Video games…are awesome.
Super Hero’s…are awesome.
What do you get, when you combine these 2 giganormous (trademarked) universes?
Well, mostly you get a lot of shitty ass games that are just made for a quick buck. I can’t blame the developers though…I was even caught in this skim of quick money by Mr. Activision (I will refer to Activision as Mister because I can’t accept the fact that a gaming company, an it, butt fucked me so many times). Wolverine’s slicing people in half? Sign me up! While that experience ended very fast because there’s a set amount of long jumps a man can take before he goes berserk. Most super hero video games are either horrible or pure gems. Will inFamous suck my big one or will it be mentioned alongside the X-men Arcade, as the greatest super hero games of all time?
The story begins with Cole being blow to pieces by a huge lightning attack. I know what you’re thinking…Why did I buy a PS3? Why have I never heard of Cole and for god’s sake! Where is my underwear!? This game establishes its own hero (Cole) instead of using a pre-existing, already established character (thank god, enough Hulk games!). My first reaction when Cole blew up was” Okay, so the main character was electrocuted to death… what’s next?” Somehow Cole isn’t blown to pieces…He actually has third degree burns on his head and his arm is possibly broken, his always grabbing it so, its either a weird fetish or its broken. I can relate with these events…When I was about to boot my ps3 to play inFamous, electricity passed throughout my body because I touched a receiver of electricity while I was placing the HDMI cable. I have no powers and my arm’s fine …so I’m guessing that the electricity didn’t give him the powers…the broken arm did…
As Cole wakes up and begins to make his way back to his friends, sources of electricity charge him up and as a result he faints…When he wakes up he has all these crazy ass powers.
The main characters are Cole (our resident super hero), Zeke (Jose but less Mexican and has glasses) and Tiffany (Cole’s sex toy before the blast but then, Cole killed 2000 people alongside her sister so she doesn’t want his “electrifying” body touching her anymore. There are also some very interesting villains in this game also which I don’t want to spoil at all. The ending is very fitting even if you can understand what’s going to happen 5-8 missions prior, if you are observatory…that is…
Voice acting is done superbly by all the cast, but one character that sticks out is Zeke. He has this swagger, like he is something. In reality, his nothing, a nobody that is jealous of your powers and would do anything to have them, even if that would cost the life of millions. Many of those professionals said something about Cole’s voice being to deep or to serious at some points but I can tell you right now that his Vi -Diesel like voice just adds to the dark mood, especially if you go evil. This game is presented to us through comic book like cut scenes that don't happen very often and most of the time you get information and backstory from voice mails, personal radio.
While story is a pretty important part in most games…Really now…You bought inFamous to blow shit up and be the baddest mother fucker in town. In MOST missions you have a very obvious diversion between being bad or good. In key points, the screen fades and it basically says that if you fry some you are bad, if you just let them eat, you’re good. This happens 3 times throughout the whole game and you’re awarded with trophies after each choice, one for evil and one for good. While those 3 main choices are obvious, there are many missions that shape your whole image. I found it ultimately a lot easier to be on the good side rather than the evil. You can just run around and heal everybody become more of a hero while as Evil you have to bio leech everybody and that takes more time. I had more fun as Evil because you are just way more powerful and have much cooler powers...thus proving that villains only go bad just to have fun. Throughout my two playthrough’s I have sometimes done a mission and gotten bad karma while trying to be good, for no apparent reason, or so I thought. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since every little choice matters when doing a mission.
Again, you don’t really give a flying fuck about that….you want to know about the powers, now don’t you? You start out simple…with the lightning strike. For those that played the demo, you’re going to be pressing the hovering button to hover around for a long time before it actually has use. The game gives you new powers every third or fifth mission in the form of sewers. Yes, sewers. The city has no light and you have to go underground and light it up. Towards the beginning of the sewers you charge up and gain a new power every time. Sucker Punch, in their credit, places stuff on your way towards the regenerator that need you to utilize the new power you gained to pass by them. This is one of the best ways to further the storyline and get you familiar with your new power, rather than them just telling you…they MAKE you use it. This is one of the best ideas I have seen implemented in a game, ever. The problem with this is that you have about 15 powers and every time you have to go to the sewers, making this VERY repetitive and monotonous. You have 40 missions in total and about 15 of them are just going to the sewers and bringing the power back on for a certain area, not that fun and lazy from the developers part.
Some of the powers in the evil side include Cluster sticky grenade (personal favourite), a big missile that has another 7 missiles on its side, an devastating attack that destroys everything and is controlled by the sixxaxis (Did they really have to implement this?) and lastly an area of effect when you hit the ground from a certain distance (jumping off a building).Some good powers are sticky grenades that restrain everybody that is caught in the blast and everything else is basically the same as the evil but blue and weaker. Evil is the way!
Another large element of the gameplay is parkour. I have seen a version of the game with the debugger on and they basically showed that you could grapple of everywhere. This is also in the final build and the parkour element of the game is very engaging but there are a few cases where I want to grab somewhere else or drop down to the floor and instead I am attracted to another object, this doesn’t happen very often but when it does…Its damn aggravating. Another thing is that in one or two cases I had to be real precise with my jumping while in other cases I didn’t…Another frustrating factor because I died on the same jump 3 times, thinking I could have completed it.
There are 3 main boss battles in the game. I am just going to say that the first boss fight is a complete joke and the second one is just…signs of laziness basically. Look, when you have a character that can move a whole building with his brain…You don’t just put him in a machine that shoots rockers…you just don’t…It could have been done so much better. The last boss battle is very good and kind of challenging and that’s followed up by a mind fuck, truly.
The graphics and sound are really not the highlights of the game. Sucker Punch has repeatedly said that this game can only be done on the PS3 and they chose the PS3 because it’s far superior, but, man! This game doesn’t look that spectacular at all…If Kojima said that MGS4 was only able on the PS3 I would believe him but this…that’s just false advertisement. It’s not bad by all means…but it’s not impressive. There's also some texture popping which I don't really care about because there are absolutely no loading times in the game and when you begin its very small in compatison to GTA IV, so it doesn't really matter Something that got me fanboying out in my seat, was that if you are evil the city is pretty banged up and after you finish your 39th mission the 40th one is the aftermath and its basically a thousand times more banged up and looked nothing like before. What bothered me here is that during the game the city looked noticeably bad but then afterwards it looked like a wreck, it was a big difference. Another thing I want to touch on is cole's look when you go evil...He looks...wierd?Why does he have oil marks on his head...?Its a very bad way to show his evil...
Oh! And by the way! 30 hours my ass! It’s basically 10-15 hours including half of the side quests and the main story on the evil side.
Conclusion:
This game is a must have for every PS3 owner but it’s not the game of the year by any means. Like most games, it has its flaws and some of them are plain laziness from the developers/designers part. This game could have been a perfect 10 if they weren’t this damn lazy and they put more variety in missions, boss fights and made the overall presentation so only the PS3 would be capable of its powers. The fluent parkouring and very involving powers make this a very “electrifying” ride, yes, you’re damn right I used the same pun two times in one review! That’s why I’m Radical!
*Thanks for all of your support guys, all of my Radical Corner's so far have been top posted and that's thanks to you guys...Next review will be UFC Undisputed or Ghostbusters or that other super hero game...*
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Subject: Radical Corner-Infamous review! 
Tue Jun 09, 2009 1:22 pm
