and theology (which, of course, you mustn't, but just to start with) and you find somebody trying to deal with thwarted ambition and a sense of injustice. Dante's Hell is what those feelings create and he looks for a way out, of somehow getting through and beyond them.

The core demographic for computer games is not, I think, fortysomethings with issues – not yet, anyway – so this all changes. The Dante here is no poet but a crusader, who has fought Death himself, won (of course) and now comes riding home with the grim reaper's scythe thrown over his shoulder. Sadly, the villa in Tuscany has been trashed and Beatrice, his giant-breasted (of course) wife, lies dead in the garden. Her ghost tells Dante he must rescue her from Hell.

In the original, it is "girl saves boy" – Beatrice, dead at an early age, looks down from heaven, sees Dante's soul in danger, and sends help. Here, however, Dante fights the nasties to save the girl. The lower he descends, the more haunting and powerful the graphics become, but it's a much duller story than the book. Kill one monster, kill another.

Literary folk usually disapprove of computer games; supposedly they inhibit empathy whereas reading enhances it and gamers start to confuse real and virtual killing. I'm not sure. Dante's Inferno is rated 18 and has its gory moments. Playing it, though, didn't feel like violence. The constant danger gets exhausting and watching so closely gives you a headache, but dangers are overcome by intricate and involved fingering. It's like playing an ocarina. In the bloodbath, you work on your finger-eye co-ordination. You can also buy relics in Hell, and enhanced powers, paying with the souls of those you have vanquished. Or you could buy a translation of the poem and find out what it's really like to ­wrestle with demons.

Ralph Pite is author of The Circle of Our Vision: Dante's Presence in English Romantic Poetry