inFamous

Morality seems to be a big trend in gaming recently. Infamous marks the latest in a string of releases that puts the player's moral fiber to the test over the course of the story. What separates Sucker Punch's latest from, say, Mass Effect or Bioshock, is the impact that player's decisions have on the gameplay. See, protagonist Cole is imbued with electrical powers at the start of Infamous, and how these powers develop is dependent on the choices that players make throughout the game. Some powers, such as rail surfing and gliding, are available to all players, while others, such as the electrical grenades, have different effects based on Cole's moral standing. This essentially makes Infamous a very replayable game. But is it worth playing through twice?

Both the quantity and quality of gameplay in Infamous is quite high. The three dilapidated districts that make up Infamous' world are full of life. Many of the pedestrians will offer Cole side quests which provide him experience and sometimes shift his moral balance in one direction or the other. Other, smaller missions are scattered around the world and play out in real time. For example, a man might approach Cole on the street and beg him to heal an injured friend. These activites never offer bonus experience, though, so some may view them as a waste of time. Other side missions span the entire game, and involve collecting objects scattered about the environment. Some of these will give you extra information about the main story, which can be helpful and interesting. The actual story missions offer up some great, intense combat. Despite the open world nature of the game, the story missions are always quite linear, but to offset this fact the missions often end with a tough moral choice.  The great thing about the choices in the main story is that there is justification for both choices. For example, the first choice in the game sees Cole in possesion of several crates of food that have been dropped into the ruined Empire City by the Army. Cole could either allow the starving populus to make off with the food, or scare them away with a show of force and keep the food for himself and his friends.

 While the moral choices in the main story are quite good, those found in the side missions are typically one-sided. This is one of my major complaints against Infamous. If you, like me, intend to play as an evil character, you will find yourself scratching your head over some of the choices you will make in side missions. Evil Cole will allow people to be stoned to death, poison innocents, and kill cops, often for little to no reason. All the while, no matter how evil Cole acts in the side missions, he remains (mostly) pure at heart throughout the main story. The most baffling example of this comes around a third of the way through the game. After defeating (but not killing) the first boss, thus neutering the threat of a local gang, Cole begins to receive psychic messages from her asking him to recruit new members for her gang. Yes, the same gang that Cole had just disbanded. If you plan on playing as an evil character, you must rebuild the gang from the ground up and lead them in assaults against the city. The game gives absolutely no justification for why Cole would do this. Causing so much chaos for no apparent reason made me feel like quite the bastard, which I guess is the point, but it never really makes sense.

From a gameplay perspective, Infamous kind of reminds me of Uncharted, another great PS3 exclusive. Before Cole was granted super powers, he was an urban explorer, which means that he is capable of scaling almost anything in the game. Like in Uncharted, the platforming is integrated heavily with the action and is mostly automated. Climbing a building is simply a matter of pushing X and a direction. This typically works out well, but sometimes the platforming can feel a little too sticky. Cole will grab onto anything he can automatically, which sometimes lead to me sitting in the open unintentionally during a heated battle. This inevitably leads to a few deaths that aren't actually the fault of the player.

Cole's default power is a simple burst of electricity, fired from his hand by holding L1 and pressing R1. Cole can take cover behind most objects with a press of O, which is vital to survival in some missions, and hitting square repeatedly will execute a melee combo. Again, these elements feel a lot like Uncharted. Cole will gain more complex powers as the game progresses, all of which are pretty cool, but mashing R1 furiously at most enemies will get the job done for the first half of the game. Unfortunately, the game is also fairly glitchy in some parts. It's nothing that will ruin the overall experience, but it can occasionally force a restart on a mission.

Graphically, Infamous initially appears very nice. The environments are all quite detailed and full of life, and Cole's character model and animations look really good. Upon closer inspection, some of the textures aren't that great, and models other than Cole's look pretty fugly. Still, Infamous remains a nice looking game. This is aided largely by the comic book styled cutscenes that progress important parts of the story, which are stylish as hell. The audio package in Infamous is great. While roaming the open world, the game is typically silent save Cole's footsteps and the cries of civilians. When the music does kick in, though, it is moody and a little offbeat. The audio team that worked on Infamous used all kinds of crazy techniques to get the sounds they wanted, including smashing in the windshields of cars and smacking metal pipes together, and for the most part their dedication shines through clearly. The voice overs don't fare as well as the music, due largely in part to some weak dialouge and a few predictable plot twists.

When all is said and done, Infamous is a great open world game. While the gameplay can feel a little button-mashey at first, creative players will be able to score some cool combos and earn extra experience through combat as the game progresses. Infamous' main flaw is that sometimes the morality system just doesn't make sense in the grand scheme of things, a caveat that is especially apparent due to the careful attention Sucker Punch has paid to justifying some of Cole's moment to moment decisions. Still, the game is very replayable and enjoyable, and marks another great addition to the PS3's library.