inFamous

"Sucker Punch's InFamous: A Storm in a Sandbox"

Used Idea, New Batteries

In 2007, the gaming world was graced by Crackdown, an open-world sandbox title featuring the player controlling a genetically enhanced law enforcement officer tasked with beating the hell out of criminals with the various superhuman abilities at their disposal. Cars were thrown, buildings were cleared in single leaps, and gang warfare was eradicated. Quite over the top (though some would consider that a plus), but nevertheless, it won the hearts of many gamers, despite riding on the back of a Halo 3 Multiplayer Beta earlier in its life. Still, it became popular on its own merits, flaws and all, at least enough to warrant a sequel currently slated for a 2009 release. It may not have been the first at doing what it did, but it brought attention and appreciation to the hybrid of super powers and sandbox environments, and long-time dream that was being let loose in a city with superpowers, to do whatever the gamer so wished.

Two years on from Crackdown's success, more games have been released that delve into the same premise, one of the most recent of which being InFamous. Its near-simultaneous release with what is now considered its rival game, Prototype, has caused many an argument over the superior title between gamers. At first glance one could be forgiven for thinking them near identical, but they do have their differences, and even a short amount of time spent with both can allow anyone to easily identify them.

However, this is not an article of comparison. This review will be focusing on InFamous, Sucker Punch's electrically charged foray into the sandbox superhero world.

Sudden Shock

Picture the scene: You are Cole McGrath, a mild-mannered delivery boy with a package of the utmost importance. Doing your daily duty to the prestigious organisation of which you are in the employ, you take it to its intended destination. Except that it explodes. Right in your face. So you get to wake up in a smouldering crater. Your coat is ruined, you're still bald, and you probably killed one or two people as well. Needless to say this is a pretty poor start for Cole, but not at bad one for the player. The requisite disaster has occurred, and the player is placed in control of our hero-to-be.

A brief tutorial plays out, teaching you the basics, such as camera control, jumping, movement, and so on, while Cole staggers and stumbles his way through the wreckage. It's quite well done, and most importantly doesn't feel too detached from the game itself. So the scene plays itself out, and leads you into a bridging cutscene. Sucker Punch, going for the comic book superhero approach for InFamous, elected to make all the cutscenes in the style of said comics, which actually works quite well. Cole narrates events, both major and minor, while the player gets treated to the accompanying art. Especially welcome as it manages to remove a lot of fluff and dragging dialogue that some players may otherwise find tiresome.

Cole quickly finds himself surrounded by his supporting cast, starting with his best friend Zeke, and his girlfriend Trish, with even more character introduced as the story progresses. The game starts you off on Zeke's rooftop, a hub of sorts for the player, though one that is rarely revisited after a few story missions. It's more or less used as a little safe zone, and a place for the player to respawn when killed by the legions of enemies that soon surround him in the form of various gangs that have taken over the city in the wake of the blast and the ensuing devastation. You're given a mission or two to start with, after a brief testing of your starting powers; a simple lightning bolt, and a forward shockwave attack. After shooting a few dummies and charging a few batteries, you're on your way, and it's not long before the game invites you to start weaving your own moral fabric.

Proton or Electron?

Moral choices have played a large part in many games, and InFamous is one of them. From the start of the game all the way to the end, you'll be presented with a choice between two different acts: one Good, one Evil. Such choices can be relatively small, such as saving a random civilian from public lynching or leaving him to rot, and they can also be of greater importance, such as a decision in an early mission in which you should choose whether you should deal with riot police yourself, or incite a riot to get nearby NPCs killed, thereby thinning your foes' numbers and allowing you to pick the rest off more easily when the fighting dies down. Your choices will affect your Karma, which determines, among other things, the colour of your electrical attacks, Cole's appearance, how civilians react to you, and the game's ending.

Most interesting, however, is how your alignment affects your abilities. While most games with some sort of Good/Evil system offer different powers and abilities depending on which end of the spectrum you place yourself, InFamous offers you the same set of powers regardless (with the exception of one exclusive, albeit largely situational power available for each alignment), but with differences in the offensive abilities depending on whether you're good or bad. For example, the Grenade power, when the player is good, offers increased blast radius and the ability to restrain weakened enemies with the blast, saving the player the trouble of doing it themselves. On the other hand, when evil, one grenade turns into many, turning what was a single explosive into a cluster bomb that offers splash damage and more destructive potential in general.

