Review: inFamous

This summer’s blockbuster superhero video game is here, and it is called inFamous. Putting the power of electricity and the fate of a city into the player’s hands, Sucker Punch’s latest sandbox game is one of the biggest, flashiest, and most unique games to grace the PlayStation 3.

inFamous pits players in the shoes of Cole McGrath regaining consciousness shortly after a bomb is detonated in the Historic District of Empire City. Coping with his wounds and dealing with strange electrical phenomena, Cole escapes the area of the blast with his friend Zeke. Two weeks later, Cole’s girlfriend is convinced he killed her sister, all of Empire City has been quarantined by the government due to a plague that started right around the explosion, and the districts across the city are all run by gun-wielding criminal factions. Cole is tasked with finding the origins of and controlling his new electrical abilities, as well as leading the population of the city to salvation or further despair.

After setting out from Zeke’s rooftop, Cole can basically go anywhere he wants in the city, with a few exceptions. Obviously, without electricity, Cole would be powerless to heal himself or fight off hoards of enemies, so most of the game’s terrestrial progression centers around reestablishing power across the three districts of Empire City. Missions will pop up on the radar given their proximity to Cole, or waypoints can be put onto the main map to show up on the radar.

The control scheme put forth in inFamous is one of the most straightforward I have used in a good while, and for good reason; Cole needs all of his agility to take down his enemies. While not targeting, X makes Cole jump, and he has a basic response to gravitate towards ledges and things he can hang on to. R1 is assigned to Static Thrusters, allowing Cole to float further during jumps, and firing while aiming. R2 inside and outside of combat brings up the Polarity Wall, an electrical shield to block incoming fire. L1 brings up the targeting reticle, and changes some of the functions of the face buttons. Circle is kind of a context-sensitive button, as hitting it while moving will make Cole dodge, pressing it near a barrier will make him duck for cover, and pressing it while hanging from a ledge makes him drop down. Triangle is used primarily for interacting with objects and people. While aiming, X sends an electrical shockwave, circle dodges, and triangle is assigned to the Megawatt Hammer. L2 will always drain from a nearby source of electricity, while L3 always sends out kind of an electrical sonar pulse, showing the player where nearby sources of electricity, blast shards, and dead drops are. Lastly, R3 switches which arm Cole is using to target enemies, making it possible for him to go on the offensive from almost any position he may be in.

Empire City itself is a very unique place. Citizens are all over the place, looking for help in whatever manner they can get it. Several citizens have missions for the player, from killing an untrustworthy person to taking pictures of Cole doing stunts, while others are simply asking for assistance for a friend in need. Cars are moving about in traffic, police are engaging gang members, and televisions are broadcasting the news and the ever-elusive “voice of survival”. Televisions are actually used in a very interesting way in inFamous. News on the plague and quarantine as well as rumors on Cole’s actions are spread by television, keeping Cole, Zeke, and the many NPCs informed on how actions taken by the player have affected things inside and outside of the city.

Pedestrians, policemen, and medics will be standing outside waiting to grab the player’s attention, needing Cole to perform different acts in order to gain experience. Most of the missions in the game are of a small and repetitive variety. Policemen need captured enemies to be escorted to prison, medics need their stolen medical supplies to be returned, and civilians just need the player to deal with people that are giving them trouble. Though these types of missions do appear often (as well as a few others, most notably the annoying counter-surveillance missions), every now and then through the game Cole will be tasked with something unique, like reading the memories of a dead person and following an electrical echo to the source of their untimely demise. Like many games, some missions just click better than others, while the rest serve as a kind of filler until a plot-based mission becomes available or is the only option left.

The majority of the scenes before and after missions take place on the in-game engine, but some of the cutscenes after major brawls and plot points use a unique comic-book style. Though short, these scenes carry a lot of weight, and add an interesting dynamic to how the story is told. Simply put, the comic style is a joy to behold, and contains some of the simplest yet coolest effects seen in the game.

