inFAMOUS

[Niosai]

Director: Nate Fox

Producers: Jeff Vargas

Music: Amon Tobin, James Dooley, Mel Wesson, Martin Tillman

Starring: Jason Cottle, Caleb Moody, Kimberli Colbourne, Sam A. Mowry

Rating:


Plot
Cole MacGrath was a bike messenger in a massive city called Empire City. For some unexplainable reason, a package he was supposed to deliver exploded, tearing up a large chuck of his city and killing everyone within a 6-block radius...except him. Cole recovers from the explosion and has to deal with life in the ruined city. He also has to cope with his emerging electrical super powers. He is given the opportunity to help rebuild Empire City, but he has to choose whether he wants to take the good and righteous route, or the explosive and evil route. What's worse is that some people are with but, a lot of people are against you on either route. And then there's Kessler, a powerful man, and the leader leader of a notorious society called the First Sons.

Review
inFAMOUS is an incredibly fun adventure filled with a simple but deep super power system. It is in a sandbox adventure style of gameplay, but is very fast paced. Exploring Empire City is incredibly fun, but it also comes with a price.

The story is quite simple at first. It is a sci-fi adventure in an almost post-apocalyptic city. But just almost. Your city is quar

Cole can run incredibly fast and scale almost any building, but there are always enemies shooting at you. And I quite literally mean always. At first, this gave the game a nice adrenaline rush, feeling like you are always in danger, having to take cover, blowing enemies out of the sky all the time. But about 10 hours into the game, the enemies went from challenging to plain annoying. There are side missions you can do to clear its appointed area of the city of enemies forever. They're good for experience, but I ended up doing them just so I could relax and actually explore without being hit with a rocket every three seconds.

You begin the game with no powers at your exposal except for a electrical leap ability for slamming into the ground, and a shock attack that works almost like a gun. Gameplay in this game begins simple, but eventually pans out into a deep upgrading system that allows you to get many other powers. Using experience, you can then upgrade your powers again to have different effects on enemies. For example, you eventually unlock a move called "Megawatt Hammer" that shoots a blast of energy at one specific point, which is good for getting enemies out of their cover. But the first upgrade allows you to target specific places for the hammers to fly towards. It is so much more gratifying to shoot 5 hammers at a massive group of enemies, then send the hammers crashing down on them, throwing them up in the air like ragdolls. Also, most of the powers have good and evil upgrades you can unlock, depending on your karma. The only drawback is that if you have good karma, you cannot use the evil abilities, and vice versa.


Overall
inFAMOUS is a great game that is worth the buy (though in my case I got it through PSN's "Welcome Back" program). The game has an okay replay value, since you can play through as good or evil, but I'm not sure I want to get rid of those annoying enemies in the city again. But overall, it is a great adventure with a progressively deeper storyline that will keep you coming back for more.