More often than not, a game's morality system is thrown in to encourage people to play the game twice for a different ending, while generally offering an experience that does not differ too wildly otherwise. However, the differences InFamous throws your way, while not groundbreaking, certainly help keep it just fresh enough for many players to see it through to the end twice.

Bright Lights

Graphically speaking, InFamous is a mixed bag. Most games with larger, open worlds are typically expected not to excel in the graphics department, but InFamous looks very good for a game with an environment of its size. While not quite bordering on realism, the textures are very good, the character models for NPCs are a bit less detailed, but more than adequate, and Cole himself looks superb, his own gritty appearance fitting in well with the city in which the game takes place. The special effects on Cole's electrical attacks are mostly impressive as well, giving the player quite a light show, especially in later stages of the game where more often than not, the player will b e seeing electricity jumping and arcing off every available surface, causing the sparks to fly and adding wonderfully to the hectic atmosphere in which these battles take place.

Unfortunately, while boasting rather impressive looks, the game's environments are where it does fall flat, in terms of aesthetics. The city in InFamous is divided into three islands, and while there are some cosmetic differences and the odd differing landmark, most areas look identical, and not too remarkable. Players can be forgiven for thinking that they're in a completely different district than they actually are on more than one occasion, as all three islands seem to share certain structures and features, leaving the environment as a whole feeling slightly lacking.

The lack of variety has also, unfortunately, spread to the enemies. Enemies in the game are split into three different gangs; the junkies-turned-terrorist Reapers, the rough but ruthless Dustmen, and the mysterious First Sons. Each gang has its own look, though with almost every enemy from each gang looking the same, you'll more or less just identify them by whether they're red, green, or brown. The exceptions to this are in each gang's more powerful and elite members, known as Conduits. Each gang has at least one type of conduit, and they offer a healthy dose of change just when things are starting to look a bit samey. The game could still do with more types of Conduit, however, and more variety in the grunts.

Path of Least Resistance

As with most sandbox games, absolute linearity is a choice with InFamous. Plot progression is done entirely through story missions that you can choose to do as and when you see fit, while the game also offers a selection of side missions for you to occupy yourself with when saving the world is lower down on your list of priorities. Far from pointless, the side missions offer some useful incentives for completing them, outside of bragging rights, and some variety in how to reap your rewards outside of the usual ‘go here, kill this' format that a lot of games nowadays do seem to suffer from when it comes to giving the player something to do when they want a break from being everybody's hero or the people's bane.

Of course, while the usual ‘go here, kill this' format is present in the game's selection, other themes make an appearance too. You can pose for photographs, defend your loyal fans from enemy attack, rid civilian buildings of surveillance cameras, and occasionally run errands to heal injured people or capture rampaging enemies. Completing these missions awards the player with experience points and karma points, both of which will contribute to the acquisition and upgrading of various abilities, some of which are also restricted by alignment and the severity of the alignment, as well as an experience point cost. Completing each mission also clears an area of the city of gang presence, removing or greatly reducing the enemies that appear in that section of the city, making getting around a lot easier when between missions or desperately trying to make your way to a nearby source of health.

Elements of the plot are mostly delivered through telephone calls through the various supporting characters, who will either tell Cole of new developments or instruct him on where to go to carry out certain tasks. Other plot elements are revealed through Dead Drops, collectible audio recordings that steadily reveal more details. That said, however, the player will know most of these details by the end of the game whether they collected the dead drops or not, so missing a few will not leave any gaping holes in the player's comprehension of the plot. The choice to narrate minor events in the comic-style cutscenes, and for most dialogue to take place via telephone while Cole is on the move, helps to keep things going and keep the player in the action.

On the whole, the plot is very in keeping with the comic book style that Sucker Punch was aiming for, with some predictable developments and the occasional unexpected surprise. Overall it is engaging, and does not detract too much form the game's pacing, giving the player control for a vast majority of the time.

Electromagnetism

Controlling Cole, for the most part, is fine, though not without its share of problems. Moving Cole is fluid, his movements are smooth, and getting around the environment is, for the most part, a simple affair. However, there are problems. Ono occasion, the game Cole will stop mid run and begin sidling along, as if there is an obstacle in his way, when there is nothing. This is easily fixed with a quick jump, and rarely poses a problem when simply navigating the map, but it can occasionally result in your death if you're trying to escape from the hordes of enemies bearing down upon you as your health dwindles.

