inFAMOUS

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Infamous is a great game. Just how great it is depends on your taste in games. This is not a run and gun shooter like Killzone 2 or Resistance. This game is more a mix of a shooter with platform game elements. You play Cole who through some mysterious manner (explosion) has developed electrical "super powers". You are basically locked on an island ala "Escape from New York" style. You can scale buildings, poles, train tracks, almost any structure you can get your hands on. Scaling up the side of a building or up the beams supporting the train tracks is a lot more fun than I thought it would be. The best part of your super powers are your electrical abilities. You can zap enemies with lighting similar to Star Wars Jedi, you can throw "energy grenades" which are lethal and you can develop other powers. The powers you develop depend on whether you choose to be "good" or "evil". You get certain special powers down each path you take. If you help civilians and do other good deeds/missions you are basically taking the "good" path. If you decide to crisp the good old civilians like bacon and do "evil" missions then you go down the "evil" path.

This "good vs. evil" choice is actually implemented very well, much better than I thought it would be. I will be playing this game through a second time in order to see how the other path develops and ends. Overall the graphics are very good and the controls are pretty much spot on. I never had problems with targeting, etc. This is a great exclusive for the PS3. I waffled between giving this game 4 stars or 5 stars and ultimately decided on giving it 5 stars. I gave the game 5 stars because I felt the originality, story and gameplay were some of the best for a PS3 game. That's ultimately how I judged this, compared to other PS3 games since this is a PS3 exclusive. This is definitely one of the top titles on the PS3 and for me personally is one of my top 5 PS3 games. If you are unsure about this game I recommend downloading the demo from the Playstation Store as it is a good representation of the game's feel.

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inFAMOUS is a superhero game about a guy named Cole who wakes up in the rubble of a large blast that killed thousands. When he awakes, he realizes he now has incredible powers, allowing him to absorb and control electricity. Shortly after the blast, the government has quarantined the city, Empire City. Empire City is made up of 3 islands, and each one has now been taken over by a different gang. The Neon is controlled by the druggies the Reapears, the Warrens has been taken over by the homeless now calling themselves The Dust Men, and the Historic District has been taken over by a secret organization called The First Sons.

Early in the game Cole gets in contact with an FBI agent named Moya who gives him information and missions, and tells him that if he can find her husband John, who disappeared after the blast, and bring her the Ray Sphere, the bomb that caused Cole to get his powers, she can get him out of Empire City.

The game is an open world sandbox type game, allowing you take on missions as you see fit. Early in the game Cole doesn't have very many powers, but as you progress, you earn new powers by restoring power to the blacked out portions of the city.

Your basic attack, which also doesn't spend any of your energy, is a lightning shot or bolt that Cole fires from his hand as quickly as you can press the R1 button (also while holding L1 to aim). You'll also earn such powers as throwing electrical grenades, fire a rocket of elecrticity, summon a lightning storm, perform a sniper like precision shot, fire off a shock wave, and some others.

As you complete story missions and side missions, you earn XP. You also earn XP for killing bad guys, healing people, capturing bad guys, or draining enemies of their life. You spend this XP on upgrading your powers. The upgrades will be different depending on whether you want to be good or evil. Certain upgrades won't even become available until you've reached a certain level on your Karma, Cole's good and evil meter.

Early on in the game you need to decide whether you want to be good or bad. The game doesn't really allow you to be somewhere in between. Although you could, it wouldn't really benifit you much because you would never unlock the more powerful versions of your superpowers.

Throughout the game you'll be given the choice to do something good or bad. Early in the game the government has dropped some food crates into the city. You're given the choice to let the people in the city take the food, or you can be selfish and scare the people away and take the food for yourself and your girlfriend, Trish, and your best friend, Zeke. There are many more choices throughout the game similar to this.

One of the best things about this game is Cole's ability to scale buildings. Almost anything you see is climbable, allowing Cole to make his way up buildings and light poles and whatever else very easily and quickly. If you've played Assassins Creed, then you pretty much get the idea. I've had more fun scaling buildings in this game than I ever have in any of the Spiderman games.

Cole will also unlock the ability to slide along power lines and train tracks, and use static thrusters to glide, which adds even more fun and depth to traveling around the city.

The graphics in this game are good, but not great, but defiantly not terrible either. Unfortunetly the game suffers from some pop in, but this is easily forgiven due to the fact that the only load screen you'll ever see is when you first boot the game up. You'll also notice some jagged edges here and there. But the characters look great, especially Cole. Even more so when Cole becomes really evil, as his clothes become really dirty and grimy, and his skin turns pale.

