Review: Infamous

Infamous is an action game for the PlayStation 3. It was developed by Sucker Punch.

Cole MacGrath talking to his friend Zeke in the sewer. The red lightning around his arms indicates that he has been acting evil.

Cole MacGrath is a bike messenger in Empire City who is caught in the center of an explosion that destroys a large part of the city but leaves him unharmed and gives him powers over electricity. The explosion gives several gang members powers and unleashes a plague, causing the government to cut off Empire City from the rest of the world. Cole has to use his electricity to defeat the super-powered gangs and find the device that caused the explosion, or use his powers to take over the city.

The player controls Cole as he completes mission in the three districts of Empire City. Cole starts in one district, and after completing enough missions he can go to the second district, and eventually the entire city is opened up. Cole can climb up the sides of buildings quickly, jump across rooftops, and grind along electric poles, all necessary to move around Empire City quickly and complete missions.

The game is divided into several chapters that take part in a section of a district. Each chapter begins with Cole restoring electricity to that section, gaining a new superpower along the way and opening up that section’s missions. When Cole completes the story missions for that section a new section’s power supply will be revealed.

Cole gains experience points from completing missions and defeating enemies. The player buys new powers and upgrades for existing powers.

Cole’s main power is shooting a bolt of electricity from his hand. Other powers he gains are offensive powers like electric grenades and shockwaves, and regular utility powers like the ability to glide.

Cole has a reserved amount of energy that is drained whenever he uses a power. Cole can refill that reserve by draining electricity from surrounding equipment like lampposts and cars. Cole can increase his reserve by finding scattered shards of the device that caused the explosion around Empire City.

Story missions are more complicated than side missions, and usually have several parts that use Cole’s powers in more creative ways. Side missions are not essential to complete, but are necessary to gain more experience. These missions mostly involve going to somewhere and beating up a group of people, or protecting a group or a vehicle from enemies, or collecting something while fighting bad guys. They are not a lot of variety to them, but they are simple and quick and they happen in different parts of the city so they do not feel like Cole is doing the exact same thing over again.

Each district is controlled by a gang. Whenever Cole completes a side mission he takes over a portion of the district and enemies no longer spawn there.

The game has a morality system. During missions Cole will be presented with a chance to do something good or evil. The type of choices the player makes affects what kind of powers Cole gets and the storyline.

If Infamous has one thing going for it is that it is addictive. The way the game rewards the player for collecting shards, completing missions, capturing parts of the city, they all make you want to keep going and get more rewards.

Empire City looks great. It is a dump, but it is a dump with a lot of variety, which is important when going across its rooftops. There is no area that looks like the developers copied and pasted from a different part of the city.

Combat is awful. It does not matter what powers Cole gets they never really stand up to a group of people armed with guns and near perfect accuracy and deadlier superpowers. And the gangs always come in groups that easily overwhelm Cole. One would think that getting shot in the face or blown up with electricity would be effective, but getting shot does not faze them and when they get blown up the enemies just pick themselves up.

The morality system is ham-fisted and annoying. There is no subtlety to the choices; they are always something obvious like kill someone and take their stuff or let them go. The consequences are so inconsequential that you really have to go out of your way to be evil. And sometimes what the developers considered the evil or good choice is questionable. It is really unfair that the player only gets some powers because of doing good or evil things, the player should be allowed to have whatever they want. And make their own decision with what to do with them.

The storyline is very bad. In addition to the morality part, motivations for the enemies, especially the ancient conspiracy that orchestrated the explosions and its high-ranking members are never explained well. And so many important characters are killed for cheap drama.

Infamous makes you want to keep playing to unlock everything, see the city, and find out what happens next. But at the end all the frustration from the combat, story, and morality system might make you feel more annoyed than satisfied.