• 

  Infamous (PS3)

  Navneet Prakash, Jun 13, 2009 1030 hrs IST

  Decide whether you want to be a good guy or the bad one!

  Highly addictive action game, great presentation, impressive combat, one of the better looking open world games

  textures pop-in, minor clipping issues

  Expert Rating :

  

  

Page 1 - Infamous I Page 2 - Infamous II

Trish's sister was killed in an explosion and when she finds out that Cole was responsible for the explosion, she walks away from him, blaming him for her loss. Zeke, on the other hand, wants to find out how Cole got his powers. According to him, everything is a conspiracy, and the government is behind all this destruction. As time passes, the game does reveal some really interesting plot twists, but overall the story is average.

The game rides high on its gameplay, the large city with more than a 100 side missions will keep you busy for a long time. There are collectibles known as Dead-drops and Blast Shards that add some depth to the roaming around. Now, the last third person action game that I played was Bionic Commando, and as mentioned in the review, swinging around was the most fun aspect of the game, so the thought of running around a bigger city was a little disheartening, well I was wrong. Initially, Cole has to run around the city and walk long stretches on power cables, while making sure he doesn't drop down. A few hours later, you are grinding power cables and train tracks like Tony Hawk on steroids and you also learn to glide short distances. A fully upgraded Cole can traverse the entire city within minutes due to the dense network of power cables and train tracks. As mentioned before, Cole is really good at scaling structures; he is almost as graceful and accurate as Altair from Assassin's Creed.

Cole is always under fire. No matter which part of the city you are in, there is always someone shooting at you from a rooftop. Fortunately, Cole is a powerhouse and his combat abilities make fighting herds of reapers a breeze. Cole never uses guns but the developers have substituted metal with electricity. You have electric bombs, rockets, bolts, precision shots (snipers), shockwave and much more. Do keep in mind that these powers change, depending on your Karma. The Karma system unlocks different powers for good and bad deeds. The powers are well balanced for both sides with a few exceptions but that's what adds to the replay value of the game. Overall, the combat is a lot of fun. There are tons of mutants to kill and Cole does it in style. A good Karma leads to blue lighting whereas bad Karma leads to the uber-cool red lighting.

The game does have a few issues, especially with side characters like Zeke. Cole's animations are smooth and realistic, whereas Zeke moves and reacts in a very unnatural way; the same applies for Trish as well. The game does suffer from pop-in texture, so don't be surprised to see a railway track pop-in while grinding. Luckily, Infamous offers a solid frame-rate and never shutters under the huge explosions.

Visually, the game is striking, with a good draw-distance and highly detailed textures. The animations have been well done and the game's lighting is very impressive. The game's plot is presented like a graphic novel which really deserves the thumbs-up.
This is a true Superhero sim with a decent plot, really good action gameplay (and I mean it, really good), loads of replay value and commendable presentation. If you own a PS3, Cole should be in there absorbing juice (that means electricity, just in case).

Page 1 - Infamous I Page 2 - Infamous II

• Which desktop web browser do you use?

• Internet Explorer

  Firefox

  Chrome

  Safari

  Opera

  Other (specify in comments)

  Poll Results View Previous Polls