inFamous

It dosen´t happen very often but when it do I know the game is something special. I´m talking about the feeling you get from a really good game. You think about when going to bed and when you wake up the next morning its the first thing there. I don´t know exacly why InFamous did this to me, it was probably a combination of things that made this game feel totally and utterly fresh.

Cole McGrath is a bike messenger in Empire City. He has a girlfriend name Trish and a best friend named Zeke. He enjoys the fine art of parkour in his spare time. But that package he delivered that day exploded in a huge electrical storm. You wake up in the crater of the explosion, electrical sparks are shooting out of you, the city sees you as a terrorist. The city gets quarantined off and street gangs of people mutated from the blast takes over. Will you save whats left of this broken city, will you use your powers wisely? Or will you start showing the city whos boss? They won´t dare stand against you with these new powers. Its the Star Wars concept molded into a Superhero story that works on a very personal level. Cole´s decisions and ultimately his story in this game feels grounded in reality. Its a grounded, gritty and a very personal story that drives you towards making Empire City a wasteland or a clean spawling city again.

InFamous story takes a backseat in the middle of the game and it can feel a bit stale at times but it comes back in the end with a bang and a great twist that I couldnt see coming at all.

The game is an open world superhero game. Its GTA combined with Assassins Creed and Crackdown. But its not as stale as GTA, not as automated as Assassins Creed and not as flimsy and just totally out there like Crackdown. You traverse the city using your parkour skills to climb everything. Cole will stick to everything you can think of. When you get the hang of Cole´s "gravitation" towards grappable points you´ll develop an insane flow to your movement that both looks and feels fantastic.
The city is your playground here. When you´re not completing missions GTA style you complete sidemissions or look for collectables in the city. The game manages to constantly throw things your way. When you have finished a mission there is a collectible on a nearby rooftop or another sidemissions just a block from there. Its VERY hard to put down.

The game also borrows very heavily from what I like to call the Lionhead studios concept. The Good and Evil thing.

Constantly through the story you´ll be forced to make moral decision on how to treat your friends, the population of the city and the outcome of tricky situations. This will transform your appearance and your powers towards good and pristine or evil and twisted. It will also transform the city itself, how people react to you and the music coming out of it. Its a total Black & White thing. And I love it.

Its also worth noting that the controls in this game are fine tuned to perfection ! I can´t imagine the amount of hours that must have gone into tuning every aspect of the controls to never ever get in your way. When you think about something you want to do you instantly do it on screen. There is really no transition between the mind of the player and the Dual-Shock. Occasionally Cole will stick to something you wont or not grab something but in the heat of a huge battle every button responds like a dream. Every button is also mapped to just where you want them. Its a dream to control this game. Its quick, responsive and natural. Well done Sucker Punch !

The same goes for the balance of the actual gameplay. Sometimes it feels way out of whack with missions being way to hard and sometimes you´ll die without even realizing what killed you. But in the end they have walked a fine line to keep the game on the edge of enjoyable.

Presentationwise the game is a bit hit and miss. It has some of the best voice acting I´ve heard in years, it has a fantastic ambient soundtrack that merges with your personality and the game looks great in motion. But when you stop and stare at stuff you´ll notice alot of rough edges here. NPCs looks like they´re from a PS2 game & there´s some crazy pop-in, jagged edges and muddy textures.
Also it really bugs me that it never rains in Empire City. Every dark Superhero story needs a rainy night on top of a high building. It would have added loooads of atmosphere.

But when you´re traversing the city, making very interesting Karma decisions and leveling your powers up through gained XP from enemies and missions you suddenly realize that it dosent matter at all. InFamous feels very fresh and it´s released in just the right time. It has polish problems, some bugs and the city can feel a bit grey and repeating at times. In game cutscenes looks plain out terrible and the game has a stunt system that feels very plastered on and unessesary. But in the end the game´s spot on controls, cool electrical powers, good & evil moments and story will get to you. It will make you come back and it will make you keep playing. The game also has alot of replay value. Making good decisions instead of evil will create new paths in the story for you and it will transform your whole experience with the game from a very dark superhero story to a light one.

InFamous is far from a perfect game but right now it deserves 5 stars for what it does. It combines all of these fractions of games into one package that´s released in a time when a game like this really feels right.