Infamous Review
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
With those words of Stan Lee, or Uncle Ben, or whomever you might like to credit them to, running through my head, I picked up the controller and began my own superhero story with Infamous, the brand new offering from Sucker Punch.
That quote embodies what the game is about at its core, and puts that responsibility in the hands of the players.
But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. For those of you who haven’t heard much about Infamous, the game puts you in the shoes of Cole, a package runner from Empire City, who is carrying the wrong package on the wrong day. As Cole is making his way through the heart of Empire City, a huge electronic explosion rocks the city, and Cole awakens to find himself in the middle of the blast zone with newly imbued electronic powers.
Then the game hands the controls over to you.
So, what are you going to do?
Infamous is a great and many things, but at it’s center it is a game about choices. Good or evil, right or wrong, heroic or infamous.
The biggest point about the game to make is the karma system, which brings in those choices we talked about earlier. During certain missions, or through your general actions, the game keeps track of the decisions you make, which is reflected by a karma meter at the top left corner of the screen. With every good deed you do, you get farther into the blue section, becoming more heroic. On the flip side, with every selfish or downright evil decision you make, you retreat farther into the red, adding a sinister touch to your personality. Your karmic shift, as it were, has influence on what powers you have access to in the game, and how the citizens of Empire City perceive you.
Cole has 16 different powers that you will get access to throughout the game, and while some of those are universal for both good and evil, others have different traits depending on your karmic standing. Take your standard lightning shock for example. The fully upgraded, heroic version of your lightning shock will restore energy when you strike an enemy with it, and will even restore health if you can score a headshot. The infamous version, on the other hand will trigger an explosion that will damage anything in its radius if you pull off a head shot. Relatively the same attack, but two very different results.
The city will also change around you as you develop your karmic standing within the world. If you decide to take the Superman approach and fight for the good of mankind, then the city will get gradually cleaned up as you fight through the many areas of the game, and citizens will start to recognize you and wave to you on the street, calling out your name. Posters will appear here and there with inspirational drawings of Cole, depicting him as a beacon of light in Empire City. But if you like a little carnage with your super powers, the city will become crumbled and destructive, with people cursing you as you run by. Posters will appear, but these more closely resemble the good ol’ Stalin propaganda posters that usually aren’t meant to inspire happiness. Cole’s appearance will also change to suit your good or evil nature.
There are a few gripes I have with the karmic system though. With the way that it’s presented, you get pulled back from the game a bit as it goes into an explanation of the possible good and evil ways to approach a situation. This made me feel like I was picking pre-determined choices that were laid out for me, even more so by the fact that the game was paused for Cole to explain them to “himself”, otherwise known as you. I wish that the choices had been a bit more ambiguous, so you didn’t always know what the outcome of your actions would be, making the decisions a bit harder to make.
Ok, so you get to make choices, and the game changes around that. You get it. But how does the game actually play? Karma is all well and good, but is the game that encapsulates it even worthy of your attention?
You bet your ass it is.
Infamous, as an open world super hero experience is a blast to play.
In terms of gameplay, you start with humble beginnings and just a few powers at your disposal. You have full access to the first of three islands (GTA anyone?) that make up the whole of Empire City, and while you can go anywhere, it’s not such a great idea. The thing is, when the huge electric explosion hit the city, it knocked out the power in nearly all the districts, and guess who gets to turn it all back on?
Congratulations, you’re now an electrician.
The game controls the narrative and city access through this method and it works quite well. After all, if your body thrived on electricity, you probably wouldn’t want to be hanging out in a blackout area either. Since Cole needs electricity now almost as much as he needs oxygen, he becomes weakened and the screen darkens and blurs when you enter the blackout zones that still plague the island. Getting into firefights isn’t recommended either, because Cole has to find sources of electricity to recharge his energy and health, so if none of those are around, your enemies have a distinct advantage over you. You only have to journey into these areas every now and then to restore a damaged electricity hub beneath the city. When you do, you’ll get access to a new power, and restore electricity to another section of the city, giving you more room to roam around safely.
To make your way around the city, you get to use Cole’s experience as an urban explorer to scale buildings, walk across electric wires and climb on all kinds of crazy stuff. It’s a cool way of doing things, and Cole has an Assassins Creed like affinity for grabbing onto ledges and windowsills, making getting from one area of the city to another a fairly fluid experience. Early on in the game, other than running and jumping, there’s no way to travel too quickly around the city. However, as you progress and restore power to more areas of the islands, you get a nice upgrade that helps getting around to your new, bigger playground easier.
The story progresses through interaction with others via your cell phone, which Cole always has on him (he probably never runs out of batteries either).
You’ll get missions and hear some general banter from your best bud Zeke, who is funny at times, but in my experience I found him to be annoying more often than not. Calls on your cell phone will lead you to missions that are spread throughout your current power-enabled zone of the city, and you get to pick which ones you do in what order. Other, smaller story elements are handled through broadcasts that you can catch when you walk past a window display of TV’s that haven’t been looted yet, giving you clues to how the outside world is viewing the Empire City disaster, and just how much of the truth is really being told.