The sound in this game is good, with all the proper special effects you'd expect to hear from someone who can shoot lightning from their hands. And the voice acting is really top notch too.

The cutscenes are a joy to watch as their told in comic book style, with added elements of 3D and movement.

As far as negatives, the game is a tad bit glitchy. Sometimes when Cole goes to restrain a villian or leech the life out of someone, he kinda gets stuck on something and jerks around for a moment before finally unfreezing from the spot. Also, in my time with the game, at one point an enemy threw a grenade at me and I somehow fell through the floor and to my death.

The other big annoyance is that Cole has very sticky fingers. While this often makes some of the platforming easier than in most games, it can also become very annoying when all you want to do is drop to the ground but Cole keeps grabing every little thing between where you were standing and where you want to land.

If you get bored in the game, there are blast shards to collect, and for every so many, you'll add another power node (your energy bar basically). You can also collect Dead Drops, which is audio recordings that help fill in the background of the main story.

There are 15 good guy missions and 15 bad guy missions, but every time you complete one, you lock out one of the others. So like I said, it's good to decide early on whether you want to be good or bad. There are 40 story missions and I don't know how many side missions, but there are quite a few. To get through the game probably takes a good 15 hours if you take the time to do every side mission and take the time to do some serious blast shard collecting.

I've beaten the game both as good and evil, and I must say that I enjoyed being evil a lot more. You can be a lot more destructive, plus Cole just looks really cool when he's evil. There are three difficulties, and playing on Easy is in fact easy. Plus, on a positive note, the game uses a very good checkpoint system, so if you die during a mission you never have to backtrack that far or replay the same mission over and over. If you die while not in a mission, just in free roam, then you just respawn at a med clinic at no cost to you.

I very much love this game. It's one of the best super hero games that I've ever played. I certaintly recommend it to anyone who loves a good action/platformer or anyone whose ever wanted to know just what it would feel like to have super powers.

Buy inFAMOUS Now

I've only played about 5 hours of this game, but I can tell you now that it is an amazing accomplishment, and worth your time and money.

If you've read any of the reviews for this game, you'll see most of the negative points are about the graphics, repetitiveness of missions, and controlling Cole (namely the platforming aspects).

Taking these concerns head on, I'll admit that yes, the graphics are good, but not great. For a sandbox/open world game, I find the graphics to be stellar, but of course they don't stand up to games such as Killzone. This should *not* deter you from playing this game.

Granted, I've only put about 5 hours into the game so far, but I feel fairly confident in saying that anyone who complains about the missions being repetitive is just nit-picking. The main story missions are not only interesting and compelling, but move the story forward at the same time. The side missions range from the extremely short (I'm talking like less than 2 minutes--kill this group of reapers) to fairly long. In the missions you might have to destroy surveillance cameras, race across rooftops, usher a group of people through a barricade, or any number of other things.

Finally we come to Cole's controls. This is another point that I happen to agree with (it can be hard to maneuver Cole into small spaces while climbing down a wall, for instance). And yet, once again, it's nothing that should deter you from playing the game. It is, at most, a mild annoyance. Usually you won't even notice a problem.

There is so much to do in this game (main missions, side missions, collect dead drops, collect shards, explore, upgrade powers, etc) that you will have a very hard time putting the game down. (That five hours I mentioned having played...that was in one session.) The developers were smart about the side missions and collectibles. You actually *want* to do it:

As you collect shards, it increases your power bar. As you collect dead drops, it uncovers new parts of the back story. As you do side missions, it opens up (clears) parts of the map. And for all these things, you'll get trophies at certain check points (25% of shards collected for example).

The bottom line is this: 99% of the negative comments you've heard or read don't take away from the fact that this game is FUN. Reviewers *have* to nitpick. It's their jobs. But at the end of the day, none of the negatives amount to squat. Get this game, you will not regret it.

Read Best Reviews of inFAMOUS Here

Like I said in the title SONY is giving this game out for free, so unless you don't have online wait till the store is re-launched to get this game free

Update: The "Welcome Back" offer from SONY is over so Infamous is no longer free. Thanks everyone for your comments.

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Despite the game's mostly positive reviews, there is a noticeable portion of professional reviewers who found it underwhelming. While the game does have a lot of good points, there are multiple issues that drag the game down.

