Previews// inFamous

Is it bad that I want to get this preview finished so I can get back to playing inFamous? Maybe I can have just another half hour, Evil Editor? The Evil Editor just redefined the parameters of swearing. Apparently I've played the preview code to death now. And something about a duck, a pint of vaseline and a tent pole...

Needless to say – so far, inFamous is looking good. Which is just as well really, because as one of a not-so-long list of big, exclusive games for the PS3 coming up, it has a lot riding on it.

If the game is unfamiliar to you, it's an open-world action game that you play through as Cole, a chap imbued with superpowers who is stuck in a city devastated by something or other. Cole is torn between using his abilities for good (blue) or evil (red). No! Wait! Put your copy of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed away and sit back down. This is a bit different.

One difference is that you actually get some choice in whether you play as a good guy or a bad guy. I won't go on about that at length, because in the chunk of the game I've been able to play so far I haven't had much choosing to do. The missions I've played, however, show that there is some difference between the abilities you get for each path (although they both involve electricity and some apparent laxity with the laws of physics).

The sort of game this is closest to comes from the comic book camp. For example - over the weekend I spent some time playing Spider-Man: Web of Shadows and after several hours playing both that and inFamous – inFamous feels like the game Web of Shadows should have been. Both feature super-powered protagonists, a loose(ish) mission structure and an open, urban landscape to wander around. Where Web of Shadows felt a little contrived and the city felt bland, however, inFamous flows well and the city is well-realised.

Yeah, that old open-world chestnut. From what I've seen inFamous doesn't have the scope of Grand Theft Auto's Liberty City, which is the open world most people will immediately make the mental leap to. The map doesn't look as big (much of it was locked, however, so I couldn't actually explore it) and I've yet to come across a building I could enter. What there is, however, is rich and varied, providing a bleakly-enjoyable sandbox to leap about in.

I've already talked a fair amount about the parkour elements of the game here, so I won't go on. Suffice to say, using the rooftops as your own post-apocalyptic adventure playground is enough to keep you entertained for lengthy sessions all by itself.

So, the missions I played through: The first was a tutorial (good idea, it turns out – I accidentally loaded into a boss battle the first time I booted the game – it didn't work out well for me). I won't go into it, beyond saying there was a handful of obligatory tasks that got me used to my basic abilities while doing a reasonable job of disguising themselves as a tutorial.

After that, it's on to the good stuff. Killing a goddamn bus! You might have seen this one in a video (which can be found here, alongside my earlier impressions). At this point, I'm looking a bit evil. My skin seems to be a bit grey, there's something that looks a bit like a tattoo of octopus arms creeping up the back of my head and my discharge has gone all red. And there's a bus to kill!