I’m a huge fan of super hero kind of games, especially ones that go into that whole sandbox/free-roam aspect. Crackdown was a giant can of kick-ass, as was the old gem Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, so hearing about inFamous and its whole moral choice system, good and evil possibilities and more in-depth story had me in pant-wetting levels of excitement, and I mean, it was called for, as the game is pretty freaking sweet. You can conjure entire lightning storms onto people, fire lightning grenades out of your hands, use phone lines and train tracks as transport by grinding on them, and even glide by repulsing gravity. Seriously? Repulsing gravity? Too cool.
You also had your parkour system, which worked really well too, what with Cole jumping around the city sporadically, clinging onto almost anything and everything and being an electrical monkey of doom. He made Altair look like a bit of a wuss with just his knives. However, Altair didn’t tend to end up looking like a total spastic with his parkour at points.
Yes, that is one of my prime hatreds of inFamous: the parkour. When it worked, it worked well, and things were smooth as butter. But when Cole suddenly can’t seem to grab onto anything and he slides down a wall scurrying his hands frantically like an angry chimp, frustration was had, because this always seemed to happen at the worst times.
See I played through inFamous the first time on hard mode, and yeah it was quite challenging. You were encouraged to take cover, be smart with your approach to things and most of all be precise. With these necessities, screw ups weren’t really tolerated unless you enjoyed getting a large amount of bullets lodged into your face. And this was when the acrobatics usually tended to screw up, big time.
Let’s set a scene: you’re taking on 50 thugs, they’re all firing at you and you’re firebombing them with electrical bombs. Things are going smoothly, with you flying through the air, grinding across rails, shockwaving people off rooftops and just generally being a total badass. Then suddenly you start taking a lot of damage and you need to get somewhere safe quickly, or find your nearest electrical appliance to leech off of. You begin pulling off your fantastic and spastic parkour, flinging across buildings and leaping onto rails. Then suddenly, Cole has some stupid fit and all he does is grind his face against a vertical wall which he could be grabbing with his damned arms. Thugs being thugs on hard mode, they aimbot your arse with bullets and you drop dead onto the floor, and they all laugh at you because you can’t grab onto rails. You are then furious.
It’s a real game breaker at points, because the game is so good when everything flows. And when something goes wrong like that, it feels so out of place and out of the blue that all you want to do is attack a polar bear or helicopter or something out of rage.
That’s the main problem I had with inFamous. The second problem which is a little less minor is the final boss. What the hell? I mean, the character was fine, and he went well with the story. He’s supposedly some really powerful dude who eats pirate ships and defecates grenades, so you’d totally expect a bad arse fight of super powers. Lightning vs grenade-poo, etc. But no, all you get is a really long boss bar that you grind down slowly, and a repetitive and somewhat irritating pattern of attacks from the boss himself. No use of super lightning strike from above (proudly brought to you by Thor), no crazy epic super fight, just grind and dodge. And though it wasn’t a deal breaker for the game, it was definitely a little disappointing, as considering the whole build up aspect, the fantastic story and the mostly great gameplay, you’d expect insanity and a half from the final battle.
But apart from these niggles and rage-fests, the game was still awesome, and I played through it multiple times. Cole had his moments of complete organ shutdown, and the final boss was continually a disappointing and repetitive bastard, but the core game was addictive and kick-arse. It really is a bit of a love to hate kind of title, because as much annoyance you get out of it, you can’t help but love it for its cool aspects. And I don’t think anyone can disagree that grinding on power lines to travel is awesome.
So until next time my fellow gamer fiends, Live long, Hate longer, and fuel the power of rage! Unlimited power!
Grind and electric missiles was godly, and I have to commend the game for never slowing down, now matter how much **** I was blowing up on screen.
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