Thursday, January 6, 2011

Review: InFamous on the Playstation 3


InFamous on the Playstation 3 is one of the best games that I have played in a while. The gameplay, story, and graphics all combine together to create a great experience that gamers will love.

The story begins in Empire City as an explosion rocks the town and kills thousands. At the source of the blast is your character, Cole. Cole begins to develop electricity based super powers and he struggles to learn how to control them as the city is put under a strict quarantine. Cole and his friend Zeke attempt to escape the city but are thwarted by an overwhelming military force at the only bridge out. Cole is captured and given a deal by a woman named Moya. She will get him out of the city if he can find her husband and a piece of technology called the Ray Sphere that gave Cole his powers to begin with.

This is where the game begins in earnest, Moya sends Cole on several missions to reestablish power through underground substations. With each of these stations Cole recharges, he gains a new power. You have a meter that shows your electricity level, this allows you to perform special moves, you can recharge at any electricity source, like a generator. Doing this also heals Cole although he will heal with time but recharging boosts his healing time.

The main attack Cole has is a shot of electricity from his hand, this does not drain any charge from the meter so Cole always has something to defend himself with. Cole will gain the ability to glide, form a shield of electricity, and grind on railroad tracks and power lines, over the course of the game. These abilities do not use up any charge and with upgrades, the grinding actually recharges Cole.

Other attacks include an electricity grenade, a lightning storm Cole can summon from the sky, (and you use Sixaxis motion control to guide it), and a precise shot feature which slows down the game and zooms in so you can hit enemies from a distance, like a sniper.

The game’s controls are impressive and they are relatively easy to master. The enemies are numerous and creative although it is never exactly explained where they came from or what they are (many are too large to be human beings) and many are wearing masks. Sometimes it seems like they take too many hits to die but that is part of the challenge of the game.

The game’s structure is open world, like Grand Theft Auto, where you can go to areas to advance the main story but you could also go off on numerous side quests. The side quests are ok but can be frustrating and a little repetitive (I ran across the counter-surveillance quest twice and it was climbing a building and destroying surveillance devices, they were hard to spot and the game didn’t need this kind of quest more than once.) I like this structure because I love a ton of side quests in the game but the first time through I like to beat the main story first.

The graphics are impressive and everything looks very good, I even like the cut scenes where they are like panels of a graphic novel. It is a fresh perspective and it is not used too much but just enough to keep it interesting. I didn’t really notice any framerate problems, there was some minor clipping but it wasn’t too bad and I didn’t get stuck somewhere because of it so it wasn’t too much of a problem.

The story is engaging, it pulls you in and keeps you guessing as several twists are added in and your actions, good or bad, can have real effects on the course of the story. The choices you make feed into a karma system where good choices make you more like a hero and bad choices make you more like a villain. This is present in other games I’ve played, like KOTOR, but the main difference here is that your powers are different if you choose to be good or bad. The upgrades will say good only or bad only and I like this because it adds to the replay value of the game and makes it really worth it to play both sides. Your karma also affects the side quests that are available to you.

Overall this game is fantastic, the graphics are nice and clean, the gameplay is smooth, the story is interesting, and the overall experience is one that I will definitely go back to again. I highly recommend.

Pros

-Great story, graphics, and gameplay

-Different powers and side quests for different alignments

Cons

-Minor clipping

-Enemies can be a

little too hard to kill at times

9/10

A lot of catching up to do

Sorry for the long delay, I got lazy again but I've played several games since I last updated the blog so I have a lot of new material to get to. I bought a Wii and received a PS3 for Christmas so I'll be reviewing games on those systems as well. Stay tuned, I'll be posting some reviews very soon.