I know, I know, everyone else does. Maybe it just wasn’t my thing, but I couldn’t bring myself to love Infamous. In fact, I couldn’t even get myself to finish it. I even tried it again before writing this review to be sure, from the good guy angle. No good for me.
I know that’s a cardinal sin with good games, as the end can turn to suck, and bad games it’s still a sin, just in case there’s something amazing at the end. And I’m sure there could be, but I couldn’t care less now.
InFamous is a third person shooter, essentially. It’s got some platforming elements which are reasonably well done, though not nearly what I expected from Sucker Punch. It’s uneven, unbalanced, and the pace is absolutely dreadful. Not just the story and escalation, the movement. Cole, the game’s hero, moves at the speed of a brooding, angry, electric tortoise, only without the hard shell. It’s strange, he can fall 1000 feet with no effects, but three bullets put him out. And those bullets will be fired at players far far far out of their retaliatory range initially, and later to an extent. The player does get the chance to clear areas of enemies, zone by zone, but the tasks, particularly the stealth ones, just become arduous at a rapid pace. Of course, it also becomes damn near essential to clear ahead to make some missions possible. The uneven difficulty curb, once again, provides problems here. Enemies spawned normally within mission areas aren’t too bad, but when you’re constantly being sniped from rooftops, they can become frustrating nightmares.
That is, frankly, my biggest problem with InFamous. It’s so easy to get ganked from nowhere, and it’s constant. Considering I’m supposed to be a superhero or villain, I never feel like a badass. I feel like a guy hiding behind a concrete block in terror of the AK-47 in front of me. Sure it gets a little better later on with a shield power, but even then enemies just show up beside or behind. And god help you on an escort mission, where you’re going to die several times, and if you hide to regen you’ll usually miss the critical target that’s attacking your ward. Even grabbing wonderful healing electricity can be too much time, resulting in a failed mission. There are, thankfully, plenty of checkpoints, and you can beat escort missions through painful memorization. I guess that’s a good point, compared to a total restart.
InFamous comes with a big block of cheese, too, in its desire for you to be the bad guy. One evil act, and your lighting turns red, for example (and looks crappy, to be honest). Cole’s appearance and clothing starts to look washed out, grey, generic smoldering evil rage, that kind of thing. The game certainly starts interestingly, but the protagonist honestly lacks appeal. His excuses for bad behavior are pretty weak, but he just keeps charging ahead mindlessly.
Now, I will say this. The game’s story does unfold very well, though naturally the overall story arc is going to be the same journey to the ending. And it is a good story, though it takes a while to start and there’s an annoying sidekick (and hey, I’m biased against annoying sidekicks named Zeke). The problem is getting there. Platforming that just never feels right, loose shooting, tremendous inconsistency, constant ambushes. Getting around is certainly a pain as well, even once you get movement upgrades like rail and power-line grinding. Jumping line to line is tricky and usually involves flying very far in a direction you didn’t intend on. And players are unable to outrun the trains on the tracks, so it’s easy to get smacked from behind by one of them, or in front thanks to an occasionally rough draw distances.
Unfortunately, it just wasn’t enough. Climbing buildings can be arduous, and doubly so for the missions that involve removing devices from the sides of buildings. The combat is often frustrating, getting around is slow, and power growth feels arbitrarily limited. There’s plenty of good things in the game, honestly, and it’s easy to see how a lot of people love this one. But for me, it just didn’t grab me, it just became an average third person shooter when I expected crazy lightning action. Call it the Prototype effect.
Infamous gets 2.5 out of 5 from me. I know there’s a good game there for a lot of people to enjoy, but I just couldn’t get into it.
