InFAMOUS Review (PS3)
Gamer Jay
The Playstation 3 has had many titles hit store shelves that, in some way, awes gamers of all varying game levels, but with this new title from Sucker Punch studious we get a taste of being a comic hero (or villain) in inFAMOUS. You play as delivery man turned super hero Cole Macgrath, nicknamed “Electric Man” or some people’s favorite “Terrorist” After a large, seismic, electrical blast that all but destroys large portions of the setting of the game, Empire City. And as with most large scale destructive blasts, you’re found laying in the middle of it all, forced to push your way through the debris and chaos that ensued from this catastrophic event. You slowly begin to notice that after the blast you’re somewhat… different. Able to stand electrical shocks and not be hurt kind of different. Thus begins your rise or fall into the shoes of a hero or villain, with the power of Zeus, only in some far cooler moves than he ever did.
From here the story begins to unfold as Cole takes the reigns of his electrical powers, as they slowly but surely grow and make him stronger. At this point you see the interesting mix of art style the game carries, switching from live action, taking everything around you and slowing it down to examine a mark for your next mission, then jumping to the deep, dark comic style which helps you get deep into Cole’s thoughts and shows you the good or bad outcome of an important, story driven mission. This way of doing the cutscenes is an obvious play on the similar theme of super heroes in comic books, which add in that sense of being inside a comic book, but actually playing out yourself what happens between scenes, and deciding if someone lives or dies. And as always, if you are a follower of my reviews, all three of you, then you know how much water effects mean to me. Well sadly in this game, water is your kryptonite but instead of weakening you, it can kill you. The water, on the surface looks pretty and almost life like, but when a body hits certain bodies of water the bodies look more like they are laying on top of the water instead of floating, or that enemies are just walking on solid ground and the water only hides their lower torso. It is great to fry people in the water, but really I like my water effects, and with it lacking anything too stunning I’m not as impressed with the world. Doesn’t mean I’ll lower my score, but it does make me wonder what the world would look like with that improvement. Over all the game looks amazing, the sheer size of this sandbox environment gives the true feeling of a city in devastation as you scale walls, train rails, and even trees. You can see the pure size of the districts, as with each one, the island side gets bigger and the buildings get taller. Though the graphics don’t seem to be pushed to their full potential, I believe that to whatever extent it was when development ended, they did a great job with the look and feel of the city and it’s people. Even Coles electrical currents surging through his arms and body look as if they could come off the screen into your room, showing SP took a step in the right direction, but could still have utilized the PS3’s Blue Ray drive to pull off some amazing sights.
The character models looks lifelike, though with a city this size, models generally start to reoccur and take away from the realism, as does the sometimes way off lip sync. Sometimes their lips will be closed or closing as a word leaves their mouth, and then it causes the whole lip sync to be off balance causing for some weird looking facial expressions not matching what so ever their words or body language. But the NPC’s did have some depth and emotion to them that I wasn’t expecting, with fear creeping onto their faces if you stare them down with an electrically charged hand primed and ready to fire, or happiness when you save someone they love from the grips of death by healing them. The A.I. is unique, but sometimes can begin to lapse and become too repetitive towards the end of the game. But the place where the A.I. wasn’t as unique was inside the enemies, who become more cannon fodder than truly stopping you on your missions around the city. They start off calculated and thorough in their methods of attacking you, sometimes tricking you with forward enemies then while your distracted flanking you with entire waves of them, armed to the teeth with guns, rocket launchers, and grenades. Then there are the other moments where they all just seem to stand in the same spots, some taking cover behind cars or poles, but others just standing in the street, sometimes not moving until you get up close and personal. As your difficulty setting changes, they do become faster and stronger, but that’s really all that changes, they start off intelligent but then get lost somewhere along the way. Though as their level increase throughout the game, so does the size of some of the tougher baddies. The size alone makes them a worthy opponent, but add in super powers that are comparable to your own and you have some pretty tough battles with just one of the. Just wait until you have to fight more than one of them at a time. It gives you the sense of the world is bigger than you kind of moment and also at the same time the bigger they are the harder they fall euphoria at the end of the battle with these behemoths. And if that wasn’t bad enough, wait until you get to the bosses! By either size or just sheer power level, these dangerous dudes, totaling in I believe just three real bosses, have to be taken seriously or else you’ll be crushed over and over again.
