Infamous (2009)

This was my introduction to PS3 gaming, so many years ago now. I remember grabbing it with what spare change I had after buying the console. It was not a game I particularly wanted, but it was cheap, and I could not abide the idea of buying the PlayStation alone and then having to wait even more to be able to actually play anything in it.

in many ways, Infamous is a wannabe Spiderman game, what would happen if Peter was bitten by a radioactive electrician instead of a radioactive spider. Imagine you shoot bolts of electricity instead of bolts of spiderweb and you can basically envision the game. At least roughly speaking. Is that a condemnation? I don't particularly think so. Whether it was truly inspired or not by Marvel's hero, I still had fun with the gameplay.

The real question is, did I have fun back then because I was willing to overlook any flaws for the sake of enjoying my shiny new PS3? Or did I genuinely had fun because the game itself was fun? Thats an answer thats harder to give. As I have zero interest in revisiting it, I shall award it three stars, because I don't think it deserves any less, but can't in good conscience give it any more either. Unlike so many other games before and since, this one I had completely forgotten until I came upon its dusty case today.

OK, yeah, this game doesn't really hold up. It sounds fun on paper, but it just doesn't work.

The city looks dull and gray. All areas look the same. Enemies are also all the same; there are different gangs in the different islands, but they don't seem to behave any different or require any other strategy than "point at them and shoot them a bunch".

And that's also because your abilities are kind of boring. The game is basically a cover-based shooter with a superhero skin draped on top. Your attack is a glorified gun and the game teaches you to use cover in the first few minutes. You even get a grenade ability.

Enemies also use guns most of the time. And, boy, do they know how to. They can shoot a machinegun with perfect accuracy hundreds of meters away, even when you're moving. So running to close combat is not a viable strategy. Sometimes you can't even run away from fights due to the large number of enemies.

The missions themselves range from passable to terrible. The stealth and escort missions are the absolute nadir, while the more traversal-based missions are better, with "go to the place and shoot at the guys" in the middle. I kind of liked the ones in which you need to find a package based on a photo of a location; it's a neat concept to engage with the place.

But yeah, overall I think this game is too dated and half-cooked to be playable today.

"Let's make a game about a dude that gets cool electricity powers"
"Yeah, sounds great. By adding magic into our sandbox game, there is no limit to the type of gameplay we could introduce"
"Indeed, so let's start by making it a cover-based shooter".
"..."

I realise that this is an old game, but Prototype came up only one month later and its protagonist could run up buildings, glide and kill people with tentacles coming out of his fists. In this game, the blandest protagonist in history can *checks notes* shoot people and throw grenades.

The moral aspect has to have been dumb at the time too, right? Cole is like "I could spend a smidgen of my infinite recharging energy to heal this person or... I could stomp on his head and eat his corpse for no benefit whatsoever; what a tough decision".

After excitedly buying a PS3 Slim last year I thought it was about time to play something on it. Among my small collection of PS3 exclusives was inFamous so I thought it was about time to give it a go.

Right off the bat I thought the movement of Cole was actually too fast in comparison to other games such as Fable II which I had just played prior. Zeke, Cole’s friend’s running animation was absolutely bonkers but I’m putting this down to “this animation is of its time”.

I wasn’t a massive fan of the comic book style cutscenes but I realise there are going to be a lot of people who are so into it that’s just a personal preference. If I’m not mistaken, Moya Jones the FBI agent was introduced in a very short “so now there’s this FBI agent….” and that’s it? It was a very abrupt and short way of introducing a main character.

