inFAMOUS Review

Sucker Punch/Sony Computer Entertainment

 (editor's note: This is a review I wrote shortly after the retail release of inFAMOUS.)

"All human beings are commingled out of good and evil."

-Robert Louis Stevenson

Cole MacGrath, inFAMOUS' reluctant hero

I've always had an affinity for Super Heroes®. And, with the rare exception (Batman: Arkham Asylum being the most recent example), Super Hero® games have been pretty terrible. So when Sucker Punch and Sony announced a new Super Hero® game, I was pretty excited. Alas, life got in the way and I was unable to get around to playing it until just recently, but the promise of a game that gave the user cool powers, running around a rich city full of citizens, and making moral decisions that actually affect much of the game world, character, and reactions from said citizens sounded intriguing. Especially when one considers the pedigree of developer Sucker Punch.

So it was with great anticipation that I embarked upon my first excursion into Empire City. After a short "motion comic" style cut scene, inFAMOUS drops the player into the first of three boroughs of the city. Cole MacGrath has, by virtue of delivering a package, blown part of the city to kingdom come. You start the game at the epicenter of the explosion. You're quickly prompted by the police to evacuate the area. Shortly thereafter, you meet the first NPC in the game. Unfortunately. Zeke, like the other characters in inFAMOUS, is irritating. He instantly engenders a feeling of hatred and loathing. And he really only gets worse as the game progresses. And that's a singular example of one of the game's glaring issues - characters. You don't really like any of them. There are really only two sympathetic characters in the game. One is an FBI agent that you meet later in the game. He isn't too bad. The other is your girlfriend, Trish. But, while you're supposed to see her as a sympathetic character, you eventually grow to hate her as well. Regardless of whether you choose to be "good" or "evil," (and the game pushes you to one extreme or the other) you never really like Cole, either. Cole is kind of a self-serving douche.

Graphically, there are some nice touches and lots of attention to detail, though the game is not perfect graphically, either. There doesn't appear to be any antialiasing on Cole at all. The characters are small enough within their environments and I sit far enough back from the TV that this is generally not an issue, but it is definitely there. Cole's Super Hero® name could be "Mr. Jaggy." But, as I stated above, there is a lot of attention to detail. Especially in the textures on the environments. It's unfortunate, then, that so much of the geometry (and the textures that go with it) is reused so often. As noted, there are three boroughs in the game. And each has its own personality - to an extent. But this mainly comes from one large set piece in each area, a change in enemy types (rarely do the enemies from the different areas co-exist in the same area, though it does happen a couple of times), and time of day. You really begin to notice how similar everything looks when you start going back and forth between boroughs. There were several times when I had to check the map to see  in which area I was. Like the jaggies, though, it's not a crippling problem, just disappointing.

Possibly the best aspect of inFAMOUS is the sound design. Everything sounds the way you would expect it to. The one sound you will be hearing almost constantly for the entire game is the sound of Cole's suit and it sounds fantastic. Trains sound fine, the ambient noises establish a sense of space. However, the music is completely perplexing. It makes perfect sense during spots in missions and in cut scenes. But outside of that, and you'll spend most of your time in inFAMOUS doing things other than story missions, it is confusing. First off, there is much of it. If you are one of those people that needs music while you game, prepare to break out the iPod (the game doesn't support playing music from the XMB). I'd estimate that a good 85% of the game has absolutely no music at all. And that may be too low a number. But if it were just that there were no music in the game, that would at least make sense. Instead, you'll be climbing a building, maybe grinding a rail, or some other mundane game mechanic when suddenly music will kick in. There's no explanation offered. You did not just trigger some story element. There is not a baddie around the corner on or your tail. There is just suddenly this music playing. And the piece of music is not consistent, either. And it almost never fits the situation. Just as suddenly as it appeared, it will disappear.

