Mike Bantick
Monday, 01 June 2009 17:48
Entertainment
Page 1 of 2
The PS3 now has a superpowers game with a mature theme and a metric ton of glitches to overcome. But the sum of inFAMOUS’s parts actually hits the sweet spot.
For many months now, PlayStation 3 owning fans of niche super-power games have literally sat and twiddled their thumbs.
inFAMOUS
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Developer
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Sucker Punch Productions
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Publisher
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Sony
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Rating
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M
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| PS3 |
Crackdown on the Xbox 360 did great business, whilst City of Heroes/Villains as a MMO on the PC also provided an outlet for those wanting to garb up in tights and cape.
Well now we have inFAMOUS, the deliberately capitalised title from Sucker Punch Productions whose past titles included a trio of Sly Cooper anthropomorphic animal adventure games, mostly for the PS2.
Some will say that Sucker Punch have grown up with the release of inFAMOUS, but there is a lot of Sly injected into this more mature title.
Filling the boots of Cole MacGrath, players begin the game standing at the epicentre of a blast that has destroyed much of Empire City. From here it is necessary to quickly come to grip with the basic moves with inFAMOUS, because even this tutorial stage is a little unforgiving on those that have an exploratory nature. An early lesson in survival is that the electrically transformed Cole, does not enjoy a quick dip in Empire City's water ways.
Almost immediately we are introduced to the supporting cast, as Cole tries to piece together his part in the quarantining of the devastated urban districts. Fellow courier Zeke fills the gap of semi-comedic side-kick, girlfriend Trish and mysterious FBI agent Moya provide much of the strong female roles in the game and other characters such as –the annoying- Dallas guide Cole through the story missions.
The missions in inFAMOUS are a strong point, alongside the story drivers there are plenty of diversionary side-missions to accept. Many, when completed, open up parts of the city, making them safe havens from the criminal elements that now inhabit the vacuum when structured authority broke down.
Many other side-missions fall into the 'do-good' or 'do-evil' dichotomy of choice. Here, an attempt is made by the game-designers to morally checkpoint the player into believing there are choices to be made in this game that will construct the on-screen make-up of Cole.
The reality is, as a gamer, the choice is nowhere as deep as the publishers may wish you to believe. Whist making any single choice does not mean players are forever destined to take either the good or evil path until the games completion, the reality is, in order to maximise the kick-ass abilities within the games fabric, Cole will need to wholly concentrate on the path of goodieness or baddieness.
Experience achieved during missions, and whilst roaming the street, is directly spent on powering up many of the sixteen “powers” Cole learns over the course of the game. So when confronted with the occasional minds-eye cut-scene, there is no moral dilemma, only min-maxing of power stats to be considered, this is the simple issue of linking a game about super-powers to an attempt an morale based story telling.
All of Cole’s powers are electricity based, and learning new powers is also linked to Empire City. Cole can explore the city maps (made up of islands, that are slowly unlocked as the game progresses), clambering up to the top of sky-scrapers (in scenes very reminiscent of Assassin’s Creed), sliding down power-lines that join buildings (A nod to Sucker Punch’s Sly Cooper series), rushing about at street level, or spending some time down in the – rather functionally ill-designed – city sewer systems.
In the sewers, Cole will reconnect power sub-stations that not only power up the grid within sections of the city, but give Cole access to new powers.
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