A Playstation 3 exclusive from Sucker Punch - the team behind the Sly Cooper series, inFAMOUS casts players as Cole MacGrath - who gains superpowers over electricity after a disaster causes his home city to be quarantined. Players gain and develop more superpowers while deciding between becoming a superhero and a supervillain in a city that has turned to anarchy.
The main selling point of inFAMOUS is its “choice between good & evil” gameplay which has become popular in recent games. No matter how players choose to play the game, inFAMOUS’s superhero mechanics prove to be attractive and intricate.
A deep and immediate Superhero Fantasy
Cole is a very fun character to control in inFAMOUS because of the breadth of what he can do and how well he responds to the player’s input.
Outside of his electric superpowers, Cole has an impressive range of movement not unlike that of Altaïr – the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed. Being able to climb just about anything (except ordinary chain link fences strangely enough) and survive any fall in the sandbox world of Empire City is empowering on its own and gives the game a fundamental sense of immediacy.
The additional powers over electricity Cole gains throughout inFAMOUS eventually turns the game into an experience that successfully combines elements of different genres.
The nature of Cole’s initial powers combined with mechanics like taking cover and the nature of battles in inFAMOUS suggests that this is a superhero game being handled like a shooter. Cole starts out with the power to shoot lightning at people almost like bullets from his hand. Even his later powers resemble common shooter weapons like a sniper rifle, rocket launcher, and grenades.
While other powers like the ability to glide through the air or grind on power lines changes things up, Cole also gains experience points from completing tasks and defeating enemies. This permeates throughout inFAMOUS to the point where it wouldn’t be incorrect to call the game an action RPG. These experience points can be spent on additional perks for Cole’s powers which in turn open up possibilities for what becomes some surprisingly deep gameplay.
At first powers like the precision shock and power line grinding might have nothing to do with each other. However, eventually Cole can gain the ability to recharge energy from grinding on power lines, and precision shocks take up a lot of energy. After that upgrade a common tactic might be combining the two abilities and using infinite precision or grenade shocks while staying on power lines.
inFAMOUS’s sense of immediacy and empowerment are further brought out by the continually varied challenges Sucker Punch manages to bring out in the main quest despite the congruency of different parts of Empire City. Furthermore, there are a lot of extra things to do and find in Empire City.
Everything concerning the use of Cole’s powers to completing the game’s objectives already fills out inFAMOUS as an undoubtedly great game. Its main selling point however – the choice between good and evil, falls by the wayside due to heavy-handedness.
A Binary Karmic Adventure
As Karma-based gameplay has become popular through games like Bioshock and Fallout 3, almost every game to employ it has done so in a very black & white fashion. inFAMOUS is even more guilty of this.
Most of the time ethical choices in games are presented through simple text events or judgment of the player’s actions in real-time. inFAMOUS sets aside entire cut scenes before handing players binary ultimatums with no grey area available.
Cole gains different powers based on whether he becomes a superhero or villain, but in order to get the most out of it players must devote Cole completely to one side or the other. Going from one side to the other takes a tremendous amount of time and remaining neutral has no benefits.
Despite being handled so bluntly, the dual nature of inFAMOUS does little to hurt the overall experience and really just takes a backseat to the action gameplay itself.
Bottom Line
All of the marketing behind inFAMOUS tells consumers that it’s a game about choosing between being a superhero and a supervillain, but that’s far from the reason to play the game. Just playing with the character Cole, his powers, and the challenges he faces is engaging and deep enough to make inFAMOUS one of the more compelling Playstation 3 games even if it’s not a classic.
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