Famous or inFamous

So I am going to attempt to write down some of my impressions from the Infamous demo I have been playing since Friday. Infamous is developed by Sucker Punch who developed the Sly Raccoon series on Playstation 2 and infamous is there first game for the Playstation 3.

It takes place in the future and the player takes control of Cole, a man who was the center of a disaster which granted him with electrical powers, much like Pikachu. Cole is able to use his electrical powers to do god or bad in the city as the game uses a good or evil scale changing the powers that the player is able to use as well as Cole’s appearance. Cole, as he his kept together with electricity, can draw the electricity out of stuff such as cars, phone booths and roof fans. When he does, he also regains health making it a quick heal function which make it a lot less frustrating during missions when your life is dropping.

Cole is agile and when he is drawing electricity he bends over to the source which especially is shown when he is standing a top of a source, he then puts down his hands and tilt his body to align it with the source. It looks great and it is well done by Sucker Punch not giving Cole one draw animation and uses it whenever he is standing.

Moving around in the city is done with ease as Cole has no problem jumping between poles, roofs and cars. It is really easy to get Cole to climb up on the train railway or a house wall to reach the roof, he can also glide on electric lines which boosts his speed and when he lands he make it with a boom. One of the less good things with Cole’s climbing is that when climbing a wall, you have to jump to get up and not just press up on the controller. It is an ability that is quite unusual in games but in Assassins Creed it was done with the player pressing in a button I believe and Altair moved up as you wanted. It is not a big problem in Infamous but I think it could have been done in another way.

The city is good looking, with the demo starting in a less fortunate area; it is dirty and cold but not done in an excessive way. It looks like a city taken from a comic book as is the whole game and the video sequences. Some video sequences seems to be done in the game engine with a cartoon shade over it and some are drawn comic book strips presented very well taking the story forth.

I haven’t finished the demo yet as it is a large one; it starts off with a mission where you have to move a train around the city by standing on the first train wagon. On the way different enemies turns up and the train stops forcing you to kill of the enemies and filling switches with electricity to make the train moveable again. This also gives the player a bit of freedom to explore the city around the train cart but I have to warn anyone who is going to play the demo that don’t run off to long since the mission gets failed when too far away from the train. When moved the train and rescued the persons on it you are transported to the next mission which lets you move from point A to B in the city. It is filled with enemies, I think they are called Reavers but I am not sure so I will continue to call them enemies, and you can either hunt a lot of them down on the way to point B or you could run and avoid them all. It is up to you.

The third mission of the demo gives the player an opportunity to play as the evil Cole and here you have to defend a place from advancing enemies using Cole’s power. It was kind of hard but Cole threw cool grenades as evil as they split up and exploded.

Cole has different powers and those I have explored are the shockwave, the shock grenade, the shock bolt and his ability to levitate, when he jumps he can slam down in the ground causing an electric shock around him as well. The shockwave sends cars and enemies flying, it is used during the first mission to move crashed cars off the track to make way for the train. The shock grenade is great and sometimes handcuffs people into the ground when they have been hit. The shock bolt is the main weapon of Cole and could be compared with a normal gun, he shoots with it damaging or killing enemies and he can explode barrels of petrol with it. Cole is also able to use kicks and punches to defeat his enemies with every hit sparkling of electricity.

I didn’t have any expectations on Infamous before I tried it but as I have played it a couple of times now I must say I really like it. I would have liked the demo to give the player the opportunity to choose mission but it doesn’t, you have to play them all in one play through, but the finished game will give the player the opportunity to explore the city and probably chose his mission as he or she wants to play. Sucker Punch has made a great job and this is hopefully one of the titles I’ll be playing this summer.