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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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