Everything about Infamous says it should be a corny, repetitive, and glitchy experience plagued with all of the problems of modern sandbox games. And while it is all of those things, it is an awesome game and deserves all the good praise it gets.
Infamous is about Cole Evans who awakes at the start of the game in the middle of a large crater where a super explosive had just gone off, wiping out a large chunk of the city. The effects of the bomb have spread throughout the rest of the city and now it is quarantined, letting no one in and no one out. To make matters worse, the city is overrun by different gang factions, all of which have gained kinds of super powers from (I’m assuming) the explosion. Cole has powers as well, and can manipulate electricity! However, news gets around that Cole was the carrier for this explosive that threw the city into turmoil (although he remembers none of this) and so the city is very on edge towards him. Cole must now decided whether to try and better his public image by doing good, or take control of the city by any ruthless means necessary; all while trying to unravel the puzzle that is his existence.
The first thing you notice is Cole’s voice, which is really deep and somewhat cheesy. It’s almost Metal Gear Solid-esque. I thought this was going to irritate me for the entire game, but the voice actually grew on me quite fast. It is a super hero game after all, so the voice eventually fits his character.
The second thing I noticed was the actual graphics of this game. The shadows (at least on my consol) were very pixilated. As the game progressed, I noticed many of the electrical effects were the same. Now, I’m using an HDMI cable to hook my PS3 up to a 1080p LED TV, so I don’t think it’s my system. I’m just not sure why some of the graphics would be so splotchy. It could also be the sheer amount of “stuff” that’s crammed into this game, feeding the need to downgrade things like shadow quality.
Don’t get me wrong, the game looks very nice. I was just expecting more from a Playstation 3 title (especially after playing Uncharted) But when you have a very large sandbox environment, that’s to be expected. One thing what I would really LOVE to point out is “bugs”. When you get to the part of the game where you play at night, you can actually see small swarms of bugs gathering around lights. I thought this was a very cool touch added by the developers.
Speaking of the environment, the city itself (Empire City) is sprawling and vast. The game encompasses 3 islands of cityscape. It’s impressive to see how much city there is (especially when you eventually climb to the highest point and can look down on all of it) but if you try to memorize the cities, you’re in for a challenge. This is because there is a large amount of reused areas. It took me a while to figure it out, but after passing the same gas station 4 times, I realized: there is 4 of the same gas station. (there may be more, I didn’t care to go around and count them all. The same goes for boat houses, warehouses, little cemeteries. They all look exactly the same, and so it’s hard to judge exactly where you are without consulting your map. I understand that this is necessary for making a very large city in a sandbox game, but when you think of games like Grand Theft Auto that pulled off a massive city that you could learn and traverse without using a map, you start to want more out of your games. GTA really raised that bar in this genre (which it also created). I’m not saying that the reused areas are bad, I’m just saying that it can become disorienting if you aren’t using your map.
Along with the repetitive environment, there is also repetitive gameplay. Usually when I hear that a game is repetitive, I shy away from it. But Infamous proves that it can still be fun. The game has different missions throughout the city, I want to say there are about 5 or 6 different mission types that you just play over and over in different sections of the city. But even though the mission types are the same, they get more challenging as the game goes on. There are then of course the story missions which are all basically different, but they get more challenging as time goes on. There are also sewer missions which have you go underground to activate large power circuits that turn electricity on for blacked out parts of the city. These missions are fun because with each one you gain a new ability, and the sewer then acts as a tutorial on how to use it before it unleashes you on the city above. So although missions are all basically the same, you get to play then with increasing difficulty and new abilities which give you new ways to complete the tasks.
Part of the games difficulty stems from its enemy types. This game has a LOT of different enemy types. I was impressed. Uncharted had like….2. This game has near 20! More and more enemies are introduced as you progress and each new enemy is increasingly difficult to defeat. It ranges from basic gang member with a gun to flying, grenade launching machines that turn invisible (which are very irritating). The enemies were something I thought the game did a great job with. Even after you beat what you think is a boss, they just throw into the city one day when you are running around! It was also nice to see that the boss battles used attacks and animations that were specific to them and are not seen outside of that fight. So you have to learn the attacks at that moment and know how to move (where as other games just have bosses that are bigger versions of enemies you’ve fought 100 times before)
The checkpoint system (for when you die) is pretty good. It has its faults though. Many times I would die and it would respawn me with a couple less enemies or in the case of chase scenes, would put me a bit further along than I was, kind of adapting to my abilities (or lack there of) which I thought was kind of nice. Some people may find irritating. But there are other times when it’s the complete opposite and spawns you right in the middle of a roof top surrounded by enemies that all immediately fire upon you (I find THAT irritating) But all in all, it felt pretty good.
