InFamous

This week, I had a friend help me tackle the "shockingly" new InFamous game. Due to my lack of a PS3 (hopefully that'll change soon) I was unable to write a review for this myself. However, a friend of mine wrote one for me. Prepare for Copy-pasta!

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Game Introduction:
The game starts out on the menu screen as any other game would. The background for the menu screen seems rather normal; just a backdrop of part of a city street. You can hear calm music playing, kids laughing and shouting, birds chirping, and watch people walking by. However, the moment you hit the “Start” button, all Hell breaks loose. The city goes completely dark, instantly followed by the sound of an explosion and a blinding white light. This also knocks the “camera” over (your previous menu screen), before someone grabs it and turns it around, zooming in on a massive blue and white explosion expanding and growing in the distance. You see fiery rubble raining down from the sky, while people run screaming. This cutscene ends when the camera angle switches to that of a helicopter, hovering high above the blast, filming it as it engulfs most of the island, before a bus that has been hurtled upwards crashes into the helicopter, causing everything to go black.

After the initial opening cutscene is over, a mysterious voice is heard in the darkness, announcing the biological vital signs of someone named Cole.

As the game fades back in, he quickly see that the blast destroyed everything within a six block radius, according to the game dialogue. Out of the rubble, only one man has survived, Cole; a bike messenger that had been carrying a package he was delivering when it exploded. As you come to, you're run through a quick tutorial on how to move (that's it), and as you hobble away as fast as you can, you receive a phone call from your friend, a guy named Zeke, who informs you that you need to meet up with him as the entire city is being attacked by terrorists! You then make your way out of the blast area, getting zapped by random electrical equipment and drawing out their electrical energy, unknown as to why something so bizarre is happening to you. As you head away from the blast zone, you attempt to cross a bridge, where hundreds of people are attempting to evacuate as well. Here you are greeted by Zeke, standing on the other side of the bridge, shouting at you to get across as quickly as possible. A sudden storm of massive lightening bolts rain down from the sky, destroying everyone and everything around you. People scream that it's the terrorists attacking, but you can tell it's coming from you. As you finally make it across the bridge, you collapse.

You're greeted by yet another cutscene, this one in the form slightly animated comic book images. Cole dialogues about how the city quickly changes in the few days immediately following the blast. The city has been quarantined by the government, saying it's a biological threat, while people riot and gangs run a mock. What police still remain now hide in fear, while the gangs control the city.

Game Facts and Review:
The real game starts on Day 14 of the quarantine, long enough for the main character to have healed and gotten some control over the simplest and basic forms of his electrical powers. Your first real mission(s) in the game are basically tutorials on how to get use to more movement in the game, and using your powers; your first mission, being to turn on Zeke's TVs. The second mission is a bit more complicated, for someone who has never played the game before. A supply of food has been dropped into the city, but it's caught on a large structure in the middle of the city, and you're the only one who can get it down. Once you figure out how to get up to the food crate, and knock it down, then comes the first turning point in the game; a decision making event. This is where you can choose to do a good action or an evil action. Each decision you make in the game will give you karma, which will be awarded depending on whether you take the good or the evil path. The good ranks you can achieve are as followed: Guardian, Champion, and Hero. The evil ranks are: Thug, Outlaw, and of course, Infamous.

As you make decisions throughout the game, as you go from mission to mission, you'll be awarded more karma, and more XP. Now, while it might sound like fun to some to go back and forth and make some good decisions and then some bad decisions, it's not highly advised. The reason is because you can only acquire and use certain abilities and attacks if you reach and maintain a certain level of karma. For example, if you're Champion, and then make enough evil decisions that you're dropped back down to Guardian, or even Thug, you'll loose the previous Champion level abilities and attacks you had gained. So it's best to stick to being totally good, or totally evil, to achieve the best abilities and maintain them.

Now, as for XP; XP is use to upgrade your powers as you unlock them. To unlock them, simply raise your karma level enough, maintain that level, and then “purchase” those abilities once you have enough XP. Now, XP can be obtained through various means, whether it be the main story missions, side missions, or taking out gang members. And later in the game, when you gain the ability to heal, bind, or bio-leech people, you'll be able to gain karma through those abilities as well. But be careful, while most actions will gain you neutral karma, which can be used for good or evil upgrades, certain actions will gain you good or evil karma. For example, healing people who are injured (there are a LOT of them), gives you GOOD karma XP, along with binding an enemy for a Live Capture. Killing a wounded enemy will earn you Neutral XP. However, bio-leaching an enemy, or executing a bound enemy will earn you EVIL karma, so make your decision carefully.

Electrical powers are your weapons. If you run low, you can easily find anything in the city that has even the smallest electrical charge to it and absorb its electrical energy. Absorbing energy does several things; refills your electricity meter and heals your wounds. Your wounds will heal over time, but your electricity meter will not refill by itself, and if you're in the middle of fighting an entire gang, being able to turn to the nearest electrically powered device near you and absorb its energy to heal yourself, and refill your electricity meter really comes in handy. Not too worry though, you can run around all you want and zap people with your default attacks (the ones you start the game off with, expect for the Shockwave, which you'll discover what that is when you play it), because your default Lightening Bolt and Thunder Drop attacks don't drain your meter at all.

Throughout the game, you will meet various characters, some very early on in the game, like Zeke (your best friend) and Trish (the love of your life). The decisions you make throughout the game will also effect how these characters see you and interact with you. There are several other main characters in the game, which I won't spoil for you yet.

The game is mostly free roam, with the ability to climb buildings and structures, much like you could in Assassin's Creed. However, you start the real game off on one of the three islands that make up Empire City. As you progress through the game, you'll be able to reach all three islands in the city eventually, and unlock the ability to travel between all three (bridges mostly). But be aware, each time you enter a new part of the city, you must restore power to it, and you can only restore power to 1/3 of each island at a time. This can be quite dangerous is you venture into part of the city without power, since your vision is darkened and you have no immediate way of healing Cole once he gets hurt. And if your idea is to simply run away from the enemy and let him regenerate his health, be aware that the enemy will chase you down! Even rooftops are not completely safe.

Overall, the gameplay of inFamous is solid and very fluid, if not similar to other videos games; Assassin's Creed, GTA4, and even Crackdown. However, it's all this plus the ever changing storyline, and the ability to somewhat manipulate the story that got me intrigued the most! The storyline is great, with mysteries around every corner, and just when you think you've got something figured out, it's turns out to be completely different. There were moments in this game that actually made my jaw drop in a “did that really just happen?!” moment, which would either excite me or make me furious. I found myself getting into the storyline of this game like any good movie; playing it for hours on end just to see what happened next.

I'm currently playing the game through in Evil rank right now, as I beat the game on Hero rank before. I want to know how the game ends when I'm evil as opposed to when I was good. Speaking of which, the ending to the game was truly shocking (no pun intended). I had no clue(s) that it was going to end the way it did, and that the plot would take such a twist, but that in itself made the entire game even more worth it. I highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys a good free-roam game, with superhero (or villain) powers, and a great storyline!

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Now, go out and buy the Strategy Guide to fill in the missing 3 pages about the game. He wrote me quite the review! Maybe I'll make him do the rest from now on!