Climbing buildings and navigating more complicated structures also comes with their own frustrating issues. While trying to leap from one ledge to another, the game is far too assuming in what you actually want to land on or grab onto, often resulting in you randomly attaching yourself to a completely different ledge or platform than the one you actually made your jump towards. As if that wasn't enough, sometimes, too frequently to be just a minor annoyance, the game will fail to register your grip on something altogether, normally leaving you having to repeat most of a climb, restart a segment of a mission, or worst case scenario, sending you plunging into some water below, something that kills Cole very quickly. The combination of these two issues makes what should be a simple act of platforming into a chunk of time dedicated to pointless, flow-breaking repetition that could so easily have been avoided.

However, these issues aside, getting around the environment is not too badly executed. The ability to grind along power lines and rail tracks, along with a glide ability helps to take some of the stress out of what would have been simply unbearable without them if the previously mentioned issues were still present, and any more prominent.

Amp Assault

Combat is generally fluid, and what nearly becomes repetition is often broken up by the arrival of a Conduit, or other event that manages to keep things from getting boring just as they're about to stray into that dangerous territory. Aiming is fine, and activating any one of Cole's myriad attacks and abilities is as far from complicated as you can get. As the game progresses, you open up a wealth of abilities with which you can rid yourself of those pesky enemies, though it all eventually boils down to electrocuting them to death, and even though you have a lot to choose from, you'll no doubt find yourself keeping to one or two select choices that can cover you in most situations, only very occasionally using something different when desperate, or when a situation calls for it and nothing else.

As your alignment changes, as do your abilities, which goes on to have an impact on how you fight. As Hero Cole, your powers offer more in the way of survivability, granting you back lost health for lucky shots, lost energy for any shots, and allowing you to augment projectile attacks with the ability to launch enemies for prolonged periods, rendering them harmless to you until they land. This makes most battles slower, but gives you a better chance of coming out of them with most of your health and energy intact. Playing as Evil Cole, however, foregoes these benefits in exchange for more raw destructive power, adding a lot more splash damage to most attacks, and more damaging benefits to other abilities. This in turn leads to a speedier combat style, which favours swift killing instead of prolonged fights. The drawback, of course, being that an evil player will not last as long in a fight, so it would be in their best interest to finish a fight quickly before they get swamped and are forced to retreat and recover.

When retreating is the only option left available to you, measures must be taken to replenish lost reserves. This can come in many forms, but the most common of these is by finding and draining electrical items in the city. A quick click of the left stick sends out a pulse that highlights all electrical sources on the radar, which Cole can drain in order to get back a portion of his energy and some lost health. While health will recover on its own in time, energy must be absorbed from something, be it a fuse box, a street light, or even a downed enemy or civilian. Each method restores varying degrees of energy and health to Cole, and it will be up to the player to figure out which is the best method for any given situation. Certain power upgrades allow you to recover energy from even more sources, and being good opens up even more of these than being evil.

Whichever style you choose, the combat never gets old, and whichever alignment you go with, you'll always find yourself satisfied at the end of a fight.

If there is one drawback to the combat, it is that it can occasionally be tilted far in favour of enemies. Enemy attacks have far greater range than Cole's, and the enemies using them are astoundingly accurate, being able to repeatedly hit Cole from well out of his range and kill the player before they can even find where the enemy is and close in on them. This is a rare problem though, and the satisfaction of going back and getting revenge on the offending enemy is often the counter to the frustration suffered from being so unceremoniously dispatched by them in the first place.

Overcharged or Underpowered?

It's difficult to place a firm verdict on InFamous, especially when it will be inevitably compared to Prototype. However, I do beseech any readers at this point to treat them as separate entities, and judge InFamous on its own merits, instead of comparing them to those of Prototype. The reverse also applies, to those struggling to make a decision on which to buy.

Overall, InFamous is a very well put together action game, with addictive combat and a story with enough depth to be engaging, but not so deep as to alienate players or devalue the action component. For all the platforming it tries, it fails in some areas but succeeds very well in others. For every flaw InFamous has, it has an equally weighty positive aspect, all of which eventually come together to outweigh the negatives. It is one of the better sandbox games out there and is worth any gamer's time.

A must-have in any PS3 owner's collection.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/30/09

Game Release: inFamous (EU, 05/29/09)