For the uninitiated, inFamous is an open-world sandbox action game from Sucker Punch Productions featuring a protagonist with super powers. Yes, it’s been done before in games like Crackdown, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and various Spider-Man games. But what separates inFamous from other similar games is its overall execution and presentation. Right off the bat, the game pulls you into its gritty urban comic book style and doesn’t let up until the final cut-scene. The atmosphere is straight out of a graphic novel on the lines of Mark Millar’s Wanted or Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. It’s the classic superhero origin and coming-of-age story but with a twist.
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You play as Cole McGrath, a courier working in the fictitious Empire City. The game literally starts off with a bang as the item Cole is carrying on one of his routine delivery runs suddenly explodes causing a devastating blast, levelling several city blocks and killing hundreds of people. Despite being caught in the epicentre of the blast, Cole somehow survives. Not just that, but his body undergoes several changes making him stronger and far more agile. He is able to scale up buildings with ease, jump across long distances and survive long falls. But the most important change is his newfound ability to absorb and control electricity.
Meanwhile things are not looking so good for Empire City. As a result of the explosion, most of the city lies in ruins and a strange epidemic has been spreading out. The city is put under quarantine with most of the surviving citizens trapped inside. To make matters worse, various gangs rise up to take control of each of the city’s three islands and with no significant threat from the authorities, Empire City soon becomes an urban nightmare with ruthless psychotic criminals roaming free and the police severely outnumbered. It’s now up to Cole to bring order to this lawless city while trying to master his new abilities and find out the actual reason behind his powers. Will he become the hero and save the day or will he use his powers to crush everyone in his path? Well, it’s up to you.
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You can either choose to play as a hero and help citizens or just simply wreak havoc on Empire City. The game offers you “karma moments”, scripted scenes where you will be given a choice between a selfless act of heroism or an opposite selfish evil act. The way these choices are played out is quite interesting. Instead of choosing between two text options and hitting a button to confirm, the game lets you act out the choice, so if you decide choose to attack an innocent character, you will actually have to do it rather than some cut-scene depicting the act. This is a minor touch, but it adds a lot of meaning to the choices. Your choices decide what Cole will eventually become. Some of the decisions in the game are truly difficult, at times even heartbreaking, and do a great job of portraying the burden of being a hero (or the perverse thrill of being an anti-hero).
The story is one of inFamous’ strong areas. Most of it is told through in-game cut-scenes, conversations with Cole’s friends and acquaintances and occasional 2D comic book like sequences. These sequences are extremely well done and add a lot to the overall appeal of the game. Unlike most other sandbox games, where the story gets lost between the various gameplay options, inFamous maintains a very strong narrative throughout. You’ll never feel like you’re simply wasting time doing random stuff while there is a looming threat lingering somewhere in the background. The story is always in the forefront, even if you’re doing random side missions or hunting for collectible items. This is a very tricky thing to achieve and Sucker Punch has done an exceptional job at making inFamous a story-driven sandbox game.
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inFamous is primarily an action game with a large amount of platforming thrown in. You see, Cole is made up of electricity, so he cannot travel in vehicles, as they explode when he’s in one, nor can he use firearms. So his only option is to travel by foot or by air and everything in between. The city is his playground and sources of electricity are his friends while water is his enemy. The city itself is a platforming enthusiast’s heaven with strategically placed buildings, ledges, pipes, poles and cables connecting rooftops. Cole can traverse these environments with extreme ease with parkour-like moves. The animation during platforming is simply incredible and looks very natural.
Next page: All palms blazing
The platforming itself is very intuitive and is quite accessible regardless of your skill. It isn’t too taxing on the player, but at the same time it doesn’t feel ridiculously easy. Think of it as a mix of Crackdown’s urban environments and Assassin’s Creed’s platforming mechanics. Cole will automatically grab on to ledges whenever he is in range and hold to objects if you slip or miss a jump. To mix things up a bit, he can also “grind” over electric cables or railway tracks (an ability which is unlocked as you play through). All you need to do is just jump on these wires or railway tracks and Cole will automatically surf over them, showering sparks everywhere. These moves look ultra-cool in motion and can be chained together to form longer free runs. The sheer rush of seamlessly traversing through the environments is an incredible feeling and is one of the high points of the game.
