Hands-on with Sucker Punch's upcoming open-world superhero/villain game. Here's a hint: it's pretty rad.
My interest level in Sucker Punch's next PS3 action game InFamous has been teetering between "looks sort of OK" and "looks completely awesome" since Sony began the game's marketing campaign. After getting to play a good bit of InFamous, though, I plan to reside firmly in the latter camp until the game comes out in June. InFamous impressed the hell out of me, but before I tell you why, check out this glut of footage that shows off most of the action I got to play myself.
So what did I take away from this demo that left me such a positive impression?
The feel of the controls. Note to whoever it is at Sucker Punch making the decisions about run speed, aiming sensitivity, and jumping controls: Don't change anything. Cole accelerates quickly, runs really fast, and turns on a dime. He doesn't lose speed or maneuverability when you zoom to the over-the-shoulder aiming view. From the basic movement and shooting to specialized moves like hovering to distant platforms and grinding on power lines, the basic gameplay has a really responsive, immediate feel to it that made me want to keep playing. This, and the next point, are really the biggest reasons I want to play more of the game.
Your moral alignment directly affects what your powers are like.Great superpowers and resulting destruction. The save game in my demo had a bunch of powers unlocked--electric grenades, a Force-like kinetic push, an electric hover ability, an aerial ground stomp--and it was really intuitive and easy to start chaining those powers into effective combos and wreaking stupid amounts of havoc. The bombastic physics system and highly explosive background elements made for some really satisfying explosions. I'd liken the big, open-ended feel of the combat and destruction to Crackdown, if you want a direct comparison. You get the same sort of chain-reaction car explosions and crazy stuff like that going on.
Moral choices with gameplay-relevant consequences. In the grand tradition of KOTOR and Fable, you can choose to be a good guy or a bad guy at scripted points in the story, and your appearance will get prettier or uglier based on your behavioral tendences. Your lightning even turns blue or red! But more importantly, the game's extensive list of powers (there must be at least a dozen) change significantly depending on your alignment. Good powers give you precision strikes that minimize collateral damage, while evil powers are more about, well, wantonly blowing shit up. The evil grenades, for instance, split into five smaller grenades on impact, giving you a much bigger blast radius.
Unique enemy encounters. In addition to that search-and-destroy-buses mission you can see in the video, I had to take on a couple of cool combat situations. One was a boss fight against a telekinetic lady who was screaming at Cole like a jilted ex-girlfriend. She could summon hallucinated enemies to confuse you during combat, and I had to get into these nifty Quick Time Events that required me to simultaneously button-mash and control Cole's hands to attack her. Another mission had me defending a prison yard from an attacking enemy force that was hurling fiery boulders over the wall. I had to use my shockwave move to literally send the projectiles flying back--until a bunch of enemy troops and giant monsters flooded the yard. One cool element was that I was fighting from an electrified grating, allowing me to constantly recharge my electrical special moves.
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I don't want to froth at the mouth here; It ain't all wine and roses for InFamous. The actual moral choice I saw (giving some food over to civilians, or killing them and keeping it) was pretty contrived; Cole's wisecracking sidekick grated on my nerves; the urban parkour took more than a little getting used to; and some of the environments are less detailed up-close than I would have liked. But those sorts of issues are easy to overlook when a game's core action is this inviting.
