Title: inFamous

Platform: PS3

Developer: Sucker Punch

Publisher: Sony

Type: 3^rd person action.

inFamous, a highly anticipated Playstation 3 exclusive, was released just a few weeks ago. While being a decent game, it fails to live up to its potential. The core gameplay is definitely fun, but the game ultimately falls victim to a boring overworld, a poor karma system, and repetition. The concept behind the game is entertaining enough; players assume the role of Cole, a man who has been given electrical powers in the detonation of a device that has destroyed most of the games fictional setting, Empire City. Now that you have these powers the game sets you loose on the city where you can choose to be its guardian angel, or its destroyer.

This would all be fine and dandy if the overworld was even slightly compelling. Empire City is a bore. While you will find side missions, they are essentially 3 different tasks given to you by random people who have no reason to be helping you because you will likely be killing countless civilians. These side missions are only altered ever so slightly to keep things somewhat interesting. Exploration is even worse. Moving around the city is slow and dull due to the poor grappling system (more on that later). There is almost no reason to roam from your main objectives aside from pickups that extend what I am just going to go ahead and call your mana bar, which drains when you use your spells… I mean powers. If you do decide to explore, these pickups are about all you will find, aside from annoying enemies shooting at you from rooftops.

inFamous has a half hearted karma system included within. Unfortunately, you are just about forced to be either entirely good or entirely evil in order to get cool stuff. The main thing that determines your alignment is what the game calls “Karma moments” where you are supposed to make (hard?) decisions, which usually come down to whether you kill a guy or not. These moral dilemmas are never ambiguous; you shoot (in this case electrocute) Old Yeller or you find a cure for his rabies. To make matters worse I can’t see a single reason to go good. When you look at the power up screen you will notice that some abilities can’t be unlocked without a specific karma alignment. The abilities that either side can use are altered in some way based on how far you are to the side of evil or good. Let’s look at Cole’s most basic skill, which essentially shoots out a small bolt of electricity. If you go good, when you kill enemies with this ability a small amount of your mana bar will be restored. If you choose the dark side of the force, people you kill with this ability will EXPLODE, killing other enemies around them. You will have no issues keeping your mana bar full given that you can restore it within seconds by walking up to any electronic device and pressing L1. So even from a functional standpoint the good side is far weaker. The lack of balance of functionality and fun factor between the two alignments are what finally drags the karma system down into the fires of video game Hades.

The in-game graphics get the job done. Most of your powers are at the very least eye popping. The particle effects also look quite nice. The draw distance is impressive as far as the buildings and structures go. However, say I want to stand on top of a building and rain some hell down on the civilians below me, too bad, because their models won’t be drawn in from that height. The games story is told through comic book like sequences, which actually work well with the game and definitely add to the graphic novel feel the developers were going for. Nonetheless the writing could definitely use some work. Many lines Cole speaks aloud are so cheesy that you will find yourself chuckling when you are supposed to be taking it seriously, the fact that he sounds like Christian Bale’s Batman adds to the humor.

Luckily, the gameplay itself is really quite fun, at least for a while. While the game takes place mostly in the third person, when you take aim, the camera zooms in to an over the shoulder perspective and gives you a crosshair for aiming your abilities. It’s fun, but sometimes it feels like you are playing a shooter more than a third person action game. Cole starts out with just a couple of basic powers, but as you move through the game you will unlock more. At the start of most missions you will go through a platforming sequence in the sewers under Empire City, when you reach the end you will receive a new power. This is fun the first few times but you end up repeating this process so many times that it becomes the ultimate been there done that scenario. The powers themselves seem cool at first but as you continue playing you will realize they are just guns that shoot electricity instead of bullets. You have thunder shock (pistol), shockwave (shotgun), a continual electric attack (machine gun), and shock grenades (really?).

inFamous sports a climb anywhere/grab on to anything style of platforming, similar to Assassin’s Creed. However, it is far too simple, you can grab so many things that you can basically scale a building by pressing X and holding up on the control stick. It’s like you’re Spider-Man! If Spider-Man were slow and boring! Wouldn’t it be more fun to just run up the side of the building or something? The missions themselves are about what you would expect from an action game. Sucker Punch did a good job of mixing up the objectives a bit from mission to mission, as well as introducing some unique in-game storytelling via dreams and hallucinations that you actually play through. Sadly, the action itself gets repetitive after about the first half of the game. You zap people… you zap A LOT of people.

With all negativity aside, inFamous isn’t a bad game. As I play it I am reminded of Assassin’s Creed at many points, another game that I think could have used a couple more months in development. This is a game that could be greatly improved upon in a sequel, because most of the issues it faces could be fixed relatively easily. Add a little excitement to the overworld, some variety to the action, fix the horrid karma system, and Sucker Punch would have a fantastic game.

VERDICT: 7.3

Similar but better games: Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Spider man 2, and Prototype.

Worth purchasing? How much do you like shocking dudes? Likely not enough to purchase.

Worth renting? Without a doubt.

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/25/

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/5/27/