I approached inFamous with an abnormal amount of apathy. I try to keep most of the games that I am reviewing out of my direct line of sight until I get a chance to play it, but in this case I hadn’t even seen so much as a screenshot before launch day came and I grabbed a copy for this review. I know that the developers were the same folks who brought the widely acclaimed Sly Cooper series to the PS2, a series that I have never had an opportunity to even see running live let alone get a chance to play. Without any past experience or any real insight besides getting a vague idea of what the game is about, I walked in blind to this PS3 exclusive and hoped for the best.

The game starts off simply enough; you hit start and then the city explodes. The protagonist was in the centre of the whole thing and made it out alive, somehow, and now seems to have some sort of super electric powers. A plague has spread around the city and the government has quarantined the whole of it, no one getting in or out. Junkies, dealers and genuinely evil men have decidedly grouped together in order to cause mayhem and take what they want, and that is the situation you are thrown into – welcome to Empire City. In an almost Grand Theft Auto like concept, the game sets you up this way and demonstrates your restrictions to the world around you. It’s a big city, separated onto three islands, and you can’t get out because adding water to your supercharged body means almost instantaneous death (one of the first games to legitimize the “water equals death” restriction mechanic). You are Cole McGrath, and you have a choice to make.

As soon as you are introduced to the story and characters, you are thrown right into a mission that displays a lot of what you will be doing going forward. That is scaling large objects with ease, fetching items based on requests and then throwing electric bolts at bad guys faces. All the while you are tested with a “good” versus “evil” decision with almost every major mission, which has such a vast difference that it is hard to mistake the consequences of your actions. Kill lots of people or save lots of people, and these decisions will ultimately shape how the story turns out (almost) and the kinds of powers you will get (kind of). It also breaks the game into two different tactical styles based on the side that you choose, since good guys try to minimize collateral damage, and bad guys don’t really mind a few extra bodies strewn across the ground as long as it isn’t theirs.

inFamous is different than a lot of open world games, in that it is not as much about exploration as it is about the journey through. The game is seamless in the execution, with little to no load screens ever causing pause to the action. You can travel from one end of the island to the other and back again and never will the game ask you to wait, slow down or watch a progress bar gradually fill up. It’s a really great accomplishment, and considering how each building has a unique feel to it where you can identify items and landmarks from just about any point in the game, the fact that it is all so crisp and high fidelity is impressive. The real break in that sense of realism is the fact that the people who litter the streets have a low draw distance, as you will sometimes see random people fall into place just around a corner, or you’ll pass by an injured person only to turn around and them not be there, it makes the citizens of Empire City just lifeless entities that will inevitably get in your way. Textures seem to fade in when you are moving on rails rather quickly, something you may do to get around the rather large landscape, and while travel in the game is excellent there always seems to be points where the game is asking you to arbitrarily move to the polar opposite side of the world with no real minor tasks to do on the way.

The powers that Cole gets bestowed upon him are quite a lot of fun to use, and increasingly useful as time goes on. The “good” powers are all about precision and power, giving you less scatter shots and more single bursts that dole out big damage and give you more power. That said, most of the time you can’t use some of the more damaging abilities, since taking out randoms that aren’t your enemies causes your “good” meter to tip towards the “evil” end, and there’s no benefit to playing neutral in this game – it’s all or nothing. The “evil” powers are much more visually impressive, that’s for sure, with your electricity somehow becoming red and your appearence gradually turning from grey-looking bike messenger to actually grey-skinned Sith lord. The powers you get playing as a bad guy afford you more scatter shots, more secondary explosions and Arc-lightning, which allows you to point at any number of enemies in range and throw them around with arching electricity. While that power doesn’t do a lot of damage, it is especially useful for close combat, something that the game does not handle very well otherwise.

inFamous is an action game. You are going to be traversing the city, finding major story missions, and those missions usually involve going to a spot where bad guys are and making them not. It is exceptionally difficult to play stealth, as the enemies generally know where you are at all times even when you have no way of seeing them, so you have to jump in and just hope you don’t become surrounded otherwise you’re probably going to get killed. The melee is very clunky, and while you do get an array of impressive powers none of them seem to be a great substitute for just aiming and firing a normal shot. This is especially true for the later enemies that require enough electricity to power a city block shoved into their brain in order to incapacitate them. Getting ambushed is exceptionally easy in the game, as well, since as you progress some enemies can dish out game ending damage in one shot, and since the game has an almost shooter-like mechanic you are often ignoring your peripheral vision enough that bad things will happen and you will have to start over. With the checkpoint system that is in this game, though, it never feels like that big a deal when you are forced to start again, since you will often have the same progress you checked out with and are put right back into the mix and very rarely back into a situation that will cause you to die again quickly.

While I do tend to get irked by a poor story and characters, the game never really made me feel offended for wanting to progress through the whole thing. None of the characters are particularly memorable, either being somber stereotypes or absolute annoyances, and that does lend to the game not having a real sense of visual or story identity. The cutscenes – which are all comic-style stills thrown in between major events – are a welcome departure from janky in-game animations that are especially jarring considering how smooth the rest of the game flows. It’s all very predictable, and some of the enemies are just non-sensical if anything, and most of the ones you will fight are basically just palette swaps depending on which island you happen to be on. You’ll either fight bad guys in hoodies, bad guys wearing trash bags or bad guys closely resembling the Pyro from Team Fortress 2.

Through all the faults I’ve outlined, and a few little bugs that caused me to fall through some buildings, I absolutely loved the game. If for nothing else just scaling buildings, flying from rooftop to rooftop chasing helicopter and the handful of missions that were very unique and just searching the world for side missions and collectibles even after the game was finished. It was compelling enough for me to play through the game in full on Normal, Hard, Good and Evil and enjoyed it both times through. The differences between the Hero and Infamous storylines are minimal and the powers aren’t vastly different that it will be like a complete new game experience, but each offers their own style and charm that help give inFamous a bit more punch. The collectibles in the game are a bit daunting, so trophy hunters will have their fill going around the city and searching, and it is the first game since PixelJunk Eden that I’ve actually wanted to get 100% of the trophies on without feeling punished by it. It’s a great game, and ranks with the best of the PS3 exclusives that I’ve played.

What I’m really trying to say is…

inFamous is by no means a perfect game. The combat doesn’t always feel intuitive, the missions can be repetitive and the second play through doesn’t seem to offer as much as it could have, but that doesn’t seem to matter when the act of moving through the open world is actually one of the best parts. It is one of the few games that can boast that. Traversing the world is great, the game is visually astounding with practically no loading, and a lot of the missions are interesting and a whole lot of fun. The powers are great, and while the story won’t blow you away it is a good fit for the comic-centric universe and certainly lends itself to more exploration if a sequel should ever arise. This should be a part of your collection as a PS3 owner, and is something to try out for those who aren’t.

inFamous was developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony. The game is available for $69.99 (CDN) for the PS3 exclusively and was rented for review. Completed game twice, once on Evil (Hard) and Good (Normal). 66% of trophies acquired…still looking for more blast shards.