You arise from a huge crater engraved into the grounds of the city you live, which is now in ruins. Your body feels crippled and banged up somewhat badly, you feel as though you should be dead, but somehow you are still alive. You remember being at the heart of the explosion which caused this chaos, you remember carrying the package that exploded. Time goes on and the city has been isolated from the rest of the world, you have come to realize the powers which you now poses. Will you become a hero and rid the city of the reaper gangs now taking over the city, or will you become Infamous?
The choice is yours, and in Infamous you are faced with constant dilemmas in which you must choose how you wish to overcome the situation. How you do this determines the type of character you become, seeing the world react to your karma status is very intriguing.
Infamous is based in a huge open world, but playing this game doesn’t just give you the normal open world feel that your used to. In other open world sandbox games, we see pedestrians walking and going about their every day life, if you happen to walk into or attack one of them then they begin to interact with you. Infamous does much more than this, people will react to you without you even initiating everything. Not only that, people may be hurt by the reapers, and you coming to their rescue will give them a sudden boost of confidence and if you have the culprit pinned down they’ll kick or even spit on them. Playing as Infamous will will make people flee at any glimpse of you. The karma system is simple, there are six levels in the system and the game will monitor your real time actions and assign your karma level accordingly. Performing good acts or participating in good side missions will elevate Cole (The main character) to karma levels such as Guardian, Champion and Hero. Doing the opposite will draw you too the ranks of Thug, Outlaw or Infamous (Infamous sounds like a much better name for the game than Hero right?)
Infamous gets very addictive, and once you pick up your controller and slot the disk in your blu-ray drive you will literally start to see the time fly by. Climbing, jumping and zapping all around the city never seems to get tiresome, and over time it is great to literally feel Cole’s powers get better. More techniques become available to your arsenal as you go on, and there is never a shortage of reapers to use them on.
Although you have a whole lot of bang for your buck as far as attacks go, don’t take this game lightly. Infamous is very difficult, and you will find yourself dying frequently unless you play with some strategy. Going in blindly, zapping everyone in sight is far from the best method to enter a fight. This is what gives Infamous some edge, you’ll want to spend a lot of time coming up with a plan on how to tackle the current situation. If you are about to die, or you run out of electric energy, you can make Cole suck more energy from generators, vehicles, and much more interesting sources of electricity throughout the city.
Infamous definitely has an outstanding presentation, the game looks beautiful and it sounds great. The story is told with a number of graphic novel style slide shows which does will to split up the different chapters of Cole’s story. The only downside is, Infamous does have its share of technical hiccups. For instance, I once died on the train tracks only to be presented with Cole glitching up and down on the side of the tracks, and the game would not resume until I reloaded. Also you may find yourself stuck trying to complete some missions, as the mission objectives are not as constantly outlined as they should be.
Overall Infamous is definitely a great experience to endure, and this is one game that should be added to your Playstation 3 game collection without any hesitance. Upon playing the game you will be addicted and find yourself immersed in Cole’s story. The game has much replay value and with up to 30 hours worth of gameplay you can not go wrong. Sure Infamous has its share of hiccups, but they are rarely seen and wont stop you from wanting to play. Sucker Punch Productions with out a doubt deserves their props on this one, for they have delivered the good to all Playstation 3 owners.
This review was based on a retail copy of the game for the PlayStation 3 provided by Sony.
