Infamous (PS3) Review

As Infamous: Second Son for the PS4 hits stores this month, I will be taking a look back at the first two games in the Infamous series.

After developing Sly 3 on the PS2, instead of making a new sequel, Sucker Punch developed a new franchise for the PS3, like how Naughty Dog went on to make Uncharted after Jak and Daxter. Was the game worth it? Let's find out.

Story

Set in Empire City (not to be confused with Empire City from Sonic Unleashed), a bike messenger named Cole MacGrath was delivering a mysterious package when it suddenly explodes, devasting one part of the city. He gains electric-based powers as a result of surviving the explosion. However, things took a turn for the worse when Empire City gets quarantined due to a plague occuring, causing a societal collapse.

As Cole begins to develop his powers, he comes across an FBI agent named Moya, who assigns him on missions in Empire City in order to look for an agent named John White, who might know something about why Empire City is in ruin and how it ties in with Cole's powers. Now it is up to Cole (and the player) to decide whether to use his powers for good or evil.

Other characters in the game include Zeke and Trish. Zeke, Cole's best friend, provides comic relief throughout the game (I heard his voice actor, Caleb Moody, ad-libbed most of his lines) and is amazed at Cole's powers, but grows rather envious as the story progresses. Trish is Cole's girlfriend who rejects him because she thought he was responsible for her sister's death.

The story is inspired by comics like DMZ and No Man's Land, all of which have to do with a city being isolated due to a civil war or disaster, respectively.

Gameplay

Infamous is an open-world sandbox game, with elements of platforming, third-person shooting, and role-playing. Cole can explore Empire City by scaling buildings and walking on tightropes, a la Sly Cooper. Throughout the game, Cole learns new electric-based powers in order to go up against enemies more easily and each one of those powers are very useful. He can also jump off a great height and land like it were nothing. Due to having electric powers, Cole cannot drive vehicles, use guns, or even swim, the latter which can kill him.

In the game's HUD (heads-up display), there is an energy meter that shows how much electricity Cole can use before being drained. When you are drained, you can go near an energy source and absorb their electricity. The energy meter can be increased by collecting a certain amount of blast shards scattered throughout the city. You can find them easily by clicking the left analog stick and the mini-map on the bottom left of the screen will display which blast shards are nearby.

When Cole is attacked or shot, a bit of blood will appear on the screen and the screen will also point who is shooting you. As you get attacked more, the screen will start to turn black and white, telling you that you are close to dying. You can heal by taking cover or evading enemy fire, as well as absorb any electrical sources to heal faster.

The game contains role-playing elements in which Cole can earn experience points for doing various actions, like completing story or side missions, defeating enemies, or helping or harming citizens. You can spend these experience points in the pause menu to upgrade his powers, but those upgrades will appear when Cole's Karma increases.

Karma is one of the main aspects of the game, which is basically the game's morality system. Starting in a neutral position, your Karma will increase if you do good actions like protecting the citizens and defeating enemies. Your Karma will also decrease if you do evil actions like harming the citizens or choosing a certain evil action. As your Karma increases or decreases, your rank will change and Cole's appearance will change. People's reactions when they see you will also depend on whether your Karma is good or bad. The Karma gameplay is really effective and being a moral person myself, I think twice before making a big decision. In short, you feel like you're Cole.

As you explore, there are some side missions you can take part of in order to take back parts of Empire City one by one. Missions range from taking out surveillance equipment from a building, finding a hidden package containing a blast shard, or defeating enemies. There is also a Good Karma and Bad Karma mission once in a while and you can choose which one to take. If that Good Karma mission is completed, the Bad Karma mission disappears, and vice versa. Completing a certain number of missions will earn you more powers.

There are various Dead Drops hidden in satellite dishes throughout Empire City, which provide more backstory to the game. Like the Blast Shards and electric sources, you can easily find them by clicking the left analog stick and the mini-map will tell you how close you are to a Dead Drop. There are also stunts that you can perform, much like the Skill Points from the Ratchet & Clank series, and when performed, you earn some experience points.

Graphics and Level Design

The game takes place in Empire City, which is a fictional version of New York City, and due to the city's isolation, it has gone to heck. It looks wrecked and dirty due to various crimes occurring throughout the city. Basically, it's a place that you really don't want live in, and Sucker Punch manages to capture the dark and violent atmosphere of this game. Depending on which Karma you have, the environment will change after the end credits roll.

Major moments in the game are displayed in animated comic book-like cutscenes with the main protagonist narrating, pretty much like the Sly Cooper series, and they are great to look at. The way they were inked and colored, it's like watching a comic book coming to life. They were done by taking 2D art into 3D stages built with After Effects, creating artificial camera movement, kind of like the loading screen in Grand Theft Auto IV.

The animations during the in-game cutscenes, however, are a little weird, though. The movement is very stiff and limited like the first three Sly Cooper games. They're not terrible; I just felt I needed to bring that up.

If I have to make a complaint about the game as whole, it's that the game suffers from some frame rate problems due to a certain amount of action going on at the same time. My game even froze a few times because of this.

Audio

Amon Tobin, the lead composer.

The voice acting is spot-on, as every character sounds right when you see them speaking. Some people might complain about Cole's voice being too gravely (like the way Christian Bale played Batman in the Dark Knight trilogy), but I seem to be okay with it.

The game's score is composed by Amon Tobin, along with additional composers like Mel Wesson, Jim Dooley, and Martin Tillman, and each track they composed by themselves or with another composer sound distinctive. In order to match the atmosphere of Empire City, they used objects you would find in an urban environment and combined them with instruments. For example, a bungee cord was strung alongside a bass drum and strummed. Isn't that ingenious?

The game also features a vocal song at the end credits called "Silent Melody" performed by indie nu-gaze band, Working for a Nuclear Free City (try saying that three times fast). While I had a hard time understanding what they're saying (the music and vocals could have been mixed a little better), the song greatly ties in with Cole's destiny as a super-powered being, even throwing a Biblical reference in there ("My hand has spread the sea/It's like there's a God in me").

Conclusion

Infamous does have its share of problems. Some of the missions and the combat get a little repetitive, and as I mentioned before, it suffers from frame rate problems due to a lot of action going on, sometimes resulting in the game freezing.

As well as that, I hate some of the stunts that you have to perform. Once you clear Empire City of everything, less enemies will appear and if you haven't completed all the stunts, you will have a hard time completing them all. Lastly, still to this day I have not collected all the Blast Shards because I can't find the last one. If you're going to collect them all, make sure before you do a new playthrough, print out all the maps (in color) that have all the blast shards displayed.

But with that said, I love everything else in the game. The story is well-written and engaging, the characters, especially Zeke, are great, the powers are awesome, the atmosphere is captured perfectly, and the morality gameplay is really effective. I put it up there with Sucker Punch's Sly Cooper games. Easily one of the greatest sandbox games I have ever played.

Tune in next time as I review the direct sequel, Infamous 2.