In closing, Infamous may not be the most original thing to come along, nor does it always borrow from the correct sources, but it nails one thing very clearly: it's fun. Sucker Punch has crafted a game where the basic acts are satisfying and slick. It's enjoyable enough that it'll make you forget about the fact that we play perhaps 3 truly original games a year. This may not be one of that holy trio, but it'll most certainly do.

(And if I hear one more person call it "electrifying" I'm going to punch their undeserved testes.)

Game Details			Loading Reality Scoring
Format	PlayStation 3 (all PS3 reviews)		Score Meaning: An above average, teetering on "good" game. This title has some great ideas and ambitions, along with redeeming qualities that outweigh the handfuls of negative aspects, making it worth a play.
Publisher	Sony Computer Entertainment
Developer	Sucker Punch
Category	Action/Adventure		Presentation
ESRB	T		Gameplay
Online Players	0		Graphics
Offline Players	1		Sound
Price	59.99		Value Factor
Release Date	May 26, 2009		Final Score

Motorstorm

Have we, as an industry, surrendered to originality being a dead or dying concept? In a world of Saints Rows, Metroidvanias and Rock Revolutions, no one bats an eye anymore when a game is cleanly ripped off and duplicated. Even within sequels themselves the formula, with the rare exception of a Resident Evil 4, is God. Bigger, better and more... well, you know; that's the mantra of most of the developers nowadays. Does that make our games less enjoyable across the board, conjuring deja vu for everyone? Or is it just developers spreading excellence around?

Enter Infamous, also known as Crackdown with lightning. It's a reimagining, rebranding of the same urban jungle as playground gameplay that proved to be such a welcome surprise back in February '07. Sucker Punch has tightened it up, approached it from their own superheroic standpoint (shocking shit), inserted a narrative and morality system. Sounds peachy, right? The jury's still out on just how original Infamous manages to be in the end, but no one's going to debate just how much fun the game is to play.

Dropped into the action right at the beginning, Infamous introduces you to its terrorist wet dream of a desolated city. Decimated by a mysterious bomb and left to crumble while under quarantine, Empire City has been taken over by thugs who bear a striking resemblance to General "I Have Four Lightsabers" Grievous. The hero, Cole, is similarly craggy and ruined by the Happening (as are many), but the city is a lot more interesting of a character. Sadly, despite all their lush, beautiful work on the storytelling and setting, they forgot to make their characters interesting (or in the case of some of the peripherals: bearable).

And the storytelling is rather beautiful. The tale they're telling itself is perfectly fine, but you can practically eat the animated comic sequences with a spoon. The voice acting even seems to rise to the occasion during the scenes, despite having only been "good" 30 seconds prior. I wish there were about three times as many such sequences.

The act of actually playing Infamous is what you'll stay for, though. What sets it apart, clearly, is the bevy of superpowers at your disposal. Taken one at a time things like shooting lightning from Cole's palms or Force -er- lightning shoving baddies can seem expected, but chain them together and you'll be surprised at the resulting chaos. Towards the end of the game when you've unlocked everything, the combat becomes a satisfying cornucopia of destruction that offsets the occasional vanilla encounter. My personal favorite is the gliding which makes rooftop traversal a seriously fun breeze. It controls really tightly too, so you always feel like you're one step away from domination, and it makes the above-average difficulty feel just right.

Despite being an entirely enjoyable piece of open-world action, the Spider-Man 2 curse rears its head here: mission repetition. Not only are the side missions too often just "kill these guys right out here", but, more frustratingly, a large chunk of the story missions are sewer dives that grant you new powers. The problem? They all play exactly the same. This unskippable bit of rehash is lazy and inexcusable; that becomes all the more upsetting when the game is revealed to be a rather short romp for an open-world title.

Another bit of theft that doesn't work is the morality system. Let's be clear: this is a gaming trend that needs to stop immediately. It's cold and artificial and, in the case of something like Mass Effect, is a silly crutch for the developers so they're exempt from creating tension in any real way. Infamous is the worst kind of offender. I would almost be okay with including the system if it were based on if you stunned instead of killed baddies or murdered the shit out of random innocents; yes, before you ask, I know you earn a small amount of points one way or another doing those things. The problem is every now and then you'll come upon a BIG HERO CHOICE!!! and, I'm not kidding, the screen goes sepia and spells out your moral decision as though you're in the fourth grade and cannot figure out that barbequing a citizen is an evil act. These moments take you out of the game and utterly insult your intelligence.

3.5 / 5

Written by :

Aaron

 

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CrAzYbRoS

Game Review: Infamous Jun 17 2009 15:44:57 Aaron makes the fanboys cry.

#10808

edgeofblade

Game Review: Infamous Jul 06 2009 03:57:09 Getting into Infamous finally... I have to agree with Aaron to a large extent, but it's "moral" choices have a far more positive impact than anyone seems to want to admit. Where there were the sepia "Morals for Idiots" scenes, closing the water mains and the destroying the tar pumps made for a REAL moral conflict: take the easy way out of the situation or play the good role and have your powers temporarily hampered. Just finished the first third of the game... and I already know I'm going to want this to run longer than it will. There should be two to three more islands and even more powers. On the plus side, it feels like it's the three-part video game equivalent of a super hero trilogy a-la Spiderman. Except no "emo" iteration... i hope. But if anyone wants to pit this against Prototype... I was skeptical initially, but Infamous blows it out of the water. Call me nuts, but it's in my GotY running.

#11079