Quick, someone give him a light bulb stat!

First things first, I must tell you that I used to ignore open world games. I honestly didn't care about them in the good old PS2 days. That all changed after I played Assassins Creed. To this day I still think it's a masterpiece of a game, with the second looking set to improve on that. I just loved running around the world that Ubisoft created. Since then I have played a few other games that it could be argued are open world such as Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Prince of Persia and Battlefield Bad Company. But I still haven't really played a truly open world game since Assassins Creed. Now the shockingly good (I'll try to keep the puns to a minimum) inFamous has again thrown me into a world in which I am free to explore and progress at my leisure and I love it!

If someone asked me to describe inFamous in a few words I would tell them to stop being so damn stupid and just watch some video of the game. But since I'm not that rude I would have to say it's a blend of Assassins Creed with Grand Theft Auto and a little of Star wars: The Force Unleashed. Assassins Creed seems to be the major inspiration for this game as like Assassins Creed you can climb on (almost) everything to get to your destination. Unlike Assassins Creed you have a lot more control over your movements, I would have to say that neither game does it better than the other, they just do it differently. In inFamous you can't just scale a wall or building, you need to find a pipe to climb up or a ledge to stand on. It makes you think about where to go next and how to climb the obstacle. The best part of the climbing mechanic is that no matter what you are hanging or standing on, you can still attack enemies. The game never leaves you in a situation where you can't defend yourself. There's also a basic cover system in the game. It's not essential by any stretch of the imagination but it can be very useful.

These are just beautiful, lets hope Sly Cooper 4 looks like this

inFamous starts with a bang, literally. The first thing you see when you turn the game on is the usual 'Press Start' but as soon as you hit it an in game explosion starts followed by a cut scene laid out in the games beautiful moving comic book style. It's a good start to what an excellent game, you awake to a city in ruins blocked off by the government because of a biohazard. You play as Cole, a bike messenger who was delivering a package which ended up exploding in his hands giving him these powers. The story works, it's not fantastic but it keeps you intrigued enough to want to know what's happening next but it's no GTA IV. A lot of the characters are not talked about or appear enough for a real connection to be made and as a result the inevitable twists in the plot don't have as much impact. The only character you really get to know is your best friend Zeek, he gives the game a bit of comic relief which is a good change from the games mostly serious tone. One thing the plot does well is set the game up for the inevitable sequel with the less than obvious cliff hanger ending.

The first mission you come to is a food drop that has landed in the city and you need to climb and use your new found zappy powers to get it down from a tower. Naturally you get caught out by some bad guys and need to zap them first to get the food. It's at this point you get the first taste of the Karma System that's a major part of the game. Do you let the people eat or take the food for yourself? This is something that Cole debates mentally to explain your choice, which ends up sounding very silly when heard out loud. This Karma choice is given to you in multiple points over the course of the game and determines the look and feel of the world, your own look, how people respond to you and what powers are available for you to unlock. Also tied into this system is a choice of how you will treat enemies and wounded people. After you have taken down an enemy you can do one of three things; you could kill them, use 'Arc Restraint' and get a 'live capture' which adds to your good karma or 'Bio Leech' them and take their electrical energy along with their life. Wounded civilians, which there are a lot of, give you an extra choice, you have the power to heal people which obviously adds to your positive karma or bioleaching them. The downside, or upside, to bioleaching is it adds to your negative karma. The only problem with this system, like many of its type, is that you can't play a neutral route because a lot of power upgrades will be locked out to you. The main difference between the powers is that as a good guy your powers become more focused and accurate, with evil you get to cause a massive amount of destruction with out much care for innocent bystanders. Each way is entertaining, but if you're going to only play once I would suggest playing evil because the powers just look cooler!

Note: Red = Evil

Tying into this system are the side quests. There are three types of side quests: the main ones which are neutral and don't affect your karma, then there are the more interesting good and evil ones. There are fifteen of each and by choosing either a good or evil mission you will lock out one on the other side. Like the normal quest it is much easier to keep to a single side since a power upgrade is unlocked after 15 evil side missions and a separate upgrade is unlocked after 15 good side missions. This is a game that screams for multiple play throughs.

