inFAMOUS

inFAMOUS
PUBLISHER: SCEA
DEVELOPER: Sucker Punch
Played on: PS3
Initial impression: Solid "everyday nobody turned super hero" game.

Liked:
- The plot
- Reasoning behind city restrictions
- Powers
- In-game TV broadcasts

Disliked:
- Selective 'sticking' to objects
- Obvious ramping in difficulty
- Some 'forced' Moral decisions
- Lack of distinct environments

On The Fence:
- Blast Shard Collection
- Stunts
- Sequel Ambiguity

Cole is a troubled man. On one hand, the (bike?) messenger opened a package that wiped out a few thousand people in the three-island city of Empire including his girlfriend's sister. On the other, he's able to manipulate electricity. And by manipulate I mean absorb and shoot it out of his hands. Such is the moral dilemma - do you use these powers for good or evil? Do you help others or serve yourself? The plot will guide you through both scenarios, and the outcome will rely heavily on what you choose. Early on you really need to decide and commit, because experience needed to unlock the powers (along with good/evil karma-specific powers) will begin to pile on about a third of the way through the first island.

The effects of such choices are rather subtle at first. Good Cole has access to beneficial defensive powers, while Evil Cole can use chain lighting to strike multiple targets. The energy blast is white-blue for Good, red for Evil, and even his physical appearance starts to change. Good Cole seems to become more vibrant, color wise, while Evil gets desaturated, eventually turning nearly black & white. As the game goes on, bystanders will either cheer or fear you, throw rocks at your enemies or throw them at you.

You start off in the Neon District, and are cut off from the other 2 islands because you can't swim (electricity + water = dead). Also the blast from the bomb you set off caused the power grid to shut down. You are eventually instructed to manually reactivate the sub-stations to restore power to various sections of the city.

The comic book-like cutscenes do an awesome job of giving you that Accidental Superhero vibe. The missions and side quests fill your time nicely, though restoring sub-stations gets pretty repetitive after you complete the first island. The areas of each of the three islands (Neon, Warren, and Historic) all look nearly identical when it comes to the non-landmark areas and because of that I was constantly checking my map. Also when you complete a sub-mission it tells you that 'enemies will not appear' in that specific area, but they still do. Granted they don't come in huge waves like before, but they DO reappear in places where the game says they won't.

These gripes are rather minor compared to the ones I outlined above. First the random sticking. Cole is like Spider-Man in the way that he can climb buildings, though he does so by grabbing ledges, windows and pipes that jut out all over most buildings. Why so much outdoor plumbing is in this modern city is beyond me, but that aside Cole has rather selective taste when it comes to holding on to these surfaces. When you want to just get up the building and look around, you'll find he has a hard time finding purchase. Oh, but if you're running for your life away from a group of enemies and jump up to grip a ledge and get away... expect Cole to either not let go or grab on to something other than the ledge you were aiming for.

This brings me to the difficulty ramping. Early missions involve taking out an enemy or two and have the feeling of being tutorials. Tasks are challenging and require some strategy as you learn to use these new powers. It's like this up until you try to leave the city in one mission. From this point on it seems like some missions just overload you with enemies instead of actually involving some sort of skill. I found that whether Good or Evil I would be best off causing as much havoc as possible to stop the flood of insurgents. The only benefit to being Evil in those situations was that I didn't have to mind the 'innocents' and could blow up any vehicle or toss as many energy grenades as I could manage.

The last point is the forced moral decisions. I'm not talking where the game asks you to choose - I'm talking about main story missions where, no matter what you do, it'll throw you toward GOOD or EVIL. One such quest is a boss fight, and the only way to end it is to kill him. This ends by giving you points toward Evil, even if you're the pinnacle of goodness. You can recover those lost morality points pretty easily by healing citizens, but I should have had a choice there if you were doling out morality points. 

