InFamous - 8/10
Infamous Review
Written by Zefix
Edit: Changed to 8/10 instead of 7.5 on 10.6.2009 due to more value (timewise) than initially accepted.
After an anticipating wait for another PS3 exclusive, Sucker Punch delivers us InFamous. But has it lived up to the expectations? Sucker Punch seemed to have looked at other games and decided to take their best elements and combine it, be it the Evil/Good side, the lightning and the effects it leaves on your face/body from Star Wars, or the combat systems of the CoD series, the familiar GTA sandbox style and the roof climbing and finding items of Assassins Creed. It even combined various elements of RPG of Star Wars KotOR by gaining XP and leveling up powers, 3rd person shooter using lightning and zooms-in and platforming in the sewers. However the great elements of this game which is well worth playing through, are serious let down by various other elements such as various graphic glitches, repetitive gameplay, short playtime and some rather simple boss fights.
The story starts out rather slow, with you having only access to two powers, lightning and thunder drop. Lightning will be your common power, as it has 'infinite ammo'. Melee is practically useless in this game as everyone has ranged weapons, it could have been interesting for Sucker Punch to add in some melee orientated enemies. In fact meleeing is pretty stupid as there are enemies who are suicide bombers which pretty much will one shot you if you touch them. The powers all in all are pretty awesome to use once you obtain them, its hellish fun using Shockwaves to blast cars away and onto enemies, gliding on train tracks and floating in air. However it does get repetitive as unless you go shard finding, which adds you additional pool of energy, which you will need to use any of the other powers besides lightning and thunder drop, is quite time consuming and not really necessary in order to beat the game. You can just make do with the ones you randomly get by climbing up buildings and from side missions easily.
The AI is pretty smart in this game. They will duck out if you aim at them and appear on another spot and know when to run if you hurl grenades at them unless your lucky enough to attach those grenades to their bodies. However sometimes you wonder whether all of the enemies in this game have been elite snipers of the special ops. This is because almost all units in this game will shoot you from over 300 meters away and still hit you, whereas your lightning won't even reach them until you get the zoom-in feature, which requires a lot of energy to use. Considering those people are drug addicts and homeless people its a bit daunting. If your a GTA sandbox fan which made you purchase the game, you will miss the auto aim feature of GTA. The AI is smart and you will need to get used to it before you'll be able to take some of the enemies down. Luckily there is no accuracy percentage statistics or mine would be 5% if not lower. The game has no HP pack system, but features CoD HP system. If your low you just suck a bit of electricity out of nearby objects.
The XP and RPG elements in this game are nicely incorporated, you don't necessarily feel forced to 'farm' for XP to upgrade your powers, some people may feel obliged to do so, but your powers are as good enough without the need to do so. The Evil/Good side could have been incorporated a bit better into the game, with more elements adding to whether your Good/Evil. It seemed a bit that the Evil side is much easier to do as you would not loose energy points and could randomly suck enemies/pedestrians energy, and the Good side's exclusive power was pretty useless compared to the Evil side's exclusive power.
The missions could have been done a bit better. There were a lot of side missions, which you could do in order to acquire the zones as in GTA:SA style. But the missions itself featured only little variety, such as hostage rescuing, tracking couriers or rescuing a medical center for a checkpoint. It could of done better, one of the reason which made this game felt rushed.
Climbing up buildings is no new thing to Assassin's Creed gamers. Climbing up spots to see the city and find the HQ and flags is not required in the game, as L3 and the map will show anything that is worth noting, but to get some of the 'flags' or blast shards requires you often to climb some building. Furthermore most of your first island enemies will be on rooftops. Staying at the same height gives you an advantage rather than being down at the streets and sniped at. Collecting shards does feel like a bit of Assassins Creed, where you required to collect in order to obtain more life points. It works the same way here in InFamous except you get more energy for special powers usage. Even the graph looks similar.
The plot of the game is quite good. The comic cut scenes are thrilling to look at, the story contains some unexpected twists. Zeke, one of Cole's only friends, can be compared to Niko Bellic's annoying cousin Roman. Unfortunately the boss fights are a bit of a let down. It features Resident Evil 5/Heavenly Sword, where you require to tap that specific buttons to defeat the boss (Quick-Time-Events (QTE), but is done much simpler.
Very forgiving checkpoints, that save your progress almost every 30secs to 1 min, and no death penalty makes this game even on hard mode quite a breeze (even GTA had a penalty where you loose a bit of money and all your weapons, maybe loosing a bit of XP (1-2) would have been an incentive of not loosing and making a tad harder), which does seem to aim at the casual gamer. However the hardcore gamer may feel that the game is not quite as challenging even on hard mode. That and some graphical glitches, no multiplayer and easy trophies makes me imagine that most hardcore gamers, will be returning/trading/selling this game after finishing it on both story modes, which by then they will have platinum trophy.
Plot
9/10
- Nice twists. Whilst some are quite obvious, but you'll most likely not guess it 100% correctly.
- Could have incorporated Trish and Zeke a bit nicer into the Evil/Good side.
Gameplay
7.9/10
- The Gameplay whilst its fantastic grilling and shooting electricity in a la Star Wars style (Sith lords) is fun, but becomes repetitive after a while. The special good power only is kind of useless and you can play through the entire game without using the special evil power.
- Riding train tracks and wire ropes is fun.
- Intuitive controls
- Boss fights could be more exciting.
- Side missions are kind of repetitive, feels a tiny bit reminiscent of Assassin's Creed, especially since this game contains some elements of AC. This is a personal opinion and will vary from the player and how much they like blowing things up and using superpowers, over and over. But then again for action Prototype got more action and people to kill and other superhuman games exist too.
Graphics
7/10
- Cole's facial features changes depending on which side you are, just like Star Wars. He is nicely animated and features.
- Flame and lightning are very realistic.
- Trucks seem to have no drivers (The ones with the turrets on it).
- Buildings are a bit edgy.
- Frame rate drops if there is a lot of explosions going on.
- Some glitches with Reapers who seem to be stuck in mid air after killing them.
- Some buildings and places can be walked through with Cole.
Audio
8/10
- Electricity and explosion are very realistic sounding.
- Cole's friend Zeke sounds as annoying as he should be.
Value
7.5/10
- Only around 10-15 hours for one playthrough at hard difficulty. Play again and you'll be familiar with the most of the story lines/missions apart from the 15 special evil/good missions and you'll get around 5-6 of replay value. Thus the game is a bit short, which could be completed in a weeks session, with no multiplayer.
- Lack of Multiplayer
- A bit pricey if purchased at $109.99 due to lack of multiplayer and replayability beyond the first two playthrough as good and evil
- Special Edition's Gigawatts are kind of useless.
Overall
8/10
Final Verdict
Its fun, if short lived. Of course it should be, since it combined some of the best elements of certain other games. However the title does feel a bit rushed, it could have much more potential. Adding a multiplayer, GTA style would have been fun. Improving graphics and bugging out the glitches would have been nice. More variety such as GTA missions would have been great rather than having either only certain hostage rescue, following couriers, killing reapers, and rescuing medical centers over and over again. Overall this game is a tiny bit of a disappointment to me, as I could have imagined so much more for it, after all the hype. The demo does incorporate the best elements of the game and its a let down after experiencing it the demo. I guess some people are liking it now, but I am thinking that once they have played it through twice and thus get most of the trophies done (which is fairly easy to do), it will not be touched much anymore.
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