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Later on in the game, Cole gains an ability which allows him to propel himself through the air using Iron-Man-like thrusters in his hands. This can be used to cross larger gaps or slow down Cole’s descent in order to land strategically onto certain areas. There is a fair amount of variety in the platforming and as a result, simply travelling through the city looking for the next mission marker can be loads of fun. In addition to that, there are “blast shards” to collect and Dead Drops (satellite dishes with hidden messages) to find. Blast Shards are collectible items which can be used to upgrade Cole’s battery cores in order to store more charge within his body (more on that later) and collecting them quickly becomes very addictive. If you’ve ever played Crackdown and were obsessed with finding every last one of those agility orbs, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.
So Cole can pull off some fancy parkour stunts and free run through the city but how does he fare in a fight? Once again that’s up to you as you’re given a dozen different ways in which you can engage enemies. inFamous is quite combat heavy. If you’re not jumping off rooftops you’ll most likely be fighting the hordes of enemies the game loves throwing at you. Sometimes you’ll be doing both at the same time. The combat is a whole new aspect of the gameplay. At the beginning of the game, you have a few basic attacks at your disposal. There’s the Star Wars like Lightning Bolt attack using which you can use to shoot electricity out of Cole’s fingertips and electrocute enemies and a shockwave attack to push enemies and objects away. You also have the rather cool “thunder drop”, which lets you unleash a devastating area of effect attack by jumping down from a height and holding a button during your descent.
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As you progress through the story, Cole will unlock new attacks and abilities. Most of these attacks are Sucker Punch’s take on your standard video game shooter arsenal. You have “shock grenades”, hand grenades made of electricity which can stick to enemies much like Halo’s plasma grenades, the Megawatt Hammer, which is essentially a rocket launcher-like attack with slow moving explosive projectiles, and a precision aiming ability which lets you zoom in on distant enemies and pull off “head shocks”, thus acting as your sniper rifle. You’ll also get some other truly devastating attacks which I wouldn’t like to spoil here.
Most of the attacks, apart from the lightning bolt, require electrical charge to execute. Cole can store electrical charge in his body by drawing electricity from power sources such as transformers, street lights, back-up generators, vehicles etc. You can increase the storage capacity of electrical charge by collecting the aforementioned blast shards. If all else fails, Cole can also give enemies the good old-fashioned one-two. The melee combat isn’t as polished as the other attacks but is generally useful while taking out single enemies who get too close. Pretty much all of Cole’s powers can be upgraded by spending experience points (XP) earned by defeating enemies and completing missions. The upgrades not only make the attacks stronger, but also add secondary effects such as automatically pinning wounded enemies down or launching them into the air.
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One of the coolest things about inFamous is the way you can link the platforming and combat elements. You can perform many of the attacks while you are free running through the environment. So you could be grinding on a power line taking out enemies standing on the roof of the connecting building with shock grenades before you jump off the roof and unleash a thunder drop on the group of enemies on the ground taking them all out at once. It’s extremely satisfying to combine various attacks and take out enemies with style. The controls feel just perfect and all your powers and attacks can be performed at any given time without any pop-up menus or selection wheels, which are commonly found in other games.
With all the various attacks and powers in your arsenal, there is a huge amount of variety in the way you can engage enemies and you will need to use every single power to get through some of the tougher scenarios. The enemies are generally pretty relentless, attack in large numbers and are usually pretty accurate when it comes to shooting. In addition to that, the game will also mix in some tougher enemies known as Conduits with the regular ones. These enemies are stronger and have various special attacks, often acting as “mini-bosses”. The combat is definitely not easy and often requires strategy. You simply cannot charge at enemies, er… palms blazing. Cole might have super powers, but he is extremely vulnerable to bullets and a single hit from a rocket launcher-wielding enemy can kill him. There were times when I had to play certain sections like a cover-based third person shooter. The game features a basic cover mechanic which works rather well and there are certain sections of the game that cannot be beaten without taking cover.
Next page: The verdict
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The health system works very much like Uncharted. The screen begins to fade and blood spatters appear as Cole takes damage. Laying low for a while and avoiding damage will restore Cole’s health. You can also draw electricity to speed up recovery if there’s an electrical source around (and usually there’s always one around). Yet, the combat always remains challenging throughout the game. However it never feels frustrating or tedious. The game has a very handy checkpoint system during missions. If you happen to die during a mission (which you will… quite often) you won’t have to start from the beginning. Speaking of missions, there are 40 main story missions and various side missions. Completing side missions lets you gain control of a certain part of the city. This works very similar to games like Crackdown and Saints Row. Once you gain control, enemies will not spawn infinitely in these areas, letting you explore and collect items at your leisure.
