Review: inFamous(BladeKiro)

by Demi on Jul.04, 2009, under Games

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I was never a big fan of open-world games, period. I guess I enjoy more of a linear game where all the objectives are straightforward and there are no irrelevant side missions. I wonder if that’s the reason Grand Theft Auto could never hold my attention for more than a week.

Enter inFamous, a game that redefines the standard of the open-world kind of game. You take control of the protagonist Cole, who has been given electric superpowers through a bomb that exploded in the city he lives in.

The government has quarantined the city where the bomb went off, and this basically led to anarchy in the area. You can either try to save the people and become a hero, or help in its destruction and be inFamous.

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I was already excited for this game by the time the advertisements came out. I can be a hero or a villain? Amazing. The multi-million marketing campaign done by Sony MIGHT have had something to do with it. They for sure went out of their way to make it appealing to people. If you haven’t seen the TV spot, you need to.

The gameplay itself is top notch. You get different electrical powers based on your decision to be good or bad. (For example, you get an electric grenade if you chose to be bad, and forked lightning if you were good.) The lack of a health bar is somewhat annoying, along with the fact that the Reapers (the main gang you’ll be fighting against in the “Neon District”) are the best god damn shots ever.

As you continue playing the game, there will be many “defining” moments for you. These parts will have a massive effect on your good or bad karma. The biggest one in the game is right at the beginning, where you choose to let the people have a share of the food that the military dropped, or kill them and take the food for yourself.

Health in this game can be a massive pain in the ass. There is no visible health bar; instead your screen simply gets darker as you get hurt. The only way to heal yourself is to charge electrical sources into your body. This can be done using nearly anything near you, such as cars or light poles.

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However, as with most open-world games, there are also the irrelevant side missions, and of course you’re pretty much forced to do some of them in order to get any decent skills later on in the game.

This game is more difficult then the average game, however it is a game with a rich storyline and plenty of checkpoints in place to make sure you don’t have to backtrack too much.

My final opinion on the game is that even though I dislike the open world games like Prototype and the GTA series, I find myself coming back to inFamous. I’m on my 2nd playthrough, this time becoming evil rather than good.

All in all, I give inFamous…