Infamous Review

Welcome to A Sith Reviews. I am starting this series to try my hand at reviewing games at a regular pace. This is my second review, so please feedback is wanted and make sure to be nit-pickish. Thank You.


inFAMOUS (To be known as Infamous from here out) is a third person open world shooter by Sucker Punch Productions, their first game since the Sly Cooper series finished in late 2005. The game was released on 26 May 2009 and is exclusive to the PlayStation 3. It was also recently announced that the game will be re-released in the PS3 greatest hits series.

The narrative is set in Empire City, which is a fictional city modeled after New York. The city is separated into three islands the Neon, Historical District, and Warren. At the game's beginning only the Neon is accessible, later through story progression the other islands become unlocked. The city is pulchritudinous even for standard PS3 graphics, but where it shines is the dystopian areas like the destroyed bridges or the explosion's epicenter. These areas are well designed, with many places to climb and see, adding a reason to just explore the sandbox that is Empire City. The setting is a great piece that adds to the enjoyment of the game.

Now onto the characters, the protagonist is Cole MacGrath. He is a bike courier who receives super powers after the package he is delivering explodes en route. As a character he comes off as immature and cocky, but he has a charm that seems to come from Jason Cottle's voice acting that keeps him likable. His comedic best friend and side kick Zeke however does not have the same saving grace as Cole. His one liners and constant nagging are a main reason to hit the mute button on your television while playing. Reminding me a lot of Roman from Grand Theft Auto: IV, but without the ability to tell him to stop calling. Next, the love interest, Trish. She is a doctor who will only love you if you play the game with a positive karma. Playing as evil she comes off as using you for her own ends of helping people, what a bitch right? Either way you choose to play the game she will remain one of the most memorable characters. Moya plays the role of Charlie from Charlie's angels. Telling you what to do from a distance progressing the narrative. She plays her role well and develops from the cold heartless FBI agent to an ally and back so seamlessly it becomes a blurred line what her priorities are. She is voiced well and though she is written to be condescending it never gets to the point of Zeke where you disdain her. The characters mostly come off as memorable and keep you entertained with Zeke being the only character that wears on you, but even that will take some time.




Villains often make better foremen for why a game is great than the protagonist or his allies, Infamous is one of those games. The main antagonist, Kessler, has an allure to him that never fades. His voice acting is a joy to hear and never becomes stale. He is the extremely powerful leader of the First Sons, a powerful gang that has taken control after the explosion. He posses powers much like Cole's, possibly even more powerful, yet he never uses this power to directly attack Cole, rather choosing to test him in indirect ways. Throughout the narrative Kessler's motivations become an enigma, leading to a conclusion that cements him as one of the deepest villains in recent gaming I can recall. Along with Kessler the other villain that has a major role is Alden, the leader of the dustmen. Alden's weakness as a character is a lack of development. From the first moment you meet him until you confront him he comes off as the same thing, a crazed revenge driven mad man with powers. His motives are simplistic, Kessler took his spot as leader of the First Sons, so he wants to destroy Kessler and all other powered individuals, including Cole. Also his story seems to fall short, especially when flushed by the deepness of Kessler, as a secondary villain he is decent but he won't be making any villain or character of the year lists. Overall the villains are good, but the strength does stem from Kessler carrying the load.

The narrative of Infamous starts with a very basic idea, you are a bike currier who gets sent to deliver a mysterious package and it explodes. When you awake the city has been devastated and you are at the epicenter. Empire City is quarantined and as you try and escape you are captured and offered release from the island if you help them accomplish their goals. So, off you go to find the ray sphere, which was in the mysterious package. The story progresses through in-game dialog and in-game cut scenes, but for major events the story switches to a comic book presentation to tell the narrative, which keeps the game fresh and is used in a compelling way. The pacing is very quick early, the first 25 or so missions can be accomplished in about the same amount of time as the last 10. The only problem that occurs because of the pacing is that towards the end of the game some missions drag on causing some loss of interest. As you progress further the narrative does develop well, and in an interesting way. Though it is by no means a masterpiece and some major clichés arise they fit the type of story and storytelling used. Some twists do come into play later in the game, though not original they do keep the story compelling and will keep you invested in playing to get to the ending. Speaking of the ending, to me it really did fit the type of over arching comic book style plot and the surprise of the ending is one that will stick with you long after you have completed the game. Parts of the story are forgettable and slow, but on a whole the narrative is well written and was an enjoyment to play through.

Along with the main missions and all the exploration to be done around the city there is another major part to Infamous, the side quests. Unlike many games currently available there is a reason to accomplish these quests besides experience grinding. After each quest you complete a percent of the enemies in a part of the city will no longer be there, thus cleaning up the city of gangs. Also where the side questions stand out is the variations in mission types. The standard go there kill him missions are present, though in the evil side missions only. There is also destroying surveillance cameras on buildings, recovering medical supplies, races, and finding packages that are hidden by seeing a snap shot of where they are, taken from the memory of a dead enemy. Due to there being three areas to clean up there are plenty of side quests to keep you occupied. Also there are karma specific side quests that give you perks such as arch lightning if you complete enough of them, in addition to giving extra karma as a reward. The side quests are well done and don't get tedious, along with the fact that they accomplish a goal they give added play time to the game which is appreciated.