The main story missions are pretty varied and feature some pretty cool scripted set pieces. There is a certain amount of repetition however as many of the early missions in a new area require you to find a power grid and restore power to a particular area of the city. These missions generally involve platforming your way through sewers while fighting enemies. However, the rest of the story missions offer a lot of exciting objectives and never get boring. Side missions in sandbox games generally tend to be a repetitive affair. It’s no different with infamous, but the key difference here is the large number of different mission types. There are at least a dozen different types of side missions ranging from simply clearing out an area of enemies, finding a hidden item, escorting civilians and my personal favourite – following an enemy courier using stealth. Some side missions are based on your karma, so you’ll need to be sufficiently good or evil to be able to do these. Although these side missions are generally optional, they’re pretty entertaining and offer XP rewards and karma boosts, so you’ll want to complete all of them.
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Since some of Cole’s attacks are extremely destructive, playing as a hero feels much harder than taking the evil karma path. Most enemy encounters take place in areas populated by civilians and hence collateral damage is almost unavoidable. The idea is to isolate the enemies and use powers wisely making sure no innocents are caught in the crossfire. This adds a new layer to playing as a hero. It’s hard but ultimately feels rewarding. Some might find this element annoying but anyone who ever wanted a true superhero simulator will surely love it.
inFamous is a pretty lengthy game with a fairly long main storyline and a large number of side missions. It should easily take you around 25 hours to finish all the main and side missions and a lot more if you choose to explore every nook and cranny of Empire City for collectibles. In addition to that, the replay value is tremendous thanks to the different karma paths which not only affect Cole’s powers and abilities but also the way the story plays out. Needless to say, you must and will play the game twice at least.
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Moving on to technical side of things, the game holds up pretty well and performs consistently. The frame rates are mostly solid except for some minor slowdowns when there’s too much chaos on-screen. The city is highly detailed and looks very convincing. It’s not pretty to look at from an aesthetic point of view as most of it lies in ruins but it looks great from a technical standpoint. There is no dynamic day/night cycle but instead the game features different lighting depending on where you are in the story. The city looks different depending on whether its day, night, dawn or dusk but it always looks spectacular. While the environments look impressive, the same cannot be said of the character models. Cole’s character model looks great and is highly detailed but the rest of the characters look bland. Cole’s estranged girlfriend Trish is supposed to look pretty, but she looks like an emotionless mannequin. Same goes for the pedestrians and most other characters. The various special effects during combat, however look pretty awesome and it’s always a joy to watch stuff getting blown up whenever Cole unleashes some of his more powerful attacks. I did however come across a couple of glitches where Cole got stuck in the environment and the only way to get out was to reload a previous save.
The game features some pretty good background music. It’s used sparsely, but is quite effective. The track that plays over the end credits is rather cool as well. In-game sound effects are also quite impressive although Cole’s movements sometimes make more noise than they actually should. Voice acting is solid throughout, which adds a lot to the gritty atmosphere of the game.
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With InFamous, Sucker Punch has delivered one of those rare titles that not only lives up to it’s hype, but also surpasses it. They have given the PlayStation 3 another title that can be labelled as a “system seller” and also one of the best games to be released this year. Sure, it borrows ideas from many other games, but the end result is a near-flawless experience that you would want to go through more than once. I understand that this particular review has been largely positive throughout, but it’s really quite difficult to find any major flaws in the game. It’s definitely the best superhero game ever made and it’s not even based on a DC or Marvel property. Go figure.
Conclusion
InFamous has all the makings of a great game. It’s addictive, controls like a dream, looks spectacular and has a solid story to go along with the killer gameplay. Why are you still reading? Go play it!
(+) Engaging story with a stylish, dark and gritty comic book-like atmosphere
(+) Almost perfect and extremely responsive control system
(+) Free running/platforming through the wide open city never gets old
(+) Quite lengthy with plenty of varied story missions and side missions
(+) Tons of options during combat with a large number of unlockable and upgradeable attacks
(-) Character models (apart from Cole) look bland
(-) Some minor technical issues
Title: inFamous
Developer/Publisher: Sucker Punch Productions/Sony Computer Entertainment
Genre: Action/Adventure
Rating: 16+
Platforms: PlayStation 3 (Rs 2,499)
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