User Review : Infamous

Ups

• Well developed characters{Karma system has actually been implemented in a meaningful way{Cole's weapons are simply awesome

Downs

• Graphics are slightly sub par at times, animation especially so{Little variation with side missions{Not enough difference between positive and negative karma cutscenes

InFamous PS3 Review

There are but a few games that can keep me so engaged for so long without having an epic multiplayer component. Infamous is one of those games. But I never thought it was going to be, after hearing about the game for the first time, I thought it sounded cool, but when I saw the trailer, cool became awesome.

Up until I saw that trailer, there was another fairly similar game that I had been keeping my eyes on more eagerly, called Prototype. By the time June/July 2009 came around, I was pretty clear on which one game I was after, thankfully, I picked well.

You play as Cole, a normal guy who makes a living as a bike courier/messenger. One day, the poor guy was delivering a package when it detonated in his hands, decimating a good portion of the city (which spans three islands, sound familiar?), and leaving Cole in a come. Upon waking, Cole finds that the city is in big trouble, with each island now under gang control, and a plague of sorts that’s making people sick, and to cap it off, the government has quarantined the entire place.

You soon find out that the blast had endowed you with special powers, all of them related to Cole's new ability to control electricity. Not only that, but if you happen to feel like jumping of the tallest building in the game, there is no need to aim for a haystack, you won't take any damage anyway.

To begin with there is the routine tutorial to get you used to the controls, after that though, the city is basically yours to do with as you please. As well as the many story missions, there are a heap of side missions to complete. Doing so takes back land from the gangs. There is also a morality system in the game. Making morally good choices makes you a hero, and the opposite makes you infamous. The path you choose affects the type of abilities Cole learns along the way. While a hero, civvies will chuck rocks and rubble at enemies, but go evil and you will get the same treatment.

Anyway, your main mission here is to get the city back up and running, which entails going into the underground sewers and reconnecting all the transformers. Doing so nets you a new ability, most of which assist you in taking down your foes.

The superpowers will obviously be pretty popular, but one of the things I liked most about this game was that every building is scalable, thanks to Coles experience as an urban explorer. You may say a lot of games have scalable buildings. But in Infamous, You'll never find yourself yelling at the screen, "Why didn't he grab on to the ledge?!” it all works perfectly. You also won't just fall of a building if you walk too near the edge; you have to deliberately initiate the drop down yourself, which saves you from a lot of time wasting falls.

At the very start of the game, I can take a long time to travel around the city. But once you start turning the power back on, the powerlines become live, allowing Cole to use them like a grind rail from R&C. Later on you also gain the ability to somewhat glide, which is another time saver. Eventually you also get the trains back up and running, which allows you to hope up on top and go for a ride, or alternatively you can just use the tracks as a grind rail again.

The people who occupy the cities make the game so much more than it would have been without them. Often you'll be on your way somewhere and will find yourself getting sidetracked by the secondary missions, or just by random people running up to you asking for help. Obviously, on my evil run through this wasn’t the case, blasting them in the face is satisfying after all, but it is just a satisfying to have helped that virtual person out.

It soon becomes pretty clear that you are force that can control the crippled city. Choose to be a Hero, and the city starts to get back on its feet, stuff starts happening again, and the people even start to clean it up. Go the other way though, and the city falls even further into dismay than it already was. They (your morality choices) also affect your appearance and the colour of you electrical abilities.

The morality system is one of the key parts of the game, and it’s been implemented well. A lot of the positive deeds actually had the effect of making me feel good about myself. Some of the evil missions on the other had the opposite effect, and were a tad bit disturbing , such as killing protestors and sucking energy out of civvies in a good old QTE sequence.

For the most part, you will find yourself battling through the hordes of gang members who rule the city. There are however, three bosses that you must take down. I should explain what/who each of the gangs are. The first island has been taken over by 'The Reapers', who are former druggies, and the easiest to kill. On the next island, you encounter 'The Dustmen', homeless people who somehow obviously had engineering degrees, as they sport strong armour made from scrap materials, and also have an army of small robots. Finally, the 'First Sons', the strongest of the gangs, inhabits the third island. These guys are after the ray-sphere, the device the detonated giving Cole, and as it turns out, some of the gang members, now know and Conduits, superpowers. Each gangs Conduits have some pretty impressive abilities, and can present a challenge if you're low on energy.

The morality system I have talked about a few times is actually referred to as 'Karma', and the things that affect it as 'Karma Moments'. In the more important Karma moments, Cole weighs up the pro's and con's of choosing to be good or bad, but normally you will have made up your mind at the start of the game anyway as to which path you will go down. I won't spoil any of these moments for you if you haven't played the game, but I will say that the best part about these moments is that Cole always justifies taking the evil route, making it hard to be good sometimes. This actually makes you think about why you are doing what you are doing, something that next to no games do.