The powers that Cole is given are of a varying bunch. Throughout the course of the game, Cole will return power to various parts of the city by becoming a conductor between the parts of the grid that are live and those that aren’t. Once the connection is established through the protagonist’s body, the surge of energy bestows upon him a new power. The powers obtained through the power grid missions are usually the main series of abilities, and through experience (gained from missions and combat) players can upgrade the abilities to varying degrees depending on Cole’s karma. (I’ll speak more on the karma system later.) To use the powers, Cole must have charged power kegs. These are basically a rating of how much electrical energy he can store (and expend) at any given time, and his overall capacity can be extended by collecting blast shards that were spread across the city after the explosion. By finding a source of electricity, Cole can drain what he needs to replenish his power kegs as well as his health. During furious firefights, players will be actively searching for untapped sources of juice to continue, and may even turn to draining an enemy or a civilian of his life in order to replenish health and power.

The most basic and passive powers don’t drain Cole at all. Its only until upgraded abilities are available (such as the Shock Grenade or Overload Burst) that players will have to keep an eye on how much stored energy is available. Also, the upgrade path for abilities will change many options so far as energy consumption and attack type. For the righteous players, the default lightning and grenade power upgrades will focus on accuracy and non-lethal takedowns, in accordance with standard savior policy. Evil players will have a bit more fun in combat, as the evil upgrades focus more on explosions and spreading damage, which will inevitably kill innocent bystanders along with the actual bad guys. Powers such as the Static Thrusters that come into play later in the game don’t use energy, and some of the initial powers have upgrades that allow Cole to absorb energy while attacking or traveling. The upgrade paths that are available depend on available experience, missions completed, and karma.

It is important to note how a player’s karma status will fundamentally change combat. Players on the negative end of the continuum will have to deal with collateral damage (such as harmful explosions and misplaced Shock Grenades) as potentially lethal side-effects of furious combat. Damage dealt to civilians does lead to a negative karma rating, so players playing the good role will have to be more accurate in dealing with spread damage and explosive offensive abilities to ensure no one outside of enemy characters is harmed.

One of the interesting things about the powers is the ability to use more than one at a time. For instance, in the game the player is given the ability to grind across power lines and train tracks to cover ground at faster speeds. During this process, it is entirely possible to shoot down enemies on nearby rooftops, using any of the available offensive powers, as well as using powers that (later in the game) become combination strikes. A savvy gamer could jump off of a roof, float down gently with Cole’s Static Thrusters, block incoming fire with the Polarity Wall, pick off a few Reapers with Arc Lightning, and engage the Thunder Drop all before hitting the ground. It sounds like a lot, and it really kind of is, but given how well all the powers fit together in the control scheme, pulling off complex combinations of moves comes quite naturally.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of inFamousis how it seems to pull multiple genres together. Cole can scale just about any wall, jump from any height and survive, and travel across any one of three districts in a matter of moments. The game almost feels like a platformer outside of combat. Successful strings of grinds can lead to higher buildings, faster speeds, longer jumps, and other successful chains of maneuvers that can really make the player feel like a superhero. Though slow towards the beginning of the game, the powers that are added to the docket towards the middle and end vastly expand the ability of the player to traverse the city. Also, many of the platforming maneuvers can be executed while in combat, leading to a huge amount of possibilities for fight or flight. One of the only gripes so far as how Cole moves about town is that the game’s ability to predict what you want to jump towards or hang on to almost works too well. Every now and then, the game gets it wrong, but in general, all of the crazy platforming moves are pulled off near-perfectly.

inFamous uses a familiar but exciting concept in that player choices within the game affect Cole’s karma rating. For the uninitiated, moments will come across in the game where the player has to make a decision, such as sharing food dropped into the city amongst the populace or taking it all for oneself. For either action, the consequence has a direct affect on Cole as well as the people of the city. At one point in the game, poison is being dumped into the Neon District’s water supply. Cole can shut off valves on the poison pumping mechanism, but he will be covered in the muck, and will basically start tripping balls. To avoid this undesirable happenstance in future occurrences, Cole can zap the pump from a distance to remove it; however, this action actually feeds more of the poison into the reservoirs, and more citizens on the street become sick and die. Yes, players actually see city folk on their knees in pain, some vomiting, some dying or dead due to the result of Cole’s actions.

