Infamous
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Super-powered humans and an open-world concept, what can go wrong? Infamous is a third person action game developed by Sucker Punch, the company is also known for the Sly Cooper-series.
The story of Empire City and Cole “Electro wannabe” MacGrath
So one day the bike messenger Cole MacGrath was just dropping of a package, the said package explodes and destroys half a city. This event gives Cole the power to manipulate electricity and therefore becoming the modern day Electro. After learning to control his powers Cole takes to the streets and meets with the FBI agent Moya, who wants Cole to track down her husband and track down the device that gave Cole his powers in the first place. After the said incident bad-guys also started to pop up and with Coles newfound power he will be the one to stop them.
The story itself is pretty solid, you got an ordinary no-hairdo guy getting super-powers while struggling with love and ethics. It may be a little cliché but the story takes some very suprising turns sometimes, and the comic-book style storytelling is really an awesome way to present the development. Let’s move on to the gameplay, the basic controls feels tight and responsive, Cole can basically grab on to everything in Empire City, which is the primary gameplay for the platforming done in this game. Instead of running through the city on the ground, Cole can simply climb a building and jump from rooftop to rooftop or use his powers to grind the powerlines.
Point at an enemy and he will soon go ZAP!
During the game you will do your fair share of electric-grenade throwing, force-pushing and lightning bolt the hell out of your enemies, doing this earns experience points to Cole which allows him to evolve his powers with a simple upgrade system. The developers has blended a third-person shooter experience with platforming and allowed Cole to use his powers in almost every situation, climbing a tree and shooting lightning bolts at the same time isn’t a problem. Throughout the game Cole will face some ethical situations, whereas the player has to choose if he want to walk an evil path, or the path of good, this is the Karma-system. These are presented in short cut-scenes where Cole ponders which choice he will choose and ultimately leaving the choice to the player. The different paths has different rewards such as different uses of Cole powers, the powers of the good path is all about precision and control, you don’t want to hurt innocents right? and the evil path is more about mass-destruction. Cole can also gain Evil/Good points by saving dying civilians on the street or draining them of their lifeforce, doing any of them will eventually make Coles appearance different, A good Cole looks healthy and inspires people while an evil Cole looks wretched and pale, another aesthetic difference between the good and evil path is the color of Coles lightning, good=blue, evil=red.
Moving forward
The story missions are pretty good, they enough variety to keep you interested but the side-missions are overly repetitive and most of the time you don’t get the Karma-choices to keep them interesting and varied. There is a limit to how many times you find it fun to climb all over a building to destroy some bugging-devices. There is a lot to do in the game, collecting blast shards which will make Cole more powerful, or collecting trophies by performing certain stunts or completing various tasks, doing all the side-missions will take a while too.
Conclusion
Infamous is a superhero themed third-person open-world action game and a pretty good one at that, not perfect though. The gameplay can get repetitive and sometimes the framerate might drop but it will not affect the gameplay.Grabbing certain ledges will sometimes be a chore, since Cole will automatically grab other ledges. But with a solid 20+ hour experience and super-powered abilities, you’ll find that the game is pretty sweet, sweet enough to play the game one more time after finishing it to walk the other karma-path. If you’re interesting in open-world games with lots of action this might be for you. As for me, it’s worth 4 out of 5 stars.
