Reviews// inFamous

Good and evil feels like a bit of an empty distinction...

Posted 20 May 2009 17:00 by
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There are a few boss battles of sorts littered about the place, but only a handful of them take the traditional 'one όber-powerful enemy' form. The more challenging, bigger encounters tend to be more along the lines of full-on firefights, such as the mission in which you have to defend the prison from a Sand Bastard assault.

Graphically, inFamous is superb. It's crisp, the superpower effects are well done, and Empire City is extremely well realised, especially given its impressive size. Given the amount of time you'll spend leaping about its architecture, that's no small deal.

So far, so awesome. I do indeed love inFamous. That's not to say there aren't problems. A bit more variety in the enemies would be nice. Empire City is broken up into islands, and on a given island you get a given standard sand grunt. They'll attack you in different ways – with gun emplacements, with shockwave powers, with rocket launchers – but on a given island they all look pretty much the same.

The whole moral choice thing, for its part, feels like it could offer more variety, too. I saw a Sucker Punch dev saying somewhere† that you might want to switch your character one way or the other for a given mission for the different powers on offer. I won't be doing that. There's not a great deal of difference in the good and evil power sets, for starters. More importantly, the heavily-flagged 'karmic moments' don't offer enough of a change in where you are on the karmic barometer to make it convenient to chop and change a lot. Similarly, I'd like to have the not-heavily-flagged moments where you perform 'good' or 'bad' actions to impact your karmic balance. Good and evil feels like a bit of an empty distinction when you can steal civilians' bio-electricity, killing them (rather than heal them) and not have it affect your standing.

It would also be good if there was more loot to be had. You can pick up blast shards to increase your power-storage capacity (you get power by sucking it out of people or the power grid) but beyond that there's not much to find. Seeing the city is still interesting as you leap about its rooftops, because it's well-designed and pretty in a grim sort of way – but there's not much point in exploring for exploring's sake.

Some kind of multi-player would also be good – preferably co-op – but it wouldn't particularly fit with the game as it stands and I'm not that interested in seeing it tacked on for the sake of it. Maybe in the (inevitable) sequel...

That is, however, about the extent of my niggles.

SPOnG Score: 96%
Conclusion
inFamous is, simply put, damn good fun. The combination of super-powered combat, free running, varied mission structure and the extremely healthy size of the whole thing combine with a solid narrative to create a great action/adventure experience. It's not perfect - there are a few complaints, but these are far outnumbered by inFamous's good points. A damn fine reason to own a PS3.

†OK, I'm not that lazy. I checked. It was Sucker Punch co-founder Bruce Oberg – he said it here.
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Comments

config 20 May 2009 16:37
1/6
First!

And by that, I mean; let me be the first to add that from the short play I had and the less short watching others play, this is one game that's great fun to play. Its parkour-ish-ness may be less glamorous than Mirror's Edge, but it feels a who heap more like parkour appears to be when the master do it - bouncing from wall to wall, using any nook/cranny, protuberance or overhang to boost over obtacles, make flight across the rooftops and scale Empire City's edifices - and not a single glowing orange "this way, dumbass" marker required.

That's not to Mirror's Edge was bad, just that this feels better.
tyrion 20 May 2009 18:42
2/6
I'd like to add that the parkour navigation is way, way more fluid than in Assassin's Creed and a lot more fun.

I've been playing the SPOnG review copy and I'm till buying this game when it comes out, because I'm never going to get enough time on it if I'm competing with everybody else to play it.
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config 20 May 2009 21:16
3/6
@tyrion don't be surprised if the save for the review copy doesn't work with retail and you have to start afresh.
Dannybuoy 28 May 2009 14:21
4/6
my copy landed on my door mat this morning! Shame my PS3 is all packed up and going into storage until I move to my new house.. (could be a month or so... dagnamit!). I'm sure it'll be every bit as fun when I do manage to get it all set up and running again. Can't wait!
sparky 28 May 2009 14:40
5/6
@Dannybuoy nooo you have to unpack it and at least give a quick play
Dannybuoy 1 Jun 2009 08:00
6/6
@sparky

I did manage to get a quick play on Sunday and I must say its a great game so far. The controls feel pretty good. Can't wait to get stuck into it properly.
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