The glitches in the game, including the lip sync mix up, seem to hinder you in more ways than one. Imagine as you scale a very tall sky scrapper that suddenly you aren’t allowed to pull yourself up to a ledge, or that every time you do, you get pushed back down or onto the other side of the building. This could be very frustrating, trust me, I had this happen while I was being shot at in hard mode. Now think if the fall could actually kill you, because it can’t in this game, but let’s just say it could. As you continued to not be able to get on a ledge you get forced off the building itself, and plummet 20 stories… you’d be electric road kill. Oh but wait there is more, that same glitch also exists sometimes near open water, meaning that with one slip you could die, instantly in the dark and debris filled water. Again happened to me also. Just something to look into if you decide to make a second installment in this I.P. Another annoying part of the game, which isn’t a glitch but can be just as frustrating as one, is the god awful camera angles. In anyway you stand on landings, or if you try to shot while your clinging to the walls, the camera shifts into a spot where you can not see anything but the glowing outline of Cole or just inside the wall. It’s frustrating and in just a few second could get you killed if there are enemies on the ground and on the roofs above you.
As you progress through the game you begin to catch onto the whole theme of the game, which I have mentioned a few times already, good or evil. Proposing the question “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” All the powers of the electrical world and in infinite amount of good or evil choices in the world. That could spell disaster for anyone with a anger complex or someone who just likes being a jerk. With specific missions for bad guys and good guys, having good or bad posters showing your kindness or your darkness, and major good and evil story line choices, the world is a buffet for the holy or the evil. It really does seem to come down to how moral you feel like being, but in this game there feels like there really is a pull at your heart strings, and maybe some part of you will go out of your way just to be good, or maybe you really don’t feel it and prefer the evil approach. The idea of save one or save a thousand seems to present itself frequently and gives you the sense that maybe, just maybe, the world isn’t all about me. My decisions, however small, have consequences. The choices you make with change the way the story shapes up, the way the cut scenes happen, everything, just mind what choice you end up making.
Now here’s the bad news. Despite the deep, moral implications, you still have a limit on powers, which change effects based on what side you pick, but with the large amount of powers, only some you can upgrade, leaving possibilities that others could have held unexplored. You get three side of each Karmic level, and each have one upgrade for most the power ups. We could have gone a lot further into the mix of evil if we upgrade one power to drain all the downed people around you instead of just one, or we could heal on a larger scale or other large scale power ups. It just felt as if someone said powers stop coming and growing once you reach three upgrades and couple powers that granted are amazing, but could have been made soo much more epic. And then the worst of the bad news comes along and makes even the few upgrades look ok, the repetitive nature of the entire game. Of course the mission structures are unique and interesting in the tasks in which you do, not a bad mixture of side quests but eventually you start seeing the same repeating pattern. Get task, turn power on, shock bad guys, get new power, shock bad guy, chase down bad guy, shock bad guy, etc. It never fails, deep down the formula is seen everywhere in the game, and it’s so depressingly repetitive! Change up the mix, give us something new to do or look at, because after a while the same old same old is going to be just that. Old.
In the end the game is an action packed game, with some repetitive aspects, but a game can’t always be innovative every second, but they could still try throwing something new in. After all is said and done, the game looks great, and allows you to pick up large amounts of trophies for stunts, collection, finishing missions and even has a mixture of good and bad trophies, labeled as such once granted. With it’s depth and the ability to finally feel like a super hero, we get an insight into how hard the life of a comic hero could be, and look on in awe, but if SP could town down the repetitive actions and fix the glitches and the camera angles and maybe give us some more powers or upgrades the game could be perfection. Then again being perfect is boring, and the game is amazing in most aspects the way it is.
I would love to see another installment to this I.P. and this one left me craving and wanting more to do, and more powers to utilize that I would buy a sequel just off that addition. With that said, I give inFAMOUS for the PS3 an 8 out of 10