There are minor actions to complete that affect your Karma. Heroic actions include healing injured people and tying enemies to the ground with your electricity. But there are more evil actions that you can do, such as blasting civilians, sucking the energy out of people and, tying civilians down. Being good can be hard at times though, as the civilians love to get in your way, and you have to be careful not to where you grenade spamming in a fire fight or you can expect to see your Karma take a turn for the worse.

In addition to all of the 'neutral' side missions, there are positive and negative karma missions that only unlock if you have a certain Karma rank. All these Karmic choices you are making culminate in one of the games two endings, which again I won't spoil for you.

The characters have been constructed fairly thoughtfully. The two most important people in Cole's life, his best friend, Zeke, and his girlfriend Trish, who sort of hates you now, believing you deliberately caused the explosion, have both been strongly affected by the disaster. You have to deal with these people's problems, and listen to them lamenting their losses, in Zeke's case, a failed relationship, and in Trish's case, her sister who was killed in the blast. All of this character building is done in a way that makes it harder to make a Karma choice that might lead to them suffering more, even if it may help other people.

This game I believe started a trend in games with its cut scenes. Each cut scene plays out as a highly stylised moving graphical novel of sorts. Most of the cut scenes are brilliantly developed, although there should be more variation between the veil sides and the good sides cut scenes.

The graphics are nothing to behold really, although the worlds have been designed and styled to fit perfectly with the disastrous events that have occurred within them. Animation is the only major gripe I have with this game. Apart from Cole's actions, everyone else's arm movement, facial expressions and lip movement are extremely rigid and distinctly 'last-gen'. Textures are pretty good though, and there are a lot of polygons in the world. Given that the game never loads except for at the beginning, it’s not surprising that the draw distance isn't huge, and there is a bit of texture and object 'popping', especially when grinding on train tracks.

Other than some graphical issues, there isn't much wrong with Infamous. One thing I will say is that there needs to be more variation in side missions, which are almost all fun, but need to be repeated a few times if you are going to clear the islands of the gangs. The only boring side mission is a surveillance one, where you have to remove surveillance equipment from a building.

There are also a lot of collectables hidden in the world, such as dead drops, which are short recorded messages that give some background to a character you encounter late in the game, and also the ray sphere. There are also an enormous 350 blast shards, collecting all of which only nets you a bronze trophy (I had only one to find, all I needed for the platinum, when my PS3's hard drive, one I bought myself I might add, not the original one, died, leaving me without the save game data). These can both be 'pinged' for by pressing L3, which gives you a rough map location for blast shards near you, and tell you the proximity and direction of any close dead drops. Pinging also displays areas from which Cole can recharge his electricity supplies.

The other bonus comes in the form of stunts, 21 of them. These range from easy level ones such as sticking a grenade to an enemy to more challenging ones such as meleeing an airborne enemy. If you want to complete all 21, it's a good idea to tackle them during the main game, as getting some afterwards may be very difficult if you have cleared a lot of areas from gang control.

Once you complete the final mission, you get to free roam the city, keeping all of your abilities, blast shards etc, as well as all the XP you gathered, which I should have mentioned can be used to upgrade your abilities.

In conclusion, Sucker Punch has punched above their weight with this game. It might not be all that pretty, but as many an Xbox 360 gamers will tell you, you don't have to have great graphics to have a great game. The characters are constructed to provide thought provoking circumstances, and the Karma system has been implemented in a very complete and meaningful way. Cole's powers, whether you are a Hero or Infamous are stunningly cool, as are the graphic novel cut scenes, even hunting blast shards is entertaining, at least till you get down to the last few. Infamous is an outstanding game that I believe every PS3 owner should at least try before this generation is over.

Score

9.4

Graphics

Overall, good variation, even if side missions are quite repetitive. Lots to do, boss battles are challenging enough to cause some frustration, but not so difficult that you end up having to fork out for a couple of new controller by the end of the game.

8.6

Sound

Besides the problems with animations and some texture pop in, the graphics have been well styled to suit the gameplay and the events that occur in the game.

9.2

Gameplay

Voice acting is pretty sharp, although Cole does sound pretty gravelly even as a Hero. Music is pretty original, and does well do reflect on-screen happenings.

9.4

Fun Factor

All of Cole's abilities are fun to use. Throwing grenade after electrical grenade wreaks havoc, and that’s always a bonus. Only gripe is those repetitive side missions again.

Overall

9.3