In Infamous you play in a sandbox world as Cole, an average messenger that delivers a package that turns out to be a bomb that destroys the city. You wake up at ground zero with just a few scratches and discover that you have super powers. You can control electricity to your own will. This is a game mechanic that really allows the developers to do what ever they want with Cole. For example, he can jump off the tallest building and not get hurt and he can even read minds, something I wouldn’t expect from an electricity super hero, but that’s okay.
You start off the game with your basic powers, which include shooting a bolt of electricity from either one of your hands, a thunder drop that sends you down in explode-y goodness and a move that will remind you a lot of a force push. You gain more powers as you turn on the power at different sections of the city, and they are all very cool to use. They all have their uses and none of them seem tacked on. I didn’t really use the grenade type of move a lot but that is just by play style.
Infamous falls along side just about ever game that has come out since Peter Molyneux has been on the scene and adds a moral choice. Though this game is a little different. You will play for probably no more than 5 minutes and you will be branded as either good or evil. At this point it is probably best just to stick to one side for the rest of the game, as there is absolutely no benefit for being in the middle ground. It actually punishes you if you don’t choose a side because you will not be able to buy upgrades to the essential powers. The big hits to your karma come during a “Karma Moment.” The game pauses, during a mission, and a Cole voiceover gives you the two choices, be good or be evil.
On top of the story missions, like all sandbox types of games, there is side quests. I actually liked the side quests and that is saying a lot for this genre. In most sandbox games the side missions become dull fast. There are probably over 20 different types of missions to do. They all clearly stem from a story mission that you did earlier, for example you get done doing a “defeat the killer bus” mission in the story mode and then all of a sudden you have 5 side quests that ask you to stop more buses. I think the reason why I enjoyed them so much was that they were short and easy to complete. They also have a huge benefit; they wipe a portion of the map clean of enemies. So quick and easy missions that have a high reward and they are just fun to do. You can’t lose. The best part of all this is that the death system is fantastic. No longer do you have to restart the whole mission over when you die. You just come back to life almost instantly at a checkpoint. And there are tons of checkpoints along missions. Even boss fights don’t start over.
Throughout most of the game I found it to be pretty easy to play. But then there was a wall I hit half way through the game that made me have to put the difficulty to easy for the rest of the game. If I was a bit more competent of a game player I probably would of done just fine on medium. I have not played in hard mode yet. But the hardest moments I found had nothing to do with the difficulty settings, but with the controls. There are a few platforming moments in the game. Most of these involve jumping and cling on to stuff using a handy system that kind of magnetically guides you to something that you can grab on to. This is all great and all but there are some very dumb things that you cannot climb. This most annoying is the chain link fence. You see them and think that even I can jump a fence, surely a super-powered Cole can, but alas you cannot. The game even uses them intentionally as blockades so you have to find over ways around. I get that the developer had to come up with something that had these qualities, but I felt a little silly being able to blow up trucks but not being able to jump over a simple fence. Also, in later levels, there is a lot of rubble everywhere. This can sometimes freak out the game and the camera will go bizzerk if you start climbing on it. And lastly I ran into a one-time bug that froze the game while I was using the thrusters and the shield at the same time. And just to let you know that combination is very hard to do, as the thrusters and the shield are mapped to R1 and R2 respectively.
So overall the problems are very nit picky. It is a blast to play this game there is stuff blowing up all the time, especially if you go to the evil side. There is a lot of stuff going on the screen and they all look fantastic. The graphics are top notch and there is barely any famerate slow down when the action gets crazy. The Karma stuff really lends the game to be played through at least twice. And also unique to the game is the fact that the collection stuff is all shown to you on the mini map when you press down the L3 button. This makes the collection portion of the game more of a fun scavenger hunt than a nuisance. The ending of the game sets up for a possible sequel and I can’t wait until it comes out.