inFAMOUS Review

May Contain Spoilers

With the release of inFAMOUS 2 fast approaching, I thought that it’s about time to review the first game.

Story

Now imagine waking up one day and finding yourself in the middle of a burning crater and with destroyed buildings and dead people everywhere. You soon learn that you are no longer like other humans. Electricity courses through your body, endowing you with superpowers and, by extension, the power to control the fate of those around you. Well this is what happens to a bike messenger called Cole MacGrath who was delivering a package which then blows up in his face taking the whole of Empire City with it. 

Shortly after the explosion, a weakened Cole was awakened by a chopper that is looking for any survivors. Instructed to meet up at the evacuation area, Cole slowly makes his way there. On his way to the evacuation area, Cole showed several signs of electrokinesis, absorbing energy from a nearby power source, and also calling forth a bolt of lightning from the sky. After slowly making his way to the other side of the devastated bridge that is connecting the Historic District to the Neon, Cole succumbed to his injuries, and fainted. Cole was then brought to the hospital by his girlfriend Trish and best friend Zeke.

After this the aftermath of the blast are shown in a comic book style cutscene showing what chaos the blast has brought such as people engaging in riots & rapes while others are infected with a plague, being burned alive by the fires or crushed by falling debris.

Empire City was then put under quarantine, and, without outside help, chaos quickly descended upon the city as gangs quickly grew in number and power. Cole awakes up after about four days and, with some encouragement from Zeke, he gradually learned to control his electrical powers after approximately two weeks after the quarantine was put into effect, Cole's powers had developed to the point where he could fire powerful electrical blasts and generate potent shockwaves. Cole was later blamed for causing the explosion, by a pirate-broadcaster known as "the Voice of Survival", noting Cole as a terrorist. This caused Empire City's citizens to turn against Cole. This also made Trish dump him, blaming him for the death of her sister, who died of the Blast.

Cole and Zeke then attempted to escape past the quarantine using Cole's new powers, but they were overwhelmed by military units and were almost killed. Zeke escaped, but Cole was caught by an FBI agent named Moya Jones, who makes a deal with Cole: she will let him past the quarantine and his name will be cleared if he returned to Empire City to recover the Ray Sphere, the device that triggered the explosion, as well as find her husband and fellow agent, John White, who had been investigating the Ray Sphere and its creator, the cult group First Sons.

Also Cole wants to find out who gave him the Ray Sphere and why and he has to go through the three factions that now control Empire City to get these answers.

Gameplay

inFAMOUS is a sandbox or open world game that combines elements of platforming, shooting, role-playing and puzzle solving. You play as Cole in a third person view and changes into a third-person, over-the-shoulder perspective when using powers such as Lightning Bolt, Shockwave & Megawatt Hammer but while using other powers such as Polarity Wall and Lightning Storm, the view remains in third person. Apart from just having these powers Cole can also use melee attacks which can also be upgraded for extra damage. Melee can also be expanded with the DLC power the Gigawatt Blades that take out most enemies with a single hit.

Cole uses Parkour (otherwise known as free-running) to get around Empire City and due to being vivified electricity, Cole is unable to use vehicles about the city, take up weapons, or even swim. However, Cole, being an urban explorer, is able to easily climb buildings and other structures as well as jump from high places without taking any damage at all.

One gameplay mechanic is the Karma system, which shows Cole’s affinity that starts as neutral but later after the first mission First Glimpse, this changes depending on the choices that you make. These choices also change Cole’s appearance, what powers he processes, the colour of his lightning and the fate of Empire City and the way the citizens act towards you. If you choose Good your lightning is blue and your powers become more defensive and focus more on restraining enemies rather than killing them, but if you choose Evil your lightning becomes red and your powers become more destructive and less focused that will also cause collateral damage often killing bystanders as a result.

