inFamous [read: Pretentious syntax] can be seen as a service. It is a game that delivers on many a young mans dream of re-living those heady childish days playing "Star Wars" in the back garden. The game bestows upon you myriad ways to blow things up using mother natures most visceral creation, electricity.
Look at this game as a piece of story-telling and you will, most likely, go away dissapointed. Approach it from the point of view that blowing things up is ruddy good fun and you will go away with wide eyes and a mischevious grin next time you pass a pylon.
You play Cole, a courier (however for what it matters he could have been a fishmonger) who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and, shockingly [sigh], ends up being bestowed various unlockable powers with which to escape a city ridden with a plague like disease. This is somewhat of an odd plot point as the actual plague seems to do little to the inhabitants other than make them role around alot, but it keeps you in once place so hey-ho.
The game hinges on various moral choices, and unlike other games such as Fable, in which your choices never felt like they were truly affecting the story, inFamous really does require you to play through twice (Messiah run and Satan run respectivly) to get your moneys worth. However this is not a game in which once can afford to play the moral grey area, which leads to the first gameplay issue.
inFamous grants you experience for just about everything that dies. With this experience Cole can upgrade various abilites; However his abilities are tied to his moral alignment. So, you really need to be either very evil indeed, or go round healing the sick. Attempt to fill the more realistic middle ground and your super-powered hero/villian will end up as a middling chump, unable to deal effectivly with the games somewhat erractic difficulty curve. However either moral path grants you some truly spectacular powers with which to wreak your vengance.
There are three islands you can explore, each with a progressivly more crazy bunch of miscreants frequenting it's streets and trying to kill you. Make no mistake, inFamous works best on the roof tops. Should you spend to much time running at street level and you will either end up very dead or quite possibly bored. This is because not much happens at street level apart from civilians dying and nasty fellows sitting around oil cans waiting for you to drop by.
The Parkour abilities are similar to Assasins creed, all be it with a bit more of a tendancy to be a bit mollycoddling, the game didn't like it when I tried to jump to much, focing me to cling on to about everything apart from fire. This does make for some frustrating trial and error attempts to grab a fiddly quest objective.
Story quests are varied and keep one interested, however certain characters lack any real gravitas and after a while you just want to get to the next big set piece. Side quests make for a nice change to begin with but the variety wears off eventually and I found myself not really caring about check point races by the end. There are around 6 differenc types of side quest however and you are guaranteeed to enjoy a fair few. A nice addition are "dead drops", in which the player must traverse the city in search of recordings that fill in the back story, many of which are more interesting than the side quests.
All in all inFamous is a great piece of escapism, the story is generic but not intrusive enough to disuade you from playing and the array of powers makes for some interesting experimentation. The controls are fluid and never felt like a hinderence; if anything inFamous' control scheme is one of the best i've seen. Don't expect to want to go back and play the opposite alignment straight away but once the dust has collected on that case you may well find yourself going back to be that angel you felt you should have been first time around.
Verdict: Buy Now.