On The Fence
For the things I'm still pondering, the blast shards are the most frustrating. As you gather them you gain the ability to retain more electricity. At some point you can't add any more nodes to your capacitor (13 is the magic number you can have total, and I think you start with 5), so you're just looking for them to fulfill the feeling of completion. On my 'good' saved side I'm missing about 6, and I'll be damned if I could find them. I wish it had something better to find them other than the pulse radar you emit. I've wasted about 5 hours looking for them so far. Along the same lines are the stunts. These are cool things you can do with your powers that give you a... well, nothing, really. Just some XP for completing each one, and a PS3 trophy for doing them all. You can repeat them all you want and still get the same XP (which is about 3 for each one), and they do look pretty slick when you pull them off, but... why?

The third questionable item is the lead up to a sequel. From the Good side I can see it happening. From the Evil side, without giving too much away, I can't. Hopefully that will be cleared up when I get to the end, otherwise I'll be really confused. The "Good" ending makes a lot of sense, especially where a sequel is concerned. I could give out my theory as to how it could play out for an evil follow-up but it involves a huge spoiler.

Even though the title of the game points to you being the most evil son of a bitch this side of Hell, you can get through with a very enjoyable time as a goody-goody. I've seen the "good" ending and I'm about halfway through being "evil". One thing I've noticed is that cutscenes have subtle differences, such as the 'rescue the train' mission. In the good one, people thank you and are glad you helped. In the evil one, they're out to lynch you even though you rescued people so you zap one bystander to 'keep them in line'. Funny stuff.
I think of this game as something between GTA and a common TPS with elements of RPG and Skater Games thrown in for good measure. Great game with a great story and going opposite on all the morality choices will make it just as fun the second time around. The most annoying part has to be how he clings to everything when you don't want him to, but hopefully the rest of the game doesn't suffer because of it in your eyes. I managed to look past it, though I complain about it every time I play it.

On a side note, the pre-order DLC at Gamestop was a weapon called the Gigawatt Blades. These produce a beam of energy that projects about a foot off of Cole's fists. They are used in melee and pack a serious punch. I missed the preorder but found a code for $1 on eBay. Were the 'blades' worth it? Meh, no not really. They don't really have any practical purpose, though I read where someone said he took down one of the sub-bosses in only a few hits using them. Impressive, since that particular sub-boss takes quite a beating using the usual weapons.

The other DLC was from Amazon and it was the Reaper's outfit for Home. Now, as cool as the Reapers look, it's kind of pointless to get an outfit for Home since there's no real reason to ever go there. If they had offered, say, an actual hoodie that looks just like the one the Reapers wear? I'd have gone for that.

8/10 Great game.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Ghostbusters: The Video Game

PUBLISHER: Atari
DEVELOPER: Terminal Reality
Played on: PS3
Initial impression: Though lacking in a few things, awesome game.

Liked:
- Locations
- Weapons and upgrades
- Witty dialog

Disliked:
- Cutscene lighting
- Most of Bill Murray's dialog
- Ambiguous Puzzles

On The Fence:
- Seeking out Cursed Artifacts
- Extremely short game
- DLC Flight Suit's Purpose

I'm not a Ghostbusters fanboy by any stretch of the imagination. I loved it in the 80's, have watched it maybe 2-3 times since it came out on DVD (not Blu-Ray, but the original DVD release) and really haven't gone all too crazy over the game. I pre-ordered it for the shirt which is too large to wear, so it's now another bedtime shirt for the wife. The game, though incredibly short, is fun. I beat it in about 4-5 hours, and most of that time was spent wandering around and looking at the environments. Most of the NPC banter is appropriate and funny, the weapons feel 'right' and the missions are interesting. Also, the title of this game makes me think of Spaceballs.

