I have played a few hours of Infamous, just getting past the Space Needle mission and I was wondering: If I keep switching between good and bad karmic actions am I ruining my chance of leveling up properly and getting the all the powers/upgrades?

Basically I like going with how I feel at the time which tends to be mix of good and bad (like, sometimes people deserve to die maaaaaaan), but if this hampers my game I will have to change.

Should I pick a side and min/max?

If you want to get all of the powers or trophies, you should pick a side and min/max, yes. Many of the powers have Karma level requirements.

You might be able to use the repeatable Karmic events (drug busts, sign flippers, etc) to get yourself where you need to be even after you've finished the story, but that'd probably be way more tedious than just picking one early on in the game and sticking with it.

@leebmx: I actually asked this earlier and never got a firm answer. I'd say you're best off going all the way to one side or the other on your first playthrough, just to be sure you get all the powers, but it's up to you.

Yeah it is much easier to just pick one Karma side and stay with it, you can swing from side to side using the random events but it would take forever. There is zero reward for playing a neutral character, besides keeping the original colour of the hoodie I guess. Like most open world games with morality stuff it is easier to go evil than good as you can just wreak havoc and the death of citizens will help contribute to your evil karma. You don't even really have to min/max really, just if you play good try not to kill random civilians and subdue enemies and if you are evil just kill everything that moves and try not to help people too much. The main story decisions are the main factors which influence your karma, doing the random events often just accelerates the process.

The Karma specific powers tend to be some of the better ones so it is worth it to choose a side. Without going into specifics in my opinion the evil karma side has more fun gameplay while the good karma side has a more cohesive story.

The inFAMOUS games aren't really about choosing whatever you would actually do, they're about being either good or bad. You're better off sticking to one, otherwise you're not going to get to max in either, and be locked out of the higher level powers.

Start over and stick to one side. It's about being good or being evil.

@cloudymusic@rorie@zella

Thanks guys, its looking like I'll have to pick good for the mo' as that is the path I seem to have headed down. This binary thing is a problem I had with the 1st Infamous and it doesn't look as if they have changed much. Imo it would be much better if you could chose your upgrades through experience (with maybe one or two roped off) and the karma only affected the direction of the story and how the world treats you.

As long as I can go crazy once in while I don't mind too much sticking with good. It will just stick in my craw a bit if I have to destroy all the drugs and not murder people who are protesting about me - but such is life as a superhero.

Also part of what I liked about the first Infamous was just how crazy things got towards the end when you were just going hog-wild with your powers and I really want to see that in effect here because the game looks something special.

If this is what release window games are looking like can't wait to see what is coming up. That view from the Space Needle. WOW.

The one thing I would add is that (if I remember correctly) it doesn't take too terribly long to max one out if you stick to it through the story missions. So you should be able to screw around some and still end up maxed out by the end. Or you could max it out and then screw around I suppose.