I'll be the first to admit when I heard about this game it just seemed boring and generic to me that the only powers in the game involved electricity. I couldn't have been more wrong. The powers in this game are great and make you feel like a total bad ass superhero (or villain depending which side you choose to take). Want to send enemies flying in the air? Want to destroy trucks with lightning bolts? Want to throw a sticky grenade on an enemy and watch them run around before they explode? Well you can do all of it and more in style. The game starts slowly but after a few story mission's new powers are unlocked and this helps the pacing a lot. The game really gets moving after you unlock the power to surf powerlines and train tracks. No I'm not kidding! You can surf powerlines in this game to get around.... But back on track (get it? sorry), while on the tracks you can still use all of your powers, just imagine surfing a train track while causing a wave of destruction. The other power that makes traveling the world much easier is the hover power which lets you glide through the air; after a bit of practice you will be able to jump from power line to power line enabling quick travel through the city.

If you can't tell, this is bad

Unfortunately all the missions that unlock a new power are fundamentally the same, go into a section of the world that doesn't have power, go into the sewers and restore power. During this process you see a clip of your new power and you need to test it, it's an interesting way of training you with this power but by the end of the game this just gets a little repetitive. I'm sure they could have designed a full power station for the player to restore; something different would have been nice. The other frustrating thing about these missions is that you are devoid of electricity and unless you have the 'Reduce Damage' power unlocked, these can get pretty frustrating with minimal electrical sources to heal yourself with.

While talking about the world I should mention that it looks beautiful! The art style of game mixed with the terrific graphics creates a world that you can really care about. The city is made up of three areas and as you progress through the story missions you will unlock the other areas to explore and find all the little collectables. The population of the city act in funny ways that change if your playing good or evil; as a superhero you have people talking about you, telling you you're the best, taking photos and generally being in love with you. If your an evil bastard running around killing them, they start throwing rocks at you, chasing you and just treating you like you deserve. They will also spit, take photos, heckle and kick the bad guys you have tied on the ground. I will make a point that since you're a 'human battery,' as your friend Zeek so delicately points out, water will kill you. Makes you wonder how he washes himself?

I hope he isn't planning on going for a swim

Being an open world game there are a few things that are important to believing the world, draw distance and pop in. Neither of which are a major problem with inFamous. The draw distance is great, and the detail of the graphics makes it easy on the eye. The way the game handles pop in is good; objects in the far distance pop in instead of textures most of the time, which sounds bad but makes it much less noticeable in the game except when quickly surfing on the train tracks. The frame rate is fairly solid but when a whole heap of enemies are attacking and you using a lot of powers at once it can drop slightly but nothing that gets massively noticeable.

Enemy types seem to look the same until later in the game, with out spoiling anything there are three different factions you have to battle and in each faction there are at least three types of enemies excluding boss battles. The boss battles are awesome; there is a mission where you face a boss in the second faction, you think to yourself 'holy crap' when you first see it. Later on in the game there are about five of these same enemies attacking a prison at once. All you can do is throw everything you have at them and hope you don't somehow die and it makes for an awesome battle. And that's what this game does when it's at its best; it sets you up in some great set pieces to have a massive amount of fun in an open world setting.

Zzzaaapp!

inFamous needed to be good with Red Faction: Guerrilla (Review here), Prototype and a whole heap of open world games being so close to it's release. Lucky for you it is; inFamous never fails to amaze. This game does so many things right and hardly anything wrong, aside from the occasional glitch, the mechanics of the game work super smooth in the world that has been created for you to play around in. I would go as far to say as this is the first must play PS3 exclusive game for 2009 for all gamers; but that depends on your feelings for Killzone 2. In all honesty this is the type of true superhero game experience that people have been clamoring for.

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