Along with story missions there are various side missions as well, some of which tie back into the karma ranking system. Some side quests are completely neutral, and are meant to be a way of getting some more XP to level up your abilities. But there are also a total of 30 side missions that fall into the karmic arena, with 15 good missions and 15 evil missions. As you progress down your chosen karmic path, the side missions of the other good/evil balance will lock out, which is where some of the replayability comes in. Since you’ll most likely want to fully devote yourself to doing either good or evil side missions, there will be ones that you never get to do, unless you play through the game later and take your other karmic path.
The missions themselves vary between a few different types, like escorting gang members to jail, spying on enemies from the rooftops and chasing down and destroying large enemy vehicles. The missions are spread out enough that you won’t find yourself doing the same ones over and over in a row, so the experience doesn’t get stale, not to mention that the story missions usually take a different turn. But other than to score some extra XP, why do the side missions? Well, when the electric explosion tore Empire City apart, the gangs took over each of the islands. With each side mission that you complete, you clear another area of the island from their control, therefore making it easier to get around.
Main story moments are also handled in cool, stylized comic book sort of way, with cut scenes playing out with a montage of rough around the edge drawings. It works well, and really makes you feel like you’re playing out a comic book story. Accompanying many of the scenes is Cole’s voice, which sounds like the lovechild of Vin Diesel and Kiefer Sutherland, and not really in a good way. I’m all for a gritty, action style voice, but it needs to fit the character, and it just doesn’t seem to work with Cole. The voice acting is fairly good, but the voice itself isn’t a good match for the character.
Well if you’re going to save a city, you’re going to need to fight, right? The combat elements in Infamous are very well done, with tight controls and great visuals to go along with them. The many powers that come to your disposal give you different ways to handle combat situations, and all work fairly well. You can sit back and blast away with lightning shocks, or close the distance and use blast waves to knock cars into your enemies. That being said, things can get a bit irritating at times as bullets fly past you from multiple rooftops, hitting you when you’re still out of range of your enemies. But again, that doesn’t last too long, because you get access to a power that evens the playing field a bit later on.
Different attacks use certain amounts of energy that get drained away from Cole, who then needs to charge himself from some source of electricity to get some juice back. So how do you find such wells of energy? The game utilizes a cool radar kind of function, when you click down the L3 button, and Cole sends out an electronic detection wave that can be seen on your mini map. Tiny blue lightning bolts signify sources of electricity, and when you hit L3 and look on screen, anything that can be used as a source of power will have a few streaks of lightning running across them, letting you know where you can get a refill.
With all the combat and free movement, there are other things to draw your attention around Empire City other than missions. Throughout the entire city there are 350 blast shards that have been scattered about, and collecting them will increase the amount of electricity that Cole is able to be charged with at once. Whereas collecting tiny items in a huge game environment is always a daunting task, the boys and girls at Sucker Punch have given you a leg up, making finding blast shards easier, and dare I say, fun. Just like searching for sources of electricity, tiny blue orbs will show up on your mini map when you’re close to a blast shard. It doesn’t tell you if it’s up or down, but once you’re in the vicinity, they’re usually not that hard to find. This is one of the great things about Infamous, because not only to you have a wealth of side missions, if you don’t feel like dealing with gang members for awhile, you can just scour the city for blast shards, climbing on rooftops and neon signs alike.
In addition to blast shards, you can also search for 32 dead drops that are strewn about the city, which are tiny satellites that have recordings on them that gradually add to the back story of the game. Like the blast shards, they’re completely optional, but it’s just one more reason to explore as much of the city as possible.
All in all, Infamous is quite a pretty package as well. The lightning effects are great, and Cole is pretty well detailed, along with the other story characters. The citizens of Empire City are a bit bland, but that’s to be expected with a game of this scope. The city itself is rich with detail, as you’ll notice cracks in the brick and rust on some of the pipes as you climb buildings. The color palette is somewhat dark, but what do you expect from a city that, for the most part, is without power?
Neon lights in the areas you restore power to help to add a dash of color, and the atmosphere works quite well. There were a few graphical and frame rate glitches as I went along throughout the game, but not too many that it became a constant problem.
The city itself is a thriving part of Infamous, with the different posters scattered around that I mentioned before, but also in the way you can interact with it. Citizens will take pictures of you, or (provided you’re good) come running up to you and ask for your help. If you follow them, you might find a few gang members in a fight with police, or be shown to a few people that need your electric healing powers. It’s a small touch, but one that makes it seem like what you’re doing in the city actually matters, and is having an effect on the people.
At the end of it all, Infamous is a truly amazing experience. With a perfect balance of open world gameplay, story progression and exploration all backed by a dynamic karma system, Infamous proves itself as a game worthy of your time. Boasting enough powers to cater to a variety of play types, and multiple sides to some powers that beg for a second play through, the folks at Sucker Punch have taken a risk with a new IP, and it’s paid off beautifully.
If you own a PS3 and are a fan of adventure games, pick this one up, because Infamous is not a game you want to miss.
Trust me, after playing for a few hours, you’ll have a shockingly good time.
Come on, I had to do it at least once, right?
- Mike Alfus
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