Controls are pretty good. You can jump and dodge and attack and all that stuff. You hold a shoulder button to go into an over the shoulder, 3rd person shooter, style camera and can fire on enemies with electric energy bolts. The more powers you unlock, the more buttons there are to press. Eventually you have the entire controller filled with attacks that you can use. You can also upgrade all of these attacks by gaining experience points for things like defeating enemies and completing missions. The attacks also use your electric energy which you can recharge by sucking energy from electronics like cars and street lamps and whatnot. Collecting “blast-shards” around the city will increase the amount of energy you can hold at one time.
An irritating part of the controls is climbing. You can climb ANYTHING in the city and go pretty much anywhere you want. You just need to jump at something and Cole will grab on. But this can get glitchy; which is expected in this kind of game. Sometimes he won’t grab something unless you jump at it just right, or sometimes something will be just out of reach and you have to find an alternate route, but later found out you could just get a running start and make it up. Climbing down is an even bigger pain. If you hit the drop button, Cole just drops down to the next ledge no matter what. So you either have to jump completely off the building and land who-knows-where, or sit there and hit the drop button some 50 times to make it all the way to the bottom. (I think they fixed this though for Infamous 2 by including a button that you have to hold in order to hold on to a ledge (ala Shadow of the Colossus)) This can be especially irritating in high pressure situations like chases or when you are running for cover.
Speaking of which, there is a cover system! But I barely ever used it. I’m usually the kind of guy that uses cover all the time. In Uncharted I was behind cover about 98% of the time. In Infamous, it was just easier to fly over someone’s head and fill their face with bolts of lightning quick enough to kill them dead before they killed you. Cover also becomes obsolete when you have enemies that do nothing but shoot missiles or grenades at you. It was a nice touch, but something that could be greatly improved.
One of the biggest features of the game is its moral dilemmas. You can either be good or bad basically. Cole can either help all of the people in Empire City and reach Hero status, or he can kill and steal from people and become Infamous. Even though the game’s title is Infamous, I decided to go the hero route. In a game full of villains and gang members, the people NEED a hero! Both paths give you slightly different moves which you can look at in your pause menu. I really didn’t see a whole lot of difference in them except when you are going bad, your electricity becomes red instead of blue. When you are good and complete good missions, the citizens of the city stop to take photos of you, come to you for help, and even help you fend off enemies by throwing rocks and stuff. When you are bad, people throw the rocks at you, and also run up and push you and stuff like that. I’m assuming since the city is full of people, going the “bad” route would make the game a little more difficult because practically everyone would be an enemy; but I look forward to playing through again, being evil this time.
The NPCs in this game are hit and miss. To me, all of Cole’s friends and family were really irritating. Not sure why he hung out with them. There are a couple others though that were decent, but all in all, I think Cole would be better off running alone. The story itself is pretty decent actually. It’s not super corny, even though it is a little. It’s got some pretty good twists and turns that left me feeling pretty good ( can’t wait to get to 2!)
The cutsenes are all animated comic book style. This may throw some people off (threw me off at first) but they actually aren’t that bad. They add some style to the game and make it different. The art is also very well done in these, and even though they are stills, there are slight animations that make them come alive.
All in all, Infamous is a fun adventure. I really enjoyed the freedom you had and always looked forward to new missions. This is why I’m so anxious to play the second game now! I’m hoping that in Infamous 2 you get to keep all of his powers from the end of 1. I know one thing they improved in 2 is walking on water. I know from the demo in 2 you can run on water for a limited time before falling in, whereas in 1 you just splash around and slowly die unless you can jump out in time.
Pros
Fun gameplay
Many different enemy types
Many different powers
Decently good story
Repetitive done well
Cons
Repetitive nonetheless
Can be kind of corny at times
Reused areas in city makes it hard to know your way around
Glitchy climbing and cover system
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