As for the game: It's 1991, and the Ghostbusters are adding a new member to their team -- you! Well, not really you, but a generic, mute character named "Rookie" (it even says that on his flight suit) who they'll use as a guinea pig for their new, untested equipment. In the meantime, the Gozer exhibit at the museum has stirred up the paranormal baddies. Your first assignment (the tutorial) involves Slimer and another fat, slow ghost creeping around the Ghostbusters HQ's sub-basement. From there you make your way to the Sedgewick Hotel (Slimer's original haunting location). Chaos ensues.

You visit a lot of the old haunts...

The experimental equipment is a blast, no pun intended. There's a Stasis Beam that slows down ghosts, a Slime cannon that shoots 'positively charged' slime that weakens ghosts and neutralizes black slime that can kill you/spawn enemies, and a pulse-type cannon that reminds me of the main Chimera gun in Resistance. You can shoot out a beacon, then all shots will seek to hit that beacon. Add on to that a handful of upgrades for each that stabalize the beams and strengthen their effectiveness, as well as a few upgrades for the trap such as making it possible to slam ghosts into it rather than carefully guide them over and down and you have quite the arsenal.

I didn't really try MP, though I did log into the lobby for it. Looks like there's a Last Man Standing mode, and you can declare your weapon specialty and choose which 'Buster you want to be. I'll have to play around in there to see what it's like.

Disliked
I only have a few gripes with the game.

On a technical standpoint, the cutscenes have really bad lighting. The scenes are far too bright, as if someone is using the default lighting in 3DS Max 2. This is distracting because the rest of the game has brilliant use of lighting and shadow as you play through. Why these were different is beyond me - I mean they're injected right in the middle of the locations and scenarios you're playing, so why does the lighting change? I've read up on it that the cutscenes were done as pre-renders instead of just using in-game engine and cameras to play out. Pity, because this one aspect's difference is glaringly obvious and makes the game look unfinished.

I'd read that Bill Murray essentially "threw out" his script and ad-libbed all his lines. While this works in the movies, it doesn't quite work in video games. Timing is everything for comedy and I felt that a lot of Murray's lines fell flat and came off more as dickish than being the comedy gold he normally produces. I will admit there were a handful of times where what he said was hilarious because of his sarcastic, deadpan delivery, but overall the voice acting from him specifically felt it was lacking.

One thing that is never really explained is how the hell you get money from destroying property. It's fun as all hell to do - shoot the proton beam at the ghost and slam it into everything you can find like tables, chairs, mirrors, light fixtures, etc - and the game tallies up how much damage you're doing, but how does that translate into cash in my pocket? No idea.

On The Fence
There are a few annoying 'this is a game' moments like waves of minor enemies coming at you, but those aren't as annoying as some other reviewers make it sound. Also, failing a mission and reloading (which I only did twice) isn't all that bad. It's a jarring lull in the action but chances are a hasty move got you there to begin with. Also when you use your PKE meter the screen switches to night vision (complete with a view from inside the goggles) while you study the scanner. Get used to how this looks -- it's how you'll play about 75% of the game as you seek out cursed artifacts and hidden ghosts.

Oh, before I forget... I preordered at EB/Gamestop and apparently I also get this DLC dark grey flightsuit from GB2. It said something like 'get it while supplies last' (really? limited supply on DLC?) so I nabbed it before installing the game. Bad move apparently, because GB had to 'repair data' when I went to install it. I had to redownload the flight suit. The option to use it is under the Gameplay Options, but I found all it really does is make you stand out more as a recruit. Nice free DLC, but bland. I wonder if it can be used in MP?

8/10. Worth playing.

Launch of WIGTI

When I Get To It is an informal blog that discusses video games. The title comes from the philosophy that I have other things going on in my life than just playing games, and I'll give you my opinion on games... when I get to it.

I'll mostly review games for the PS3 and PC, though I'll also throw in my opinion on PSP, Wii and XBOX360 titles on occasion (especially if the game's cross platform).

I hope to throw something down every week, but again -- it's when I get to it. Some weeks might be more, some might be less.