As a child, watching the X-men on a Saturday morning left me believing that being any super hero other than Jubilee would be pretty cool.
Now, as a man-child, I stand ready to critique Sucker Punch Productions' first foray onto the PlayStation 3 with their super-hero inspired title, inFamous.
Literally starting with a bang, inFamous puts you in control of the parkour-loving courier, Cole. An explosion has just wiped out six city blocks killing thousands of people and throwing Empire City into quarantine and chaos. Waking from the explosion with only a few fragments of memory and lightning based super-powers, Cole has to work for the information he needs to understand what has happened to him and his city.
It's a comic book inspired story which charges Cole with the task of either saving or destroying the citizens around him through the choices he makes, and the action he takes. Key choices throughout the game, such as whether you save a thief from an angry mob or not, will sway your alignment between good and evil, with the changes having immediate results on what powers you can use, your appearance, and how your friends will react to you.
Posters will go up with your image on them, reflecting how the people view you. If you're perceived as evil, they will run in fear; as Captain Nice, they will stop and take your picture or even feel brave enough help out if you're in combat. It's similar, but more subtle than what you find in the Fable series of games, but unlike Fable, inFamous has great gameplay.
Immediately after the brief training areas, Cole is able to put his parkour abilities to use. Anything that looks like it could be climbed on, can be. When jumping, Cole will automatically attach to the nearest possible platform, and his perfect balance and unwavering grip means that climbing over and around the city is a breeze.
His abilities and the resilience gained from the explosion means that there is nothing to fear from being fast or taking chances with your movements, which in turn means that (although barred from ever using a vehicle because of his explosive powers) incredible speed and mobility are possible. Extra abilities that are received through story missions allow Cole to propel himself across energized train and power lines, and give him the ability to glide from building to building at such speeds that traversing what was initially a massive city becomes a truly enjoyable and engaging affair.
There is a downside to Cole being made of double-sided tape, and that is in the instances where there is a specific ledge or platform that you want to connect with, if it is surrounded by other objects, Cole will always lock onto the largest thing there, making precise movements a bit of a chore. It can be mildly annoying, but as you play you quickly learn to make allowances for this slight hindrance.
Combat comes in two flavours; attacks and abilities that use up Coles energy reserves, and those that don't. Lightning bolts and melee combat fall into the latter. They are fairly standard and work well enough against single targets, but when you are dealing with groups of foes, it is Cole’s energy dependent special moves that you will be calling on. Shockwaves can send groups of enemies, cars or rockets flying, lightning bolts from the sky decimates everything in your path and the shock grenade is exactly that.
Other than the ultimate outcome of the story, combat is what is most affected by your moral choices in-game. Experience is gained from completing quests and defeating foes, allowing most abilities to be upgraded. Just how good or bad you may be affects what upgrades may be used, which in turn alters the way you do battle. Your powers can be made far more destructive, or they can be refined to make you more merciful to downed opponents and protective of the citizens around you.
The way that Cole replenishes his energy is by sucking the electricity out of nearby power boxes, cars or people. This ability also increases the rate at which Cole's health regenerates and serves as an organic way to curb the players movements away from areas that Sucker Punch Productions want you to stay away from, for the time being. Electricity is restored to sections of the city through events that occur in the main storyline, so getting ahead of yourself and venturing into the powerless areas of the map leaves Cole at a distinct disadvantage.
As I mentioned earlier, the game is very much inspired by comics, and that shows from the stylised cut scenes to the character archetypes and ultimately the plot itself. There are periods where all these fall flat due to the limited information at hand (which results in the feeling that you may have missed some vital piece of information) but it all ties together to produce a satisfying story no matter which outcome your choices lead you to.
The game structure is in the same vein as most other sandbox titles, as the main story will wait for you if you want to go off and do the various side quests that dot the map. For the most part, these are all morally neutral and serve as a means to gain experience, but there are others that are labelled as good or evil, and they affect your position on the karma scale as well as awarding points that you can use to access to new alignment-specific abilities to further define Cole.
Completion of any side quest results in the area it originated in becoming liberated from gang influence, removing all hostile forces. These safe zones are shown on the map, so at a glance you can see exactly how much of the city you have liberated. They give you a great feeling of completion and go hand in hand with the storyline of Cole becoming the dominant force in the city. The downside is that there is not a lot of variety in the side quests and that cleaning up the streets robs you of villains to fight.
It is the lack of variety in the bulk of the side missions (and a few of the campaign missions) that makes the game really start to feel rather bland and uninteresting. Repeatedly fighting the same few enemy types over the same few objectives can really wear on your enjoyment of inFamous, but these missions are punctuated with some excellent events that make full use of Cole and what he can do, and these are worth the price of admission.
Visually there are a few issues with textures popping in, but even with all the action going on the frame rate remained pretty consistent, the only noticeable change was when it improved in small closed-off locations. The sound design does its job. If you have heard one lightning sound effect you have heard them all but everything else is remains serviceable.
Coming away from playing through inFamous, my feelings are that it is a great game that is made up of elements that vary between being fairly average to outright excellent. It has issues that would have been resolved with a little more time in development but ultimately your enjoyment of playing as Cole will carry you through the low points.
