Infamous

Have you ever dreamed of making far reaching moral decisions about your life in between surfing the train tracks of a destroyed city and shooting drug dealers off of roof tops with your accidentally acquired electricity based super powers? Well neither have I. But after playing inFamous it seems like it mightn’t be such a bad use of my time after all.

One of this years most exciting releases for PS3 has been inFamous with a lot of promise that seemed to be enforced by the lengthy demo that came out. Well July of this 2009 has finally rolled around and we’ve been given a treat. Sucker Punch Productions has delivered what will likely be this years best game. While not quite perfect it’s a game that makes me run down the streets telling everyone I meet to play this gift from heaven because it deserves nothing less than a 10/5 rating. Okay, maybe I’m going a bit overboard but that was how I felt when I finished it.

So inFamous is the story of Cole McGrath, an everyman – or should I say every fan? He’s somewhere between 20 and 30 years old, with no apparent aspirations, works as a bike courier and hangs out with an overweight conspiracy theorist friend named Zeke who seems to be dedicated to reading comics and warning you about the government. But one day Cole’s city is destroyed and at the same time he’s given super powers. Unfortunately he’s also labeled as a terrorist and becomes the only hope for Empire City in these dark days. Or maybe he just wants to cause a lot of destruction before he gets the hell out. That’s something the player decides.

In terms of super powers there aren’t a lot and they generally are a reimagining of your standard video game weaponry. You’ve got rapid but weak zap attack, grenades, shock waves, missiles, shot guns, sniper rifles and Dark Lord of The Sith Force Lightning. No joke. However this is a case of if it’s not broken don’t fix it and putting a new face on old weapons with a few extra uses is nothing to scoff at because they work well and give you the freedom to choose how to fight. I chose to throw grenades at everything.

Other than his electrical attacks, Cole is able to leap any height without hurting himself, play some hardcore fisty-cuffs and masterfully traverses the city with the power to glide, ride electrical currents in wires and it just wouldn’t be a third person, seventh generation sandbox game if you couldn’t do any parkour. However unlike certain other, similar titles the parkour is done well in this game and the controls are wonderfully intuitive. Rather than jumping blindly, Cole will automatically grab onto surfaces near him. When you jump in a direction he moves towards ledges he can grab in that direction. Combine this with the wire surfing and gliding and it’s as much fun exploring Empire City as it is killing enemies. The system isn’t perfect and sometimes Cole will grab the wrong thing but it’s a lot better than grabbing nothing.

One of my favourite parts of this game is the colours. Empire City has a lot of grey and navy colouring in it’s architecture but this is used mostly as a contrast to the plethora of neon lights, colourful antagonists and the occasional art deco, gold statue. The visual styling of the game works well and is a nice change from the increasingly popular grey and brown of this generation of games. I for one am a big fan of colour and wouldn’t have minded if inFamous even threw in a little more.

Gameplay and graphics aside, where this game really shines is in it’s story. Cut-scenes are presented in a kind of comic panel style that works well considering it’s a game full of superheroes, super villains and silver age science. While things might seem slow at first, the pace quickly picks up as the characters and the story evolve and before you know it you’re on the edge of your seat as you go from exciting game play to exciting story development and finally climaxes in a challenging final battle and a final exposition that is part “I saw that coming.” while part “Holy shit!” and two parts “Wow!” That’s not to say the ending is the only time the story totally enthralls the player and forces him to the edge of his seat and then over it.

But nothing is perfect and the story is heavily dependant on a system of moral choices through the game. Fortunately this is done better than some other games in that the choices have some affect on game play beyond the powers you get. They also determine what path the story takes with you. This is how the moral choices system should be integrated into a game.

Unfortunately the moral choice system is still inherently broken and inFamous tragically makes the assumption that the player will choose the evil path. Evil players will get the best powers and Cole’s Broody McDarkdark voice lends itself better to evil. I don’t blame the game designers for this, however. I blame the audience. Their assumption is undoubtably going to be correct for most players. I recently saw a video where random people on the street were asked if they would be a hero or a villain if they has super powers. Of course every person except one said they’d be evil. Why? When did being a villain become cool? I criticise too much because I used to be of the same mind frame. When I was thirteen years old. I’ve grown up sinse then but I’m still waiting for everyone else. The most pathetic thing is most people’s idea of being evil isn’t even evil. What people really want to be is an anti-hero and by anti-hero I mean: Being an actual hero except crying about it and being rude to the people who thank you whenever you pull little Timmy out of the well.

But all aside, Broody McDarkDark is well acted and, for that matter, so are the other characters which definitely helps in any game. I really only have one issue with the game and that’s it’s unfortunately accurate assumption on it’s audience’s choice but as I said, I don’t blame them for that.

Otherwise the game is solid and I surprisingly light on bugs. A few graphical mishaps here and there but only under rare circumstances that I can still count on one hand and I’ve played the game through twice.

InFamous is certainly the game to get this season and while I haven’t had a chance to get onto Prototype yet, inFamous is shaping up by all accounts to be the better game. My contemporaries seem to largely agree with me on that. We’ll see how it works out but inFamous is already going into my collection of “personal favourite” games. It’s not a perfect game, but a game’s strengths can always compensate for it’s weaknesses and inFamous is in no shortage of strengths. I definitely give this game 5/5 electric grenades. They may not make much sense, but damn are they awesome.