The missions are split into two types: main missions to further the story of the game and side missions which are for gaining more XP to upgrade your powers, but also for opening up new ways to move across the three districts that make up Empire City like getting the trains working again or lowering a bridge. There are also a number of missions that depend on what Karma State Cole is which contributes to gaining a new power. If Cole has Good Karma you gain Overload Burst which is like a powered up version of Lightning Bolt and if you have Evil Karma you gain Arc Lightning which fires a continuous stream of lightning. The enemies that Cole encounters ranges from regular gun-wielding hoods to enemies who have gained some powers from the blast just like Cole has, but not to the same extent however.

The enemies of inFAMOUS are divided into three groups (The Reapers, The Dustmen and The First Sons) each with their own Conduit who have also gained powers from the blast and are just as or more powerful than Cole is. Their powers range from mind control, telekinesis and electrokinesis.

Also there is some stuff to collect which also gives you extra XP points and increases the number of Cole’s Battery Cores which allows him to store more electrical energy for later use and these items are called Blast Shards which are pieces of metal that have become supercharged by the blast and there are 350 of them all around Empire City which can also be gained by certain missions and the other collectables are Dead Drops which reveals more of the back story of inFAMOUS which become available after the third mission and if the power has been restored to the area.

There are also 21 stunts that Cole can perform to earn more XP, some from beating enemies a certain way like using Shockwave to push three enemies from a rooftop or beat five enemies in less than thirty seconds using only melee.

Music

The soundtrack for inFAMOUS was composed by the electronic musician Amon Tobin, composers James Dooley and Mel Wesson, and electric cellist Martin Tillman, under the direction of Sony's music manager, Jonathan Mayer. The music was divided between Tobin, who worked on the in-game music, and Dooley who worked on the music for the cinematics; the two worked together to make sure common musical themes were present in both aspects. The music does a good job of adding to the overall grim tone of the story and makes the twists in the story much more dramatic as a result. My personal favourite from the soundtrack is the song that plays during the credits which is called Silent Melody, which was produced by Working for a Nuclear Free City.

The soundtrack is available to download here on Nero's Lair
http://nero-kiva.blogspot.com/2011/06/infamous-original-soundtrack.html

Final Thoughts

When I played Infamous for the first time I thought that it was awesome. Over two years later, I'm still standing by that statement and backing it up with over about 30 hours of playtime. Cole's powers are cool, the graphic novel style cutscenes are stunning, the story is intriguing, and the city itself is alive. However there are drawbacks with this game for example the free running auto correct can be really annoying because Cole grabs anything during a climb up a building and this is tedious to deal with when under heavy gunfire which often results in Cole being killed. The worse case of this particular issue that I had was when I was playing the mission when Cole is climbing Alden’s Tower and Cole would not latch onto the last piece of metal just before the face-off with a large of Dustmen minions and a Conduit and falls to his death.

Another thing is that the missions do get a bit repetitive which does limit the variety, however this only a minor issue for me and it didn’t make the experience any less enjoyable.

The last issue that I have with inFAMOUS is while there is a good story throughout the game itself, the back story for me is a little thin when compared with its rival [PROTOTYPE] that has the Web of Intrigue which does explain a lot but is long-winded. However this is explained more with a series of comics the first being inFAMOUS Post Blast which can be found on this blog which is a graphic novel  split into four issues that were released on IGN.com depicting the events that lead up to the events of inFamous. There are four comics, each focusing on both Cole and John White.

Here’s the link for inFAMOUS Post Blast:

http://nero-kiva.blogspot.com/2011/03/infamous-post-blast.html

There are also six other comics being released by DC Comics in association with Sucker Punch Productions. The comic book will follow the adventure of superhero, Cole MacGrath, and bridges the gap between inFamous and inFamous 2. The comic primarily depicts Cole's escape from Empire City in the first game to New Marais in the second game. The comics feature illustrations by Eric Nguyen as well as a cover art by Doug Mahnke with the story being written by William Harms. The first issue of the six-part comic series was released in March 2011.

Overall I feel that inFAMOUS is a must have for any PS3 collection and I would recommend this game highly with a good story that has a lot of twists that you don’t expect, plenty of action, urban exploration and other stuff to do within Empire City to you busy for a while.

This concludes my review of inFAMOUS now I’ll have to wait till June 10^th to get my hands on inFAMOUS 2 which I will also review at a later date.