One of Cole's many lightning powers

As I stated above, when the game hands control over to the player, you're told to evacuate the area in which you start. Like a lot of games, this serves as a quick tutorial. First you are taught how to move, then how to fight. But you only have access to rudimentary powers at this point. The mainstay weapon is the lightning bolt. It's quick, somewhat short ranged and low powered, but it does not use up valuable energy when being fired. You are also taught how to make Cole perform his parkour-like climbing moves. You can hang from ledges and aim, only popping your head out to actually fire off a weapon. This will keep you somewhat protected, assuming you are behind adequate cover. So the main gameplay mechanics are climbing, hanging, and shooting. The shooting is competent. Hanging, too.

The first bit of gameplay problems surface with the climbing mechanic. While not as automatic as the moves in Assassin's Creed, Sucker Punch went to a lot of trouble to make moving Cole vertically as simple as possible. And when their efforts are successful, it works brilliantly. If you jump toward something onto which Cole hang grab, he will stick his hands out and automatically grab it. The same goes for jumping down onto poles, ledges, window frames, platforms, etc… When the mechanic works correctly, Cole moves with the grace of a cat. And it feels wonderful. Unfortunately, it doesn't work almost as often as it works. There are constant, frustrating issues where Cole should automatically grab something, yet instead sails right past it. Some of this has to do with a few surfaces in the game that don't support Cole grabbing or landing on them (for instance, the large cranes in the second borough have arms that drop down, but if you attempt to jump onto the extended arms, Cole magically slides down the length of them until he plummets into the water and certain death). But most of the time it is just that the system that is supposed to make him attach to things does not work correctly. Conversely, there will be multiple times when you just want Cole to drop all the way to the ground (or some other platform like a rooftop) but instead Cole will grab on to any and all ledges in eyeshot. This will get you killed at least once. The bad guys have relatively decent aim when you are stopping at every window on the way to the ground.

The game is also rather buggy. I do not know how long inFAMOUS was in testing, but the idea that testers did not find the bugs that appear regularly to even a casual gamer is a little far fetched. There is a mechanic in the game whereby after taking down an enemy, but not killing him, you can approach said enemy and perform any of three special actions on them. You can handcuff them to the ground with your lightning, you can heal them (more on this in the story section), and you can siphon their life energy into yours. This works the way it is supposed to roughly 75% of the time. The other 25% of the time, the game glitches. Either Cole stands around dancing as though he needs to relieve himself until the amount of time passes that it would normally have taken to perform the action, or there is a pregnant pause before the animation of the action begins. You are not safe from enemy fire while the glitches occur. There are little bugs and glitches like this peppered throughout the game. And, by happenstance, while I was playing the game today, I tossed a lightning grenade at the same time an NPC was beginning to talk to Cole and the game froze and locked up the PS3, requiring a hard reboot. Bottom line, inFAMOUS needed more time in the kitchen before being served.

Cole can be good... or evil. Red = Evil.

If you've ever played a generic open world game, you will feel right at home with inFAMOUS. I could blame the game itself for a lot of what I am about to rail on it for, but that might not be fair. It very well may be the case that I am simply not suited to open world games. At least not games as open as inFAMOUS or Grand Theft Auto. But rail I shall. Some of the complaints I have I didn't notice until my second play through the game. But many were there in the first and many of those became apparent quickly. The structure of the game is such that you open the world map to locate missions, take Cole to the locations where the missions are marked, walk through beam of light and, if it is an optional mission, press triangle to trigger a cut scene that explains what the mission entails. This is not a bad system inherently, but it is also nothing we haven't seen before. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The problem, however, stems from how this pushes the player into playing the game and the perception it leaves. In essence, inFAMOUS is a long string of errand boy missions. Nothing Cole does ever seems to be motivated internally.

