inFamous Review

inFamous ends where it begins, but the rest is up to you. Dropped into the shoes of Cole McGrath, inFamous starts off with a bang, rather, a massive eruption of power exploding from within Empire City. Without any further premise, gameplay commences immediately with Cole waking up at the epicentre of the blast and making his way to safety. This passage sets the stage as the game holds little back in terms of narrative, visuals and quickly instilling gameplay mechanics in the hands of players.

As Cole escapes the quickly deteriorating crater he awoke from he's electrically shocked by a haywire electrical box for the first time, yet remains completely unharmed. Cole finally makes his way to safety after negotiating a collapsing parking garage and crossing a severely destroyed bridge, landing at the feet of his best friend, Zeke. From here the game proceeds to reveal the big picture of what has gone down, and let players loose in the newly anarchic landscape that is Empire City.

inFamous continues 14 days later as Empire City has been placed in quarantine and blockaded by the federal government. Where police protected the city prior to the explosion, gangs now rule the streets as conditions in the city look post-apocalyptic, and disease, theft, rape and rabid crime have swept into the city. Cole meanwhile has developed from a spark plug to a walking lightning rod as he now wields the power of electricity and the ability to scale any railway, building and just about anything else in his way.

And so opens up the sandbox world of inFamous. Where the story continues to progress nicely, one of the key elements of the game initiates with the karma system. With Cole's new-found powers, the game often lets players choose the course of the story between either good actions, or bad. Even outside the story these choices are often presented through side missions and random occurrences on the street with civilians.

The more good or evil Cole becomes, his rank increases in either category. If the player chooses to play through the game as evil, they progress from Thug to Outlaw, and finally inFamous. Adversely, if they play as good, they rise from Guardian to Champion, finishing as Hero. However, Cole is not limited to continuously making good or bad choices based on which side he chooses originally. Throughout the game it is possible to sway from good to evil and back again as they player sees fit, however this isn't helpful to maxing out abilities as either good or evil.

Gameplay in inFamous is literally a blast. Much like a third-person shooter, Cole has lightning bolts shooting from his palms in place of a gun that luckily never run out. The electricity theme very much plays in inFamous' favour as it makes for a very unique ammo system. As Cole actually doesn't use ammo, but electricity, there are no ammo pick-ups, and also no health pick-ups. Instead, to recharge energy for special attacks, Cole sucks power from power lines, cars, and even people themselves. Doing so also heals Cole, as electricity is also his life line. This makes for interesting gameplay as Empire City is largely blacked-out at the beginning of game.

While the wide range of abilities are fulfilling to unlock, use, and abuse, inFamous does suffer from a number pit falls. Glitches, while not overly frequent, draw the question as to why the game's release date was moved ahead. Animation glitches, dead bodies stuck in the air, very noticeable frame-rate drops and draw distances pop-in among other issues hamper the experience and hurt the game's overall quality.

The game's graphics are not spectacular, yet the detail to animation as Cole ascends any building is admirable. Comic style cutscenes do a good job of fleshing out Cole's thoughts and playing out the stories' finer points, yet in-game cutscenes completely drain this as the animation is flat out terrible in such sequences.