The gameplay of inFamous feels very much like the precursor to Spider-Man on the PS4. A person with super powers jumping about a city, fighting villains, while using the city’s infrastructure to travel at pace. The travelling around in this game is something I found very annoying. What you’re meant to do is travel from one marker to the next using electrical lines but I found it very frustrating to climb a building to start travelling rather than just starting fast-paced travel from ground level. Due to this I just ended up running on the ground from one point to the next, ultimately taking longer but I just could not be bothered climbing a building.

inFamous is an “open world” game however you can never sit back and relax enough to explore as you’re constantly being shot at by enemies. You can however complete side missions to get rid of the enemies out a certain area but I’d find myself still coming across them in areas which I had cleared. The game comprises of 3 islands much like Grand Theft Auto but there’s not really much about them that sets them apart from each other, all 3 are just New York style environments.

The climbing mechanic in this game is not bad, not too frustrating, just a tedious bother. The climbing mechanic often worked against me however, much like in Assassin's Creed where you’re trying to drop to the ground, move forward or do something other than climbing and Cole just latches onto things. I was screaming at the TV as Cole would hug a lamppost while being pelted with bullets.

The performance of this game can be very hit or miss, you’ll either get what feels like a nice 60fps for 2 seconds or you’ll get something closer to 20fps when you visit the section of an island that’s like a shanty town. During that time the framerate CHUGGED and it gave me the feeling of Alice in Wonderland Syndrome. I was delighted when I moved out of that area. I had one soft-lock during my playthrough but thankfully did not lose much progress.

NPC AI is terrible. You’ll have pedestrians running towards a fight or standing in front of you are you’re aiming, about to send 1.21 gigawatts at some guy wearing a bin bag. There are a couple of missions where you need to follow a “memory” of someone to find out where they are. Despite the memory being of someone in the past they still manoeuvre around present day cars which I found funny. Other side missions have you guiding a group of NPCs from point A to point B but they tend to get stuck on the scenery forcing you to execute them just so you can complete the mission.

I suppose I should mention one of the main aspects of this game, the karma system. There’s nothing too unique about it. Doing good things makes you good, doing bad things makes you bad. Being good lets you use good powers, being bad lets you use bad powers. The End.

I did enjoy inFamous, it’s a great game of its time however now in 2022 there are games out there who do the same thing but better such as the previously mentioned Spider-Man video game from 2018. I will be looking to purchase and play the second game in the series to see how the developers have refined the story and gameplay. I’ve read people online saying the gameplay in the second game is much better.

Pros:

• I loved how they introduced gradually new powers and new buttons in the control scheme. At the start, you're not overwhelmed with complicated controls. After you spend some time with the game, every move feels natural and it's very easy to learn your new powers and implement them to your gameplay. Towards the end of the game, I had total control of my character and really felt like a superhero (or villain depending on your karma).

• Perfect check point system. Honestly, I would have quit the game for good if the game made me play missions from the beginning every time I die, since there are some annoying enemies & missions. But thankfully the check point system is really fair and makes your job a hell lot easier.

• Not sure about the variety of the "open world" and honestly I don't really care since I'm not a fan of the trend of "making every game and every genre open world". But I think the atmosphere was good. The city felt like real with enemies and citizens doing stuff all around.

• Riding rails and wires is so much fun and satisfying! Certainly better than stealing a car and driving it.

• Lightning storm is satisfying as hell! Overall, I liked the variety in the powers. And it's almost necessary to use all of them from time to time, so they made a good job with the balance. Well, maybe the gigawatt blades was the weakest among them and I almost never used it.

Cons:

• This may sound weird but I didn't like the main attack of our character. It felt weak and not so satisfying. Maybe it would be better if we could hold the button and continue to shoot.

• Too many enemies with firearms! I would prefer if some of them had melee attacks, or something different than a firearm. It's annoying when bullets fly from all over place and sometimes I felt helpless because of that.

• Those f****** enemies with turrets are soooo annying! Too bad that you obtain the electrical shield so late in the game. It was one power that I would really prefer having right from the start.

• I said that the control scheme is very good but sometimes the controls felt clunky. Simple tasks like climbing a ladder, or dropping down from somewhere felt frustrating.

• Instant death on water is a poor design choice I think.

And one question: What were those floors that glow when you walk on them for? I tried to smash them, suck them... Nothing happened.