Cole hops from one person telling him to "go here, do this" to another for the entire game. There is also very little variation in the missions. As I said above, I did not fully appreciate how limited the mission types were until my second play through as "evil" Cole. While there were a couple of new types of missions for my dastardly anti-hero to complete, I was profoundly disappointed when I discovered that some of the missions are exactly the same as the "good" Cole missions with different voiceovers. For instance, "good" Cole is charged by the police to escort (yes, there are a plethora of escort missions in the game, much to my chagrin) a horde of baddies, be they Reapers on the first island, Dust Men on the second, or First Sons on the third, to a police station where they are remanded into police custody. Every time Cole embarks upon one of these missions, two things will happen an undetermined number of times during the mission. One, some of the horde will attack Cole, so he must put down the rebellion attempt and two, some of them will attempt to escape, so Cole must apprehend them. This was repetitive just during the "good" Cole play through. But when switched to "evil" Cole, I was supremely disappointed when, upon reaching the second island, that an evil NPC charged me with escorting a horde of opposing gang baddies to the pier so they could be executed publicly and it was the exact same mission with the exact same actions taking place within it. All that had changed was the person dispatching Cole on the mission and the reason for the mission to exist.

All in all, there are roughly half a dozen different types of missions in the game. And most of them are rehashed several times per borough. In fact, one of the lynchpin mission types is one of the most reused. In order for Cole to discover new powers, he must complete a circuit at a generator in the sewers. He does this several times per level and each time it is akin to having yet another tutorial level thrown into the game to show the player how to use the new power. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, it's that the missions themselves are nearly identical. They all take place in the same environment. They all ask the exact same thing of Cole (complete circuit, run through the sewers until the power transformer is contacted, power up the transformer, mission complete). By the time the third borough is opened up, there is basically nothing to surprise or captivate he player other than the thin story of the main missions. And again, some of those are things like the sewer levels. To put it succinctly, if inFAMOUS hasn't hooked you in the first level, it's likely not going to hook you at all. Yes, you open up new powers and abilities, but overall you are doing the same missions over and over again. The same missions you do from the very beginning of the game.

None of that is to say that there are not some fun aspect to the game. Especially playing the "evil" role. When the mechanics are working properly and Cole is able to move around at the player's actual command, it is immanently satisfying to cook bad guys with electricity. Whether it's doing a power slam from on high or taking a precision (think sniper) shot from two blocks away, kicking the living hell out of the bad guys is fun. Grinding the train tracks and power lines is fun (though it's a power that doesn't open up immediately). There's not much strategy to the path one chooses to upgrade their powers and abilities. As I mentioned early in this review, the game pushes the player relatively hard to either go all out "good" or all out "evil," so you will eventually max out your abilities, anyway. But it is still fun to do the upgrades and see their effects.

Cole activating a power node

And speaking of "good" and "evil…" On my initial play through the game, I decided I'd take the "good" route. For the most part, this entails trying not to intentionally harm civilians and helping them as much as possible. I say "intentionally" because certain actions count as negative karma and certain others don't. And some of each cause direct harm to civilians. For instance, if you're in the middle of a firefight with some bad guys and you're hurling lightning bolts indiscriminately and you happen to take out a few dozen civilians in the process, no harm, no foul. But if you were to jump off of a building into a power slam in that same fire fight and took out a single civilian bystander, that counts as negative karma. So if you're trying to achieve a certain karma level, it pays to at least pay moderate attention to the actions you're performing and how they affect karma. But, it's unlikely that an incidental activity will keep you from your ultimate karma goals, because karma is mostly affected by the moral choices that are heavy handedly presented to Cole throughout the game. These choices are black and white (or, shall I say, red and blue), are mostly not optional, and tend to stop game play until the player has made a choice. For example, the police approach Cole to help them defend the police station from gang members. The screen will fade out a bit, Cole will ponder the situation in his head via internal dialogue, a choice icon appears at the top right of the screen, and the dilemma is laid out before the player. Should Cole help the police defend the station or should he walk away and let the cops deal with their own problems? If you help (attacking one gang member involved in the attack constitutes helping the cops), Cole gains positive karma. If Cole walks away, he gains negative karma. Certain power and ability upgrades are dependent on a certain level of a certain type of karma. This is what I meant when I said that the game pushes the player to the extremes of either "good" or "evil." While I'm sure it's possible to play the game and maintain a middle ground morally, it's clear from the beginning that the developers want you to pick sides. This leads to problems in the story.

