Title: inFamous
Players: 1 players
Platform: PS3
Developer: Sucker Punch Productions
Publisher: SCE
Price: $59.99
Release Date: Late Spring 2009
Website: www.suckerpunch.com/detail.php/games/infamous




A game that promises as much as inFamous - the opportunity to be a super hero in an enormous open-world - is sure to make gamers wary of disappointment but there's little to indicate that inFamous won't live up to its vast potential.



While I like to think of myself as a hardened game journalist, the idea of an open-ended super hero game turns me into an irrational fanboy. The combination of an open game environment, where you can do anything, and a super hero main character, who really CAN do anything, seems like it could result in a remarkable game. When I saw Crackdown, I thought, "Wow, I need an Xbox 360." In much the same way, I think people will look at inFamous and say, "Wow, I need a PS3."

However, Crackdown disappointed me with its lack of depth and I was instantly suspicious of inFamous upon seeing its extremely impressive live demo at PAX last summer. On Friday, I had a chance to play through three missions of the game at a Sony event and came away with many reasons to be hopeful.

In inFamous, players control Cole McGrath, a bike messenger living in a quarantined city lorded over by gangs of criminals. The massive explosion that leads to the quarantine has caused Cole to develop electricity-based powers, which he'll use to take back the city from criminals. We saw about five different powers throughout the demo but that's apparently only a fraction of the amount available in the full game. "One new power every hour" was the phrase used by the Sucker Punch rep, I believe.

For starters, you can launch a standard electric blast at enemies or hold down R2 for a constant "streamer" attack which slowly cooks your foe. More advanced attacks include "lightning grenades" (basically, clumps of electricity that stick to enemies and explode after a few seconds) and a short-range shockwave that sends enemies flying. Cole can also jump off ledges and create a massive "meteor nova" when he hits the ground to take out numerous enemies at once. While the character can't fly, he does develop the ability to glide.

All of these abilities drain your power, which is displayed in a coiled meter at the top right of the screen. To recharge your energy supply, you must seek out lights, fuse boxes, transformers, etc to siphon off electricity. You can find nearby sources of electricity easily by tapping L3. My only gripe about the system is that there didn't seem to be any visual indication on Cole of whether he needed juice. Sure, the meter on the top right shows it but it would've been nice if you could just keep looking at Cole and the center of the screen and be able to get at least a rough idea of how much juice you have.

Some of the criminals you fight will have powers of their own so in addition to the normal gun-wielding thugs, you'll run into guys who can send tear up the pavement underneath your feet with seismic waves or teleport. Assuming each criminal gang has a different set of powers, it seems like the game will be constantly pushing you to develop new strategies.

Eventually your electrical attacks will knock an enemy to the floor and you have to run up and finish them off. While you can just punch them and be done with it, the game also gives you a few special finishers. In the demo, we were also able to hog-tie the criminals or do something called "bio feed" which allows us to suck them dry of energy and kill them. Innocent bystanders will be hurt during your fights and you can interact with them in a couple different ways: drain them for energy or give them a quick zap to resuscitate them. There's two bars on either side of your energy meter that measure your morality, which is apparently affected by your interactions with civilians and your choices in missions. In the first mission, a crate of food is dropped into the city on a parachute by a government airplane. After killing the gang members trying to snatch the food for themselves, you're given the choice of allowing the civilians to collect the food or zapping them and hoarding the food for yourself. When I asked the Sucker Punch rep whether your morality would affect what powers you could acquire or upgrade, he simply stated that I was "on the right track."

The game mixes in a decent amount of platforming and contrary to what you'd expect, it doesn't suck. Cole can climb quickly and smoothly across a variety of surfaces. In the mission with the food crate I mentioned earlier, the crate's parachute gets tangled up on an enormous statue so Cole has to climb up to the top and free it so the foodstuffs can be retrieved. The statue had a bunch of narrow ledges and strange slops but it was a snap to get up to the top. The Sucker Punch rep admitted that the climbing aspect of the game had gone through three different iterations and it seems their work has paid off. You can also dodge and perform attacks while climbing so the climbing aspects of the game are an extension of the game's normal action rather than an awkward intermission between fights.

The graphics look really great but what's more impressive is Sucker Punch's ability to craft great set pieces. In one mission you have to help a malfunctioning train get out of a crime-infested neighborhood. You hop on top of the train and, with your electricity powering the train and making it move forward, surf on the top while zapping gang members who take pot shots at you from rooftops. It's a great visual and a lot of fun to boot. I was able to watch a later mission in the game where Cole had to help the police prevent a gang from rescuing their leader. The gang launches giant balls of molten scrap over the prison wall at the building and Cole was forced to blast them away with his shockwave ability. Then the gang blew up a section of the wall and we finally learned what was throwing the balls of metal - an enormous scrap robot.

In addition to these story missions, the game will also have over a hundred side missions. I didn't get a chance to experience any of these during the demo but it sounds like you'll be retaking turf from gang members, stopping crimes in progress, and stuff like that. While no doubt the side missions - and the other major feature we didn't experience, the morality system - are important and could be the difference between the game being stellar or a disappointment, I now realize that one of the reasons Crackdown really fell short was that the campaign was lifeless and tedious. Based on what we saw from the demo, though, it seems like they've created harrowing encounters worthy of the super hero they've created. I expect that once the other high-profile PS3 exclusive for early 2009 - Killzone 2 - hits stores, a whole lot more attention will be lavished on inFamous and frankly, it's well-deserved.