Of course, players with a sense of righteousness will take the dose of poison to save others the trouble, and can even heal people on the streets of the poison that plagues them. Empire City is literally living or dying off of the actions of the protagonist. Not only does karma affect the plot and outcome of individual missions, but it also affects character relations, Zeke and Trish’s disposition, and Cole’s physical appearance, as well as his available missions, powers, and ability upgrades.

Unfortunately, inFamous does have a few downfalls. Most of the enemies faced are of a very similar variety. Base-level thugs across all districts are more or less guys with guns. There are a good number of enemies with rocket launchers, grenades, and shotguns, but only the grenadiers and rocket jockeys change battles. For their numbers, one would imagine that the basic enemies are weaklings with little to no accuracy, but this would be false; basic enemies are crack shots, able to shoot Cole from a distance well outside of Cole’s available range. Especially at the Historic District, these ordinary foes can be quite difficult to take down one-on-one, let alone in groups. Throw in the super-powered Conduits, and battles can quickly become overly-difficult (especially on the harder difficulty). Compared to some of the standard brawls, the boss fights in inFamous are clown shoes. Though somewhat inventive and extremely fun, I didn’t find much challenge to any of the three major bosses to be fought in the game. This can be taken as somewhat of an upside, as the real meat of the game is not in just a few key scenes spread evenly throughout the adventure.

In-game textures and models are truly a sight to see, but every now and then I encountered some details that would be bush league even on the PlayStation 2. Not just relatively poor, these visuals (like those over the head of the second boss) were quite literally a haggard scar across the in-game picture. Although these rough moments are very few and far between, they serve as a major distraction from what is overall an extremely polished title. On top of these harsh effects, the in-game cutscenes show a strange kind of animation quality more reminiscent of robots than people. Characters will walk and move their arms in ways that would never seem human, and it serves to draw the player out of the game experience and back into the real world. Luckily, players will be too busy busting heads to pay much attention to how well a beat cop’s mouth matches up to his words.

The majority of the music in-game just gets the job done and not much else. A few tracks are less than stellar, and one particularly short track sucks hard enough to actually make me uncomfortable. I would liken it to someone playing a record backwards while you are chewing on aluminum foil. Luckily, the sound effects and overall digital mix is extremely well-done, and more than makes up for the weird ten-second song of doom. Playing this game on a Dolby DTS-capable setup is highly recommended.

At first, I found some of the plot to be confusing. inFamous basically (and literally) drops a bomb when it comes to the story. Although none of the characters or locations were familiar before the explosion, things have obviously drastically changed, and it kind of made me personally feel like I was coping with all of the changes along with the rest of the citizens. Things eventually become clearer, as Cole encounters Moya, and the dead drops left by John clarify some of the loose ends. The finale of the game definitely answers almost all questions raised, but manages to leave specific details behind, as well as bring up more questions as to the nature of what Cole has come to know and how a lot of the concepts were even possible. If there is going to be a sequel (which is a definite possibility), Cole is absolutely set up to become a serious hardass.

Ultimately, inFamous is not only a standout game amongst the relatively few PlayStation 3 exclusives, but manages to be bigger and more unique than many games in similar genres across all platforms. The graphics are incredible, the sound top-shelf, and the overall mechanics for traversing Empire City and its alleys, buildings, and sewers are so phenomenal that doing nothing in particular is one of the most exciting routes to take. For PlayStation 3 owners, inFamous is a must-have.

Doin’ It RIGHT: - Amazing control and player agility - Tight controls - Strong plot	Doin’ It RONG: - Minor graphical issues - Repetitive missions - Small variety of enemies
FINAL SCORE: 9 / 10