Gameplay: The game lacks polish in many areas. I've encountered numerous glitchs, such as the camera suddenly going screwy when I go up against a wall, falling through the floor or sinking into buildings. While the glitches haven't been as frequent for me as they are for other reviewers, they are definitely there. The Le Parkour aspect of the game is great, but Cole is too likely to cling to things that I'm not aiming for. The fact that you can't climb chainlink surfaces is asinine. Combat is also often frustrating. The enemies are too accurate, and getting in the wrong position can lead to Cole getting killed before I can move him to a better tactical position. They also have slightly better range than Cole, and only show up on the radar at a certain distance, even if they can attack you and you can attack them.

A common criticism is that Cole's electrical powers are just guns by a different name. This doesn't bother me, but maybe I'm not creative enough to imagine different uses for them. It is very annoying that you can't shock people by shooting metal objects near them, especially given how crowded the battlefield can be. The game's primary attack requires you to go into an aiming mode, which can be problematic. You move slowly when in aiming mode, and you can't see objects next to you, which sometimes blocks me when I'm trying to be a moving target. Another issue I have, even though it is a minor flaw (albiet one that makes battles more troublesome) is that in sniping mode, I don't have fine enough control over the crosshair. It's probably not a problem for most people, but the game has no auto aim, and when the enemies are in motion, and I'm sometimes in motion on a vehicle, I want as much control over the crosshair as possible, to be able to inch it into place instead of having it jump when I tilt the joystick slightly. Other problems are that the shockwave move has a very short range, and the grenade move bounces back easily, and can be difficult to throw behind objects.

Story: The story has some interesting bits, but it's largely too straightforward for it's own good. I had difficulty caring about the characters, and too much is left unresolved even for sequel hooks. I'm in the far minority here, even among negative critics, but I found the comic book cutscenes to be ultimately detrimental to the story. They're an interesting gimmick, but by having the main character describe what happens, instead of showing us and hearing what the characters say, it's harder to grow attached to them and to immerse yourself in the story. As for the supporting characters, they're depressingly typical. Some of them have a little depth and charm, but not enough to overcome their faults. Of particular annoyance is the main character's girlfriend, Trish (A reference to Devil May Cry? Who can say.) She initially blames you for what happens, and while it makes sense that someone who has gone through a tragedy would want someone to focus their grief on, she's too snide about it ("You OWE us for what you did") to remain likeable. Even in evil mode (where she has better reason to criticize you) she instantly blames you for every bad thing that happens, despite the gangs running loose in the city. They made her a nurse to establish that she cares about people, but it ends up feeling shallow and mostly serves to make her seem more self rightous. Finally, the main bad guy's plan doesn't make sense, but I'll explain that in the comments for this review to avoid spoilers.

The Karma System: Many people complain that the moral choices are embarrassingly black and white, and the fact that the game stops to tell you your choices is akward. This is true, but it doesn't bother me personally, since I'm not interested in karma systems beyond replay value. My complaints deal with how it affects the story and the side missions.

The main character, Cole McGrath is presented as a very average guy. He has little ambition, and doesn't expect much from people. I think this is appropriate, even though Cole can sometimes be a little too apathetic to the situation at hand. The problem is that outside of a handful of cutscenes, Cole's personality doesn't change regardless of what you do. Combined with his largely neutral personality, it makes him hard to like, and takes some of the fun out of what morality you choose to be. For example, late in the game Cole has to make a particularly difficult moral choice. But even though I played as Good, I could not see Cole as the type of person who would be able to make the right choice in that situation.

This problem extends to side missions too. There are 2 different types of side missions, ones based on morality and generic ones. While playing as Good, these are no problem. But when playing as bad, they often don't make sense. Why are civilians constantly making requests of Cole, if he's always killing people who get in his way or tick him off? Some people might consider side missions irrelevant besides playing the mission and getting rewarded, but the fact that the gameplay and story separate so obviously show a lack of production values. The most blatant example in the game actually comes during a main mission where you have to team up with the police to guard a prisoner. Even if you've been playing the evil side missions that require you to kill a lot of cops, the game makes no attempt to explain away why they have no objections relying on him.

In my opinion, it's hard to tell if someone will like this game. The problems have a lot to do with perception, and what the player expects from the game. But given how many people like it (and it is fun if you can work past it's flaws) I'd at least recommend that someone try it out. But it's best to go in expecting a good game, not one of the greatest games of the current generation.