I had never played a game from Sucker Punch before yesterday when I picked up inFamous, but I think I'm quite sure I will be buying all of their future products from now on because I had an absolute blast with this game.
inFamous is a free-roaming superhero action game, the type of which usually suck. This game is totally original though as you play as a bike messenger named Cole who drops of a package that turns out to be a bomb that destroys most of Empire City (the game's setting). Cole wakes up with super powers and then the carnage and fun ensues! One of the best elements of the story is that you can help shape it by making good or evil choices, from very small decisions such as killing a thug or capturing him all the way to murdering a whole group of innocents begging for food or giving it all to them. The story is very engaging and the moral choices make it worth a second play through.
Gameplay wise inFamous is also fantastic. It controls very well and Cole has a whole lot of really cool moves that he can use. The travel and exploration part of the game is very fun as you can climb pretty much everything ala Crackdown and Assassin's Creed, and it works just as well here as it does in those games (which is very well). Cole's super powers are also very cool as you can do stuff like throw electric grenades, shoot electricity at dudes, blow people away in a blast, glide through the air, surf on railway lines and a whole lot more. If you are evil the powers are far more out of control and destructive which is probably a more fun way of playing the game to be honest because if you're good you can't inflict as much carnage.
The mission structure of inFamous is as you'd expect from a sandbox game with story missions taking the game forward and plenty of side missions to get you extra XP and affect your moral good/evil standing. The side missions can get a little repetitive in terms of objectives but blasting dudes and jumping around the city is so fun that you probably won't care. Much of the story missions contain moral set pieces where you have to make quite a big decision and they great thing is that you actually perform these yourself unlike other games in which you select an option and the game carries it out for you. The story really is completely interactive and the missions on the whole are very fun and worth playing through again from a different side.
The presentation of the game is a little bit of a mixed bag and that's why this game hasn't quite got the 5 stars from me, some is great and some could do with some improving. The story comic book style cut scenes are awesome and it is one of the few games where I have actually wanted to watch cut scenes like that because they are done so well. The in game cut scenes is also nicely done but are a little bit bland. The visuals themselves are pretty good for an open world game and no loading time is a huge plus. The colour palette is a little but dingy but we have kind of gotten used to that in this generation of gaming but the animation and lighting effects are absolutely stunning. The sore spots in my opinion are in the voice acting and al the number of bugs and glitches that have got into the game. The voice acting is a little bit wooden and Cole's Christian Bale esque voice from Batman really grates on the ears after a while. The other voices are also completely unremarkable. The glitches can be annoying and are also fairly frequent; people fall through floors, cars move with no drivers, people get stuck on the environment and there was some clipping as well.
Other than the few glitches and unremarkable voice acting there is little else wrong with inFamous. It's a very enjoyable experience with an intriguing story and fantastic platforming, exploration and combat elements that mix together into one hugely enjoyable game that PS3 owners should have no fears in picking up.
The inFamous games are an important part of PlayStation history, but the series is in limbo and playing older entries isn't exactly easy.
Would like remasters of 1 and 2. I enjoyed them much more than Second Son.
1 & 2 had more of an emphasis on climbing and the traversal requires a bit more effort in a good way. It was rewarding. Second Son made climbing mostly obsolete so they put little effort into it. The traversal was just great in inFamous 1 & 2. There's a reason Sunset Overdrive copied and improved upon the induction grind mechanic.
Reminds me of how I felt about the decline of parkour and the well designed tombs (basically Prince Of Persia levels) that we saw in the Assassin's Creed games.
The story and atmosphere were also much better in 1 & 2.
Electricity is just a brilliant superpower for an open world city. It perfectly fits just like webslinging does in New York and it has many applications.
Wouldn't the onus be on the consumers? If they bought the Infamous games, then we'd have more games from that series.
I would love to see a new game but a feel that would get a response similar to Saints Row.
Loved all 3 of them. I couldn't get on with the vampire spin off though. Wish they didn't move away from cole but I didn't mind the other character.
Nixxes' Remaster focus could set the stage to resurrect many obscure titles like the karma-centered, superpower-fueled sandbox of Infamous.
Infamous remaster? How about an Infamous re-Boot! This is one game that doesn't need a remaster, it needs either a proper equal of a reboot of the original. And since Sony is currently in development with Marvel, i can totally see them having guest marvel characters to appear in Cole's world.
I'd like a Killzone 2 Remaster.
Keep the visuals style as is ... just improve the LoD and the resolution
There is a lot of the PS3 era that I would love to see ported/remastered. But, unfortunately, they are probably not commercially viable and I have no idea who owns the rights currently. Stuff like Sire: Blood Curse, White Knight Chronicles, Tokyo Jungle, Folklore, etc.
Infamous on the other hand was never a series that I found good or interesting. Especially when compared with other contemporaries like Prototype. But, given how bare the subgenre is right now, I would dig a remaster.
Infamous, Resistance, and killzine are so ripe for a remaster, I wish Sony would make it happen.
From Xfire: "For a company with a three-decade-long history in gaming, Sony has done a crappy job at preserving its legacy. "
All the mgs games, all the ape escapes, silent hill 1-4, croc 1 and 2, legend of dragoon, tekken 3,tenshu, bushido blade, vagrant story, okami, ico, crash bash, gt4.
Thats just off the top of my head that i would play immediately, still so many more though that id love.
Folklore. It was such a unique and beautiful game. Great soundtrack. I still have my PS3 copy
Infamous 1 & 2 probably will get remaster for PS5/4 at some point as for the others in that article idk
very good review, I agree 100%