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The Podcats: SURPRISE

Gaming is full of suprises. As Gomer Pyle would say: “Surprise, surprise, surprise!”

 

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REVIEW: INFAMOUS

Reviewed on PS3. Developed by Sucker Punch. Published by Sony.

Infamous, in a  nutshell, is an amalgamation  of Sucker Punch’s earlier Sly Cooper series, infused with a healthy dose of Crackdown and a little Force Unleashed. You play as Cole McGrath, a courier who’s at the heart of a massive energy release in Empire City. Surviving the deadly blast, Cole finds himself infused with super powers the same way warm water is infused with tea leaves. Hmm. Time for a cuppa.

skip ahead 10 minutes

So begins Infamous, with its great comic book style cutscenes and an open world city with  game play ripped from Crackdown. You play, gather XP every time you beat a mission, defeat an enemy or perform an act of cruelty or kindness. As you get more XP, you can level up your powers, becoming more and more badass. You can also play good or evil, with  the game giving you lots of opportunities to decide on your path. The story, though very well done, drags on a bit longer than you’d like. This is perhaps unavoidable on longish games like this, but what the hey- it’s a fun game. You have a Karma meter which has Infamous on one end and Hero at the other. Kill a pedestrian or drain the life force of a vanquished for, you get evil karma points. Heal a citizen and merely lock up a defeated foe, you get positive karma. There are both good and bad story missions- beating the good mission will lock the bad mission, encouraging multiple playthroughs if you’re into that thing. I always tend to play these games as a good guys since I’m such a cunt in real life.

The game structure is fairly familiar. You start off in one section of the map with the rest blocked, in this case a third of the city and you progress by completing the story missions that appear on your map. There are also side missions which ask you to do things like, remove all surveillance devices off the side of a building, defend an area or clear and area of enemies, pose for photos, etc. These are mostly good missions that enhance your Karma but there are a few evil missions in there as well. More on that later. Each side missions you complete will mark the map in a way so that enemies don’t respawn in that area so there is a very real reward for side missions since in some areas you can’t walk down the street without some asshole shooting at you. All of the collectibles are woven into story so there are no blue orbs floating arbitrarily at the top of a building. There are blast shards you collect to up your electrical storage (fragments of the device that explodes at the start of the game).

Its an open world but not really a sand box. You don’t drive cars so vehicular stunts are out but you can climb almost anywhere within the map if that’s your thang. And I mean almost anywhere and straight out of the box. Your climbing powers are pretty much the same from the start, you just get the gliding ability later. Want to climb up that building now? You don’t have to wait until your level is maxed out in Infamous. You can climb up most buildings just by tapping X a lot. A lot. For a game that’s not about climbing, Sucker Punch didn’t make the climbing a limiting factor in the game play. Some areas require special attention to climbing (like  in Uncharted) but these are very much in the minority. You can  go where you like in most cases.

Your powers are what the game is about. You start off just shooting electricity as your ranged attack and a simple melee attack for CQC. Since the powers are based on power, you will need to restore underground substations in each area to progress. These conveniently hold the key to you gaining new powers so you will need to do these a lot in order to beat the game. Its funny how some of the powers you have in the demo are those you would have fairly late in the game. You do get one power that slightly overpowering but you do get that so late in the game that its not like the gravity gun in HL2 where you just have a win button. It also doesn’t help against the final boss.

On criticism is that the game does have some annoying boss fights with specific methods required to defeat them, which is where Crackdown shines- the rules are the same. You just shoot them more in the 360 game- you use the same rules as the rest of the game. AI in the game is another mixed bag with NPC’s with pathfinding, both good and bad. But then you’re in world where the equivalent of a small nuke has gone off and everyone is just going about their business as if nothing as happened. There can be major battles going on and the citizens of Empire city are not running and hiding, panicking as they soil their pants in terror- they are just milling around, walking into your zone of fire.

Graphically the game is a mixed bag. With its fantastic comic book-style cutscenes, the game has a boold style. But then you get in-game cutscenes with horrendous models with off lighting. The animation is definitely very ordinary. Its adequate, but you can’t call it good. Sound is quite well done with very good voice acting from the cast. Cole McGrath has a 50 a day habit by the sound of him. Must make being a bike courier hard.

So Infamous. The best PS3 game since MGS4. Its better than Resistance 2, Motorstorm 2, Little Big Planet and Killzone 2. Its the type of game you would buy a PS3 for.

Controller1.com rating 3/3

NOW PLAYING: INFAMOUS

After returning from a holiday and trying three different local stores, I finally found a copy of inFamous. This morning I have been having a great time playing it and feeling kinda sad for Prototype. Its also killed any chance I had of ever replaying Crackdown. Infamous is better in some ways. Its making Protoype look like an also ran and Uncharted 2 look limited by comparison. Sly Cooper 4 Infamous also has its problems, such as really ordinary animation but overall its probably the best PS3 game so far this year, easily eclipsing Killzone 2 for fun.

Its a free roaming game set in an open world where you play as a guy who has suddenly developed all of these cool powers, mostly to do with Electricity. You don’t shoot guns, you discharge electricty and you consume electricity in order to fire off more electricity. The guy’s got some serious rubber shoes on his feet and its a lucky thing his head is shavd otherwise he’d be a dead ringer for one of the Jackson 5 circa 1974. Infamous has everything Crackdown has apart from a Halo 3 beta invite.

So if you like Crackdown like controller1.com’s very own Cameron, you will like infamous. So what does Infamous do better and what does it not do as well?

Better than Crackdown:

Movement and climbing is so easy and therefore fun. You don’t feel like you’re fighting the controls (as you do in the god-awful-to-control Prince of Persia). It manages to make Assassin’s Creed movement seem clunky (which was one of its better features) and now I feel Uncharted 2 will feel more restrictive during its platforming sections after the total freedom afforded in Infamous. Of course, restricting movements to paths is a gameplay decision. Infamous doesn’t make platforming difficult since its not a platformer- you just need to get places and the game doesn’t make it too hard to do that.

Story: The actual storyline is more involving that Crackdown’s simple “cleaning up the streets” mantra. It also has fantastic comic book style cinematics (even if they are just a modern version of those flat cardboard rod-puppets children have)

Not as good Crackdown:

The in-game animation is really, really ordinary. Even bad in places. Combat is a bit less fun (at least initially). This Sly Cooper in a new skin. Really. Not a bad thing but oh boy is it obvious the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

You have the time-trials and equivalent of the agility orb hunting as well, though they are more neatly integrated into the story, rather than just being collectibles. So play this while we wait for Crackdown 2. I would hope the guys at Ruffian games have a good look at this

This is really the best PS3 only game since MGS4 (yes better than KZ2, Resistance 2, Little Big Planet, Singstar AB- huh?). If you have a PS3 and don’t have this game yet, what are you waiting for and if you don’t have a PS3, it means you haven’t played this, MGS4 or Uncharted. I hear there’s a price cut brewing around the launch of Madden 2010

Controller1.com Focus Test: inFamous

Its like Crackdown but its not crackdown. See how many times Crackdown can be mentioned in a 25 minute podcast
that’s not about Crackdown.

 

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