Review: inFamous

It's pretty convenient how whenever one of these increasingly frequent city-devastating tragedies occurs, someone is imbued with superhuman abilities powerful enough to combat whatever nasties have emerged as a consequence. It's more likely, on the event of a freak and immense explosion, as in inFamous' case, that in fact no one would receive anything beyond a natural reaction. To be honest, they'd most likely be treated to a fundamental attribute of nature: death. Just hope you're well within the blast radius.

But that isn't what happens to Cole McGrath: The explosion that turns a large percentage of Empire City's criminal low-life in to gun-toting monsters, prompting the quarantining of the entire area, also provides Cole with his ability to store electricity within his body and expel it at will in increasingly inventive ways. Initially you're limited to a simple zap move – the equivalent of a handgun, but as you complete more main and side missions, amassing your XP as you go, you can purchase or simply unlock greater and greater abilities – from electricity shields to catastrophic, six-axis-controlled bolts of lightning dragged down from the sky.

Shock Treatment

Excluding light attacks and the non-offensive unlocks such as hovering, all of Cole's abilities depend on his energy bar, or Battery Cores. Because most of the more powerful attacks deplete your cores at a substantial rate, it's important to ration their usage and, if possible, simply headshot enemies with your basic zap. But, if you have the time and/or enthusiasm to collect hundreds of the game's Blast Shards, you can add additional cores to the meter, extending the time between frantically ducking out of an encounter to suck some volts from a nearby power source with the left trigger.

The actual process of re-energising is, at first, quite novel – at least on a visual level, but considering how easy it is to exhaust your battery cores and, more importantly, how ridiculously accurate the enemies are from any given distance, you find yourself hunting for the nearest car, street lamp, random fuse box or rooftop-bound TV every couple of minutes. It's fortunate that, for the most part, sources of electricity are abundant, but it's frustrating having to regularly hit the breaks on an enjoyable shoot-out to ensure you can live through it.

In contemporary tradition, Cole's health does regenerate itself over time. It's far quicker and easier just to siphon off the nearest electrical equipment, but during the moments when such relief isn't available, Cole comes prepared to take refuge atop any of the game's many buildings. Besides the whole electricity thing, the main gimmick of inFamous is the ability to scale pretty much everything with graspable ledges, and besides chain-link fences, an unusually immense obstacle which Cole can neither climb nor shoot through, it's quite a success.

High Voltage

Empire City, a once bustling metropolis, now stands a mere shadow of its former self; run-down, dilapidated buildings corrupt the cityscape, dotted with civilian-built constructions seemingly consisting of nothing but corrugated metal sheets. It's an ugly picture for any aspiring tourist, but with its many miles of electrical cables connecting one rooftop to the next (along which Cole can grind later in the game), multitudes of giant roof-mounted extraction fans and lonely generators filled with revitalising electricity, and the triggers for a large percentage of both side and story missions, the rooftops are where Cole is best suited, and the place from where inFamous best displays its impressive visuals.

In the absence of cars (Cole apparently breaks them as soon as he gets in), navigating your way to the next generously-placed checkpoint is seldom a pleasant journey on foot, but rooftop travel has benefits beyond its ease and adventurous appeal: Not only does it show off the game's impressive attention to detail with sprawling, hi-res vistas, it provides some much-needed relief from the sometimes overbearing quantity of enemies aimlessly wandering the streets. Still, you need to get your hands dirty eventually, and Sucker Punch has done an impressive job of allowing you to clean up.

Jolting

I was expecting to be disappointed with inFamous' combat because I considered there to be little you could do with electricity as an exclusive source of attacks, and it certainly feels unusual to have a free-roaming game without getting your hands on any form of firearm. But inFamous' variety of attacks is diverse enough to satisfy even the most hardened of shooter fans – even if each electrical one has a traditional FPS equivalent – complimented with a basic but satisfying upgrade system. New abilities are unlocked as you play and their respective upgrades purchased with earned XP, and even though said upgrades never venture beyond making something more powerful or with a greater range, the increase in power is a welcome one.

Power doesn't necessarily mean an advantage, though, as inFamous can rack up the difficulty from time-to-time at rather sporadic moments. Nonetheless, the game's free-roam mission structure rarely disappoints in both engagement and variety - not to mention the fantastic artwork leading the cutscenes. Having decimated an enemy stronghold and plundered XP in a story mission only to be removing surveillance devices from a civilian's building block in a side mission is an unusual change of pace, but for the most part the game is consistent throughout the campaign, with a respectable ramp up in challenge and a few twists and turns to keep the player on their feet.

My Name is Cole

In addition to XP gained from missions and general combat, the game ranks the player's actions which feed into a Karma system. Punching old ladies in the face for no reason or healing everyone you see on the street have obvious effects on Cole's Karmic alignment, but the greatest influences are through story-integrated choices, explained to you through Cole vocally weighing up his options. Initially the choices are meagre, focusing mostly around Cole being selfish or not, but later parts of the story facilitate truly morally-challenging and rather superb decisions. Both Good and Evil players will have certain powers and upgrades available exclusively to their alignment, but the way the civilians of Empire city react to you depending on your Karma is what instantly gives away your life decisions: clapping, taking pictures and phoning their friends, or screaming and running away.

InFamous' audio elicits a similar awe with each explosion or electrical onslaught. Though the voice acting is a little OTT, with Cole's sounding almost painfully gravely, each of the actors does a fantastic job of bringing an element of believability to the characters and the city as a whole. Equally, the music that themes your adventures is as delicate or as intense as it needs to be.

As a whole, though, inFamous is a pretty intense ride from start to finish. As frustrating as it can be to constantly have to keep your eye out for sources of electricity, the power it gives you is particularly enthralling. With an intriguing story and original, if painfully skillful, enemies, the game offers engagement through both narrative, likeable characters and respectable challenge.