“Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.” – John F. Kennedy
Infamous players may remember the first half of this quote. It is one of many that are shown to the player during loading screens. And I have to say, I can’t remember the last time I felt as epic as I did while I was Cole Macgrath.
I want to start by commending Sucker Punch Productions on a job well done. Infamous has to be the best superhero game I’ve played since the Spider-Man games (mind you, Arkham Asylum is right around the corner, so hopefully good superhero games may start to be commonplace). You don’t get a narrator, the whole story is told from the perspective of the main character, a bike messenger who works in Empire City, which is like New York with fewer taxies – a LOT fewer. Now I’m sick and tired of games that occur in New York City personally (GTA IV, Prototype, Spider-Man, Ghostbusters, Max Payne, the list goes on). However, Empire City is only loosely based on New York, and looks different enough that I felt like I was in a different place.
The design of the city is great. It looks post apocalyptic, but I can’t say it was realistic at all. I mean, there was one explosion at the start of the game. This explosion is the detonation of a device called the Ray Sphere which ends up giving powers to people who are called “conduits”. You play was one of these conduits and end up fighting all of the other ones. Now this one explosion, which seems to have been contained on one island of Empire City, somehow turned every single car on each of the three islands into a rust bucket. Not to mention the huge amount of superfluous pipes and ledges attached to every building in the city.
Cole’s superhuman balance and upper-body strength I’m willing to chalk up to the blast, but I don’t see how electricity causes that. While we’re covering the unrealistic, the game is riddled with glitches, from graphical distortions to falling through the level. I’ve even been standing knee-deep in solid concrete at certain points. The glitches are not detrimental though, and the games respawn system makes sure you never lose too much progress, with checkpoints all throughout each mission.
That last bit was about all the bad I have to say about this game. The sewer design was impeccable. I knew that I was just seeing the exact same things every time I went down there to earn a new power, but it felt like a new adventure every time. In relation to the sewers, I absolutely loved the effect that knocking the power out in certain parts of the city has on Cole. After all, every superhero has to have a weakness. The blurred vision and lack of places to recharge adds a feeling of urgency to find the mission objective when travelling through a blacked-out part of the city – and the turret trucks don’t help that feeling.
Karma plays a big part in the game, but it leaves a little to be desired. Sure the powers are fitting to the side you choose – bad karma attacks are more spread out and destructive, whereas good karma attacks are more focused – but there’s no neutral bonuses. This means that you either play Cole as a complete asshole, or as the sinless savior of Empire City. There is no in between, which is fine if you want to play to the extremes, but honestly I enjoy walking the line between good and evil.
The storyline is great and kept me engrossed the whole way through, and the twist at the end caught me completely off guard. Though there was a certain arc that I wish was more fleshed out in the evil play through, you’ll know the one if you play it. Adding televisions as a story item was pretty cool. I found myself stopping every time a broadcast came on so I could find out which of my heroics the government was taking credit for this time. And the difficulty curve is nice. The first island ends up being a bit of a cakewalk for the most part, and each subsequent island ramps the difficulty up. The boss battles are fun and innovative; I really liked the idea of moving Cole’s hand to a position on the screen to pull ornaments off of the first boss.
To top it all off, the ending leads the player to believe that the entire game is one big prologue. I felt like I was playing through issue #0 of an Infamous comic. As a side note, the game now has a movie in the works, and if screen writer Sheldon Turner can translate the amazing story from this game into a superhero movie, I can guarantee a blockbuster hit. So here’s to the upcoming film, and hopefully at some point, Infamous 2, I can’t wait.
Written by: Bramimond
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