The Power Review

Sucker Punch Delivers a Knock-Out: inFAMOUS Review

Sucker Punch 2009 for the PS3

Overview

Sony has found their new posterboy in this new multi-faceted main character, Cole.  inFAMOUS is altogether a really well thought through, great game from beginning to end.  This is the kind of title that you play for hours, and when you finally turn it off, you can’t help but keep thinking about it.  Not that there’s anything extraordinary about the storyline that sucks you in more than any other game, but there is just so much freedom to manipulate the world however you choose, that the game becoming strangely addictive.

Controls

I have to congratulate the team that developed the controls for this game.  Being able to control a super-hero’s every move with a small-handheld controller, yet still have all of the inputs be intuitive is no small feat.  They somehow managed to pull it off though.  With everything from being able to scale any building on the map, to using your powers to “fly”, the player actually feels really in-tune with the character, because of how easily they can manipulate him to perform the most complicated moves.  My only critique is that that radius around objects that you essentially “snap to” as if you were going to climb them when you fly by is entirely too large.  Just because I may be flying near an object doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m going to want to cling onto it and climb it instead of continuing on my current flightpath.  But, since everything else is done so well, this minor detail is negligible.

Graphics

Sucker Punch did a great job of creating a nextgen game without losing the stylistic flare they were trying to achieve this game.  The graphic novel cutscenes are a nice change of pace compared to graphics heavy cinematics of say: MGS4.  Not to say that anything is wrong with having movie quality graphics incorporated between gameplay, however the graphic novel approach seemed to work well with the feeling of this particular game.   One thing that was done particularly well was the distance that was rendered in the open world map.   You could take your character to the top of the highest building, then use the zoom-in ability, and you could still see details for nearly as far as the eye could see.  However, the character models felt slightly unfinished as a whole.  Specifically towards the very beginning of the game when there is a lot of dialogue, it’s really evident that the production was rushed to meet a deadline, and they simply didn’t get around to polishing off all of the edges of the character models and talking animations.  The good part about this though, it that is has absolutely no effect on the gameplay whatsoever!

Gameplay and Story

I cannot brag enough about how much fun this game was to play.  I was looking forward to this title for multiple reasons, but once I got my hands on the controls, I forgot all of them and just got sucked into how much plain fun it was to run through Empire City as a “walking sparkplug”.  What makes this game stand out is the engine it is running on.  There is ZERO lag for the game no matter how many explosions are onscreen at the same time, or how many dozens of enemies you are fending off.  That’s the beauty of an engine that is specifically made for a game, rather than a game that is designed to work around the capabilities of a specific engine.  All in all, the storyline and gameplay were captivating and addictive, what more can you ask for from a new IP?

The Bottom Line

9.4/10

Despite the fact that I’ve already beaten the game completely through twice, and gotten the platinum trophy, I don’t see this game collecting dust on my shelf for long.  Even after you beat the game, there is so much fun to be had simply rampaging through the streets and abusing your superpowers against “exploding pedestrians”.  This is one of the best titles yet to be released on the PlayStation 3 platform, and I would go far enough to say that no self-respecting PS3 owner’s game collection would be complete without this game among the others on the shelf!  If you haven’t bought this game already, I don’t know what you’re waiting for, if you have then you’re probably going to do the same thing I am after writing this, go back to playing more inFAMOUS!