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.