Review | inFamous

Format: PS3 | Genre: Action | Publisher: Sony | Developer: Sucker Punch | Out now: £49.99

By Daniel Lipscombe

In a world filled with anarchy and destruction, one would think that seeking out the ability to recreate situations of said anarchy and destruction would be avoided. There is, however, that small section of our brains that enjoys the idea of rampaging wildly around a crowded city, imploding or exploding anything and anyone. Sucker Punch have managed to zero in on that section of the human psyche and created a virtual playground for our minds to revel in the annihilation of all things inanimate or otherwise.

//Mind the ’splodes
inFamous starts as it means to go on. One of the first things you experience is a catastrophic explosion that decimates thousands of people and their homes. Waking up from the centre of the blast is Cole, the protagonist of your new adventure. You begin controlling Cole as he stumbles and drags himself from the blast zone and through a simple tutorial section, as the world continues to crumble around him. As an on-foot courier, Cole is nimble on his feet and moves through the city using parkour, which seems to be a firm trend in videogames presently.

Controlling our Cole is a joy. Moving from obstacle to obstacle is a fluid ballet of jumping and grabbing. Jumping towards a lamppost will see Cole grab it and shimmy up; jump towards the edge of a bridge and, depending on how close you are, you’ll grab onto the ledge or land on it and tip-toe along. The control system is tight and versatile, and scaling buildings is just as important as running. Climbing the exteriors to get good vantage points, look for collectibles or attack enemies from above is an enjoyable experience that provides an extra rush of energy when being pursued by any of the street gangs.

It’s worth taking the time to expand on the story a little: although it does feel like a superhero cliché, the plot maintains your interest from start to finish. With Cole waking up as strange electric powers course through his body, he is forced by fate to become a hero to the people. With best friend Zeke in tow and Cole’s girlfriend angry that his powers seem to cause so much chaos, it feels as if Sucker Punch is regurgitating old comic book stories.

With half of the citizens calling you a monster and the others revering you as an icon for change, it’s up to you which of these paths you follow. Throughout the game you’re presented with moral choices: as you approach a mission, a good/bad symbol will appear in the corner of the screen and Cole will ponder the situation, laying out your choices. In the first of these scenarios, an aid box has been air dropped into the city, but is caught up high on a monument. Do you scare the citizens away and keep all of the food for yourself, or let everyone take an equal share? Once your decision is made a karma meter will swing in the chosen direction.

Unlike many other games, inFamous utilises its karma system incredibly well. Choosing a moral path will allow you to unlock more moves and abilities for you to use. Fighting enemies, completing missions and helping or hurting pedestrians all award experience points in varying amounts; these points are then spent in the powers menu to allow you to upgrade your abilities however you choose. Starting off with a small lightning bolt that can be shot from your hands, you’ll eventually hold the powers of a Norse god after fighting the good, or bad, fight. Upgrading your powers will eventually see you hovering on static thrusters, throwing electric sticky grenades and even riding electrical wires with conduction movement.

//Energy crisis
With many varying moves on display the combat becomes as deep as you want it to be. Dealing with the many street gangs within Empire City is never a chore. The difficulty of the battles has a nice balance that will keep you on your toes: be too aggressive and storm in, and you’ll be outflanked and dispatched swiftly; hang back and your foes will hide behind cover leading you out in the open to be killed. Approaching each situation takes patience and care to save any innocents caught in the crossfire – unless, of course, you are playing as an evil character, in which case you can blast anything in sight and hope to survive the fight yourself.

The street battles here come thick and fast until you begin liberating blocks of the city. Empire City has been put into quarantine, and with the gangs shutting off the electricity and water supplies it’s up to you to turn them back on. Once you have activated the electricity or water to an area, the lights will turn on in buildings and on streets and the gangs will flee, allowing people to get on with their lives. These missions are where the game takes a turn for the worse – although at the end of each of these missions you’ll be rewarded with a new power, each one is repetitive and linear. Trawling through sewers that look exactly the same as the one before, then trying out your new power in order to escape, becomes mundane and leaves you wishing for variety – though the majority of the mission structures are excellent.

With an open world that rivals many other games on the market, you can pick and choose which missions to take on. Do you storm through the main story or complete all the side missions while you progress? The story is enjoyable with the expected twists and turns, but it’s in the side missions that inFamous shines. With a huge variety of missions on display you’ll always have something to do. Following couriers, freeing hostages, rescuing medical staff, escorting prisoners to jail, disabling surveillance devices: the list goes on. Additionally, there are plenty of collectables, blast shards from the explosion are scattered across the city and can upgrade your power bar, and dead drop messages which add to the storyline are hidden in rooftop satellites. There’s certainly plenty to keep the completionists among us happy.

//Adventure playground
Although Empire City has much to explore, it lacks a certain atmosphere of other open-world games. With no soundtrack to speak of and citizens that often repeat their limited dialogue, it is hard to fall in love with this place, despite how beautiful it looks. But it’s compensated for by the cut-scenes: hand-drawn, comic-book-style artwork tells us more of the plot in between acts of the game, and these scenes help to cement the feeling of reading that new superhero adventure supplied by DC or Marvel.

And, really, this is a superb playground to spend time in. Jumping from skyscrapers and climbing everything in sight, combined with the mayhem of battles in the streets, is a thrill. Each mission feels well-crafted, with only a few exceptions, and although it follows a convoluted story that seems borrowed from Stan Lee, you should still enjoy the plot throughout. The morality system feels natural and not shoehorned in, and the combat is fluid and engaging.

Sucker Punch has created a game that uses carnage in a beautiful, over-the-top style that will push you to try new things. A tremendous origin story that will surely lead to an inevitable and welcome sequel, inFamous will doubtless appeal to the Heroes generation. This is a game born from the age-old question: what would you do if you had superpowers?

8/10

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