Moral choice systems, often broken into good and evil with no middle ground. Infamous' karma system is no different, with the exception that it breaks down into levels of how good or how evil you are. From the starting point of neutral the good side progresses as such: neutral, guardian, champion, hero, whereas the evil side goes: neutral, thug, outlaw, infamous. To gain points in morality for either good or evil you make choices during the narrative, during these times of choice the game will freeze time and Cole will describe the situation with an inner monologue and present the two choices. You then proceed to pick what option to do giving points in the category your actions fell under. In addition you can heal the injured to gain a positive moral standing, or suck the life out of the innocent to gain evil morality. The main purpose for the system is for skill progression. To increase the power of your attacks you will need to purchase upgrades with experience points, but you will not be able to purchase the skill unless you have a certain moral standing. The overall effect of the karma system comes down to the narrative sections told through comic pictures, where your morality determines what Cole does. One such example is when your free people from a train that had been captured, the good Cole is heralded as a hero and thanked, but the evil Cole is criticized, and assaulted causing him to kill someone to set an example. Also the ending is influenced upon the choices you made leading up to the final cut scene altering which ending you receive. The system works and takes nothing from the game, but to the same effect it does not add all that much either. For what it is used for it is fine, but it isn't a feature to flaunt about.

Now, to the big factor, the game play. First, we start with the combat seeing as you will be using it a lot. You use lightning based attacks to kill your enemies, manually targeting the enemies from an over the shoulder viewpoint. There are a lot of attacks that are available, from sticky grenades that split into several projectiles to a lightning storm. The different attacks work well together and can be used fluidly and quickly in combat. The combat itself is visceral and simple allowing for mastery over the system to come quick even to people new to third person shooting mechanics. You start with just a single semi-automatic bolt of lightning that can become broken with the ability to spam it, but other stronger attacks have a balance with them costing energy stored in nodes shown in the heads up display. These nodes can be refilled by absorbing electricity from generators and other places around the city. Refilling the nodes also heals Cole instantly, though his health does regenerate over time if he stays ouf of fire. The game does its best to avoid repetition in combat by using so many attacks but it will start to become dry after a while, with using attacks to create different and interesting effects being the only appeal to using more than the basic powers a while. The combat is done well, but it does get tedious and remains interesting only when causing massive explosions or killing lots of people in creative ways.

Next is the open world game play aspects of this sandbox. The sandbox is vast and the way to traverse it is to climb. You will spend the majority of your free time climbing buildings and jumping from building to building. This does add to the feeling of how big the city is, but at the cost that this process gets old ridiculously fast. Also the climbing does get glitchy at certain points, not grabbing onto a ledge when you want and so on. Cole doesn't seem to enjoy it either as the grunts he emits while climbing start to feel like having a brick bashed against your forehead every time you jump. Though there is a second way around, thank god, and that is the railways and electrified wires. Once you restore power to a part of the island the wires and rail tracks can then be used to let Cole speed along the wires and rails to get around faster and with less effort. In addition later in the game you gain the ability to glide in the air, which makes getting around quicker as you can jump longer gaps and climb less. The climbing is a low spot for the game but with the other ways to get around being introduced it does soften the rare misstep of the game, though it can't be completely forgiven.

Difficulty is a tough thing to judge, usually. Here however it is rather simple, Infamous is, with one or two exceptions, yielding. On the hardest difficulty with nothing more than your first attack and not trying to be Rambo most the enemies go down without much effort. Also with the ability to run around gaining experience and moral standing you can gain attacks far too strong for the point of the story at which they are accessible. The only good point about the difficulty is that it does curve into a slight challenge by the last third of the game once all the islands are available. Another point to mention is the gap between the difficulty felt in normal missions and battles versus the boss fights. The boss fights are long and hard, though that is attributed to the bosses having massive amounts of health that can only be chipped at slowly. Though it makes sense for the bosses to be much tougher than normal enemies the leap in difficulty is so great it's stifling. The game could have done better by making the standard missions and enemies tougher and tuning down the bosses a little to fit into the game more seamlessly.


The environment becomes a great weapon in your arsenal. Cars can be shot until they explode, destroying cover for enemies or just killing them. Enemies in sewers can be killed in large groups by electrifying the water, using the environment to its full potential. Places such as gas stations also add to the fun and destructive powers you have as you can blow up the stations and kill anything standing around at the time. The only annoyance caused by the environment is that you can't touch water. You being a human battery this is sensible but it can get irritating at points, such as when avoiding bullets in a sewer by jumping to a pole only to fall to your death in the water below. Overall the environment is well used and causes more fun than annoyances.

Just a few quick notes that I felt need mentioning, the game has good length at somewhere between 10-14 hours of story and unlimited time as a sandbox. If evil, hours of fun can be drawn from running around killing the homeless (yes I did spend a lot of time frying people for fun, do I have a problem?) Besides the fact that you can play through twice to see all the events and both endings there isn't much replay incentive. Although that first play though will be fun and the time spent in sandboxing may make up the time it would take to play the game a second time.

VERDICT

For the $30 that it will cost to get the game in the upcoming PS3 greatest hits release I strongly advise you to go out and buy this game if it isn't already in your collection.


My other reviews and things of that type: My first ever and only other review so far, Fable 2