--------------------------------------
Sucker Punch has developed some excellent platformers in the past such as the Sly Cooper series on the Playstation 2, and Rocket: Robot on Wheels for the Nintendo 64. But how has their leap into the sandbox action/adventure/super hero genre AND current-gen consoles turned out with inFAMOUS (yes, I feel the need to type it that way evERY time)? Well, let’s find out!
Graphics:
Sucker Punch did a great job of setting the atmosphere with all aspects of the game, but especially with the graphics. There was an excellent amount of detail on Cole (the main character who you control), and the other major characters. The buildings were all well designed, and also very detailed. And standing on top of a tall building, looking out over Empire City was an awe-inspiring thing to do. The enemies had only a few different models, but the first set of enemies were very different than the second, and the second were very different than the third. And all the enemies “fit” into the world of inFAMOUS perfectly. The bosses were interesting to look at, and all very unique. But one of my favorite parts of inFAMOUS had to be the comic book style of storytelling in its major cutscenes. Cole is really a super hero, so the fact that Sucker Punch decided to use that type of art style for the cutscenes was a seemingly natural choice that worked very well.
However, very few things are perfect, and that holds true even here. inFAMOUS gave me some problems with drawing distance- towards the end of the game, I was forced to get a little closer to my enemies than I wanted in order to pick them off simply because they didn’t show up on screen. And there were times where I would end up on the other side of a wall, almost miraculously, due to some very minor clipping issues. In reality, this didn’t affect me as much as it could have due to the fact that everything else was done so well. Overall, this game is a shining example of one of the many reasons why you own a Playstation 3- it’s high definition gaming at it’s finest.
Score: 18/20
Sound:
I, myself, am about to be a Graduate acting student this coming Fall (of 2009), and I appreciate nothing more in a video game than good voice acting. inFAMOUS delivers on this front with surprising force. Really, very talented voice actors play all the main characters, but two people really stood out to me- Cole and Zeke (Cole’s best friend). Both actors portrayed unique, believable, and emotionally gripping characters that I needed to know more about. Some might say that I am giving the actors too much credit, and I realize that they had to have a good script also, but without that talent of the actors, even the best script can fall flat, especially in a video game. Zeke had a great sense of humor at the beginning, which turned pitiful toward the end of the game that made my emotional attachment to the character even greater. And Cole tells his story with believability and passion that is often missing from the video game world.
While there wasn’t really a big musical score (at least that I can remember), inFAMOUS took what sounds it did have and used that to not only set, but to enhance the mood Sucker Punch was trying to convey. Whether it was the sounds of buzzing bullets near your head, grinding down the railway tracks, sucking energy out of electrical units, or getting blown to shreds by the rockets being shot at you, Sucker Punch made sure you never forgot that you were playing in the closest thing to a post-nuclear attack as you will ever want to get. This is one category that I cannot find any glaring weaknesses, and I will have to give the very unusual “perfect score”.
Score: 20/20
Story:
Admittedly, story in a video game is usually something I don’t get much of due to the fact that I spend most of my time trying to win the Stanley Cup, or the Super Bowl. But, when I do get a story, and it is as good as this one, I remember why I started playing video games. The story starts out with a carrier, Cole, whom you play as, waking up in the middle of a giant hole where a bomb has gone off. This explosion should have killed him, but instead, it granted him these incredible super powers that allow him to climb up just about anything, and shoot electrical shocks from his hands. Your goal is to find out what happened, and get the heck out of dodge. Obviously, this is just a synopsis because I don’t want to ruin anything for you. But, the story is what grabbed me and made me play for hours upon hours for the past few days. Simply put- you know how some games have those endings that make you say “really, that’s it”? Well, inFAMOUS is not one of those games. The story builds all the way to the end, and delivers said ending perfectly. You should want to play inFAMOUS for the story, and then you will need to keep playing it for the ending.
Again, perfection is very close here, but not quite met. I wish there was some more development on one of the major characters (I won’t use specifics because I don’t want to spoil anything), and I wanted to feel more sympathy for another character. Overall, though, the story in inFAMOUS makes this a AAA title.
Score: 18/20
Gameplay:
I honestly cannot remember the last time I had this much fun with a video game. inFAMOUS is a sandbox game, which means there is a ton of freedom to do what you want, when you want, and that you have a ton of space to roam around in. What sets inFAMOUS apart is the ability to climb almost anywhere- if you can see it, there’s a 98% chance you can climb to it, and blow something up once you get on top of it.