Cole starts off as the de facto reason for the disaster that has befallen Empire City. But regardless of whether Cole becomes a hero or a villain, he never really seems to be all that concerned with making things right. At least not for "right" reasons. He spends the entire game running errands for other people with their own agendas. The most Cole ever brings to the table is some occasional attitude. I think this is directly due to the way the story is structured. And I think the story is structured the way it is specifically because the game is an open world game. The story cannot be allowed to unfold organically, because the player hops around the map doing random errands for random people until he is ready to move the story ahead by going on an errand for one of the major characters. So, while Cole is, in essence, at the direct center of the plot; were it not for Cole, there would be no story, he spends the entire game almost on the periphery of the plot, weaving in and out of it a the beck and call of the other characters. Contrast this with Nathan Drake, the protagonist in the Uncharted series of games, and the difference in how effectively the story is told and how the main character drives the action and narrative and you'll see a night and day difference. inFAMOUS' story is clunky by comparison.

But what is supposed to set inFAMOUS apart from most other games is the morality choices and how they affect the game, story, and characters. And they do. But it is all so superficial. The recycled missions only further expose the lack of depth here. I am about halfway through my "evil" run through the game and, while being "evil" is more fun than being "good," something that happened almost immediately after the first boss battle both confused me and completely destroyed any chance of the "evil" story line making any kind of impact on me. The first boss Cole encounters in inFAMOUS is a crazy chick (her craziness brought about by a tar concoction that was developed as part of the same program responsible for granting Cole his power) that has a thing for Cole. Or thinks he's someone that she has a thing for. Or something like that. Suffice it to say she's totally nuts and Cole hates her guts. He makes it quite clear that he loathes her. So you can imagine my surprise when, after defeating her in a boss battle (which is the last time she makes an appearance if you take the "good" route), I launch a non-critical mission and the person handing out the errand is none other than the crazy chick. And Cole goes on the mission for her. He doesn't even bat an eye. It doesn't make any sense from a narrative standpoint or a psychological standpoint or just a human standpoint. Then there are the missions that are identical whether you're going through as "good" or "evil." Some overlap would be expected. But for the life of me I can't understand why an "evil" Cole would care about half or more of the missions he embarks upon. A lot of them are saving people or protecting people. Those missions made complete sense when trying to foster a "good" Cole. But they stand out as ludicrous when being "evil" Cole.

As an aside, regardless of which path you've chosen to take, there are story based missions (as in, required) that affect your karma in either direction. So if you've chosen "good," you will end up having bad karma moments because of missions you're forced to complete. And I was never entirely sure what the criteria was that made these missions "good" or "evil." They all serve to basically drive the narrative forward. And there was never one that seemed particularly "evil." Just a curiosity, because as I mentioned, you'll end up maxing out whichever karma side you have chosen regardless.

In summary, inFAMOUS is a deeply flawed game in almost every respect. There is no single aspect of the game that is close to perfect. It's still fun. Especially in short bursts. There won't be many of those bursts, though. Despite the replay value inherent in a game in which you have to choose to be either good or evil, the game is pretty short. The fact that this will almost assuredly be the first PS3 game for which I get a platinum trophy* says something about its ability to overcome its shortcomings in ways that are important. It will also likely hold the distinction of being the first PS3 game that I trade in. Which speaks to something else, but just as loudly.

Cole's primary mode of transportation

Pass, Rent, or Buy? Rent

*speaking of trophies, one last gripe. Scattered throughout the game are hundreds of "blast shards." One of the trophies requires that the player collect all of these shards. I have nothing against the idea of that, but the shards don't appear on the world map. And they can be in some rather obscure locations. There is supposedly even one that doesn't show up during a scan (that normally shows you where nearby shards are located), because it's "too high." That's a bit much. And now that I think of it, the little map at the bottom of the screen is way too cluttered during a scan. They should have included a way to turn off power sources in the map. They're ubiquitous anyway.

inFAMOUS
Sucker Punch Productions
Sony Computer Entertainment