The controls, to me, at first seemed odd for some reason (in fact, I only played for about an hour the first day because I thought the shooting mechanics were weird), but once you use them for a little while, you realize they are set up extremely well, and the controller becomes second nature as you’re blazing through the missions. Any game where I am not thinking about the piece of plastic in my hand is a game worth playing in my book, and that is what inFAMOUS was able to do. From climbing up the side of a building, to grinding down an electrical line, I found myself getting into set paths that I would follow to get from a certain point to another as I became comfortable with the city. This is the first game I have played in a long time (probably since GTA 3) that I can say I was “comfortable” in the city, which is another reason that inFAMOUS sets itself apart from other titles.
inFAMOUS is a morality based game and it takes this to a level even greater than Fable II (another morality based game that I’ve beaten recently) due to the personal level of almost all of your choices you are forced to make. Again, I don’t want to spoil anything, so I will just say that you need to be prepared to make tough decisions, and the game will play out one way or another based on those decisions. Whether you decide to help the people in the city that are lying on the ground, or hurt them, and what mission-based decisions you make, your karma will either go up (toward Hero) or down (toward inFAMOUS). Whether you decide to be good or evil will determine what special power upgrades are available to you (most are available in both, but some are good or evil specific), and how the city reacts to you as you walk the streets of Empire City (as well as effect the story).
The game gets harder as it progresses (for the most part) like most games, and the enemies go from annoying little things, to deadly dudes (and trash monsters) later on. This is good, except for a few things- you have to do things four times a lot in inFAMOUS, which can sometimes be overkill. The boss battles are tons of fun, and very exciting, they just require a lot of deaths in order to defeat them (in my case, at least). So, if you are the type of gamer who doesn’t like to die, play this on easy, and stay away from the harder difficulty levels. But, inFAMOUS is able to find that great balance where it never seems easy, and it never seems impossible, which is why it such an accessible game.
You don’t collect health packs as you start to die; instead you gain power through electrical devices around the city (cars, light posts, generators, fans, and so on). This also fills up your electricity meter, which is used for some of Cole’s special powers (which I won’t spoil for you). Later on you are able to gain electricity by grinding on railway tracks, or electrical lines which adds a whole other aspect to the game (I used these a lot to defeat enemies).
There is one aspect in particular I want to touch on because I don’t hear it mentioned a lot when I talk with people about the game. inFAMOUS is a sandbox super hero action game, but it also contains a lot of puzzle elements that I think are overlooked, but Sucker Punch did very, very well. Now, I am not talking “what ruby goes into which slot” Resident Evil type puzzles, but rather “how do I get from here to there without killing myself”, or “how do I actually defeat this boss” type puzzles. Mostly, I loved this aspect of the game. But, when it came down to the last few missions, and there was an unusual amount of mystery around how to complete a mission, I started to get annoyed. For the most part, though, this puzzle aspect is a major reason I kept coming back to inFAMOUS- it made me feel like a better gamer because I was able to beat them.
There is always so much to say about the gameplay in any game, especially a game as big as inFAMOUS, but overall, the gameplay in inFAMOUS was unique which is not at all what I was expecting coming into it knowing that it was a sandbox game (and having been playing GTA and it’s clones for the past decade or so). inFAMOUS is simply great. That’s the long and short of it.
Score: 18/20
Replayability:
inFAMOUS allows for a lot of replay value based on its morality theme. You can beat the game as Good, and you can beat the game as Evil (both will be different endings). Then there are tons of side missions to be found for both good and evil in which you can clear Empire City of its bad guys. And then there are the drop zones (31 of them around the city) to collect at the tops of buildings, and finally there are the blast shards to collect (350 of them around the city) which allow Cole to hold more electricity at one time. The fact that this is a sandbox game also helps replayability because you can just run around the city killing for virtually forever if you so desire. But, the real reason you will pick up the PS3 controller after you beat the game the first time is to play the other paths, to collect, and to finish side missions.
Score: 19/20 (Very High)
Although there has been other AAA Playstation 3 exclusives released this year, none of them can equal what Sucker Punch has done with inFAMOUS. From the story to the voice acting, and from the super hero fun, to the beautiful graphics, inFAMOUS makes it darn near impossible for me to not name it as an early contender for Game of the Year. Only the best games make it difficult for a reviewer to point to one aspect of a game that makes it great, and that is what inFAMOUS has done; it’s not just the graphics, the story, or the gameplay that set it apart- it’s the graphics, the story, and the gameplay that do it.
Games like inFAMOUS make me glad that I own all three current-gen systems- I don’t miss out on any exclusives! If you own a Playstation 3, there is no reason you should not be playing this game. And if you don’t own one yet, this may just be the game you have been waiting for. inFAMOUS is superb.
Final Score: 93/100 (9 out of 10)
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment