[QUOTE="After_Math"][QUOTE="clembo1990"]I'm with Sony on this, no need to deal with haters.therealnerdd
How was Tom Chick or w/e a hater? He said that InFamous is a solid action game. He doesn't sound like a hater. Tom chick listed 10 things good about infamous and 10 stupid things about infamous just to get afew laughs, he was basically clowing sucker punch and their product.The Pros - Almost all if not all were good points. Graphics are good, gameplay is fun, powers are cool, some sweet missions, SuckerPunch took their time in crafting this game. Thats what I get from reading it.
10) Awesome opening. Your first view of the game when Infamous boots up, and then the brief introductory sequence when you press the start button, is remarkably effective.
9) The checkpoints within missions made dying and retrying painless, even during traditionally annoying missions like "escort the target" and "protect the target". There was no mission that couldn't be completed with minimal persistence. Infamous can be challenging, but it's never punishing.
8) You might not remember a 1977 movie called The Gauntlet in which Clint Eastwood drives a tricked-out armored bus through several city blocks of sustained gunfire. But I do. And so does Infamous.
7) The electricity theme might feel a bit forced - couldn't they have gone with "gamma energy" or "bioflux lifeforce" or "blue crackle"? - but Sucker Punch knows how to commit and see it through. Cole's powers, how he replenishes them, and even how he interacts with the environments and the inhabitants all make for a great example of creative unity. It might not make sense, but it's nothing if not consistent.
6) The graphics look soupy at times, but they serve the gameplay perfectly. Infamous does not suffer from slowdown, or a lack of detail, or bad wonky physics. Saints Row 2 might have better gameplay and Grand Theft Auto IV might have better graphics, but both of those games are lacking in graphics and gameplay, respectively. Infamous, on the other hand, is the "just right" compromise where the technology and gameplay are a perfect tuned to each other.
5) As you choose to do good things, people snap your picture. Cute, but I already saw that trick in the last Spider-Man game, so it doesn't count as one of the cool things in Infamous. However, the one I liked was seeing the citizens throw rocks at the evil gangs once you've cleaned up the streets a bit. Go, bystanders! Let he who is without themed gang garb throw the first stone!
4) No multiplayer. You might think this would go under the "ten stupid things" list. But I admire a developer that doesn't feel the need to waste resources shoehorning in some sort of obligatory multiplayer support. Co-op would make no sense in Infamous and competitive games would just be a quickly forgotten side show. Whatever time Sucker Punch didn't spend on multiplayer was probably time well spent.
3) The powers in Infamous are spectacular. It's better to let them unfold for you as you play rather than read about them in a review, so I'll refrain from specifics. They're central to how Infamous is superbly paced. As it progresses, the gameplay evolves along with Cole's powers, which keeps thing fresh throughout, even if the city itself is pretty dull.
2) The cover system is flexible enough to let you switch hands when you're slinging superpowers, which makes a difference based on how you're looking around a corner or over a ledge. What's more, you can easily fight bad guys on top of a building while you're dangling from the edge of the roof. It's even easy to fight while clinging to the side of a building. I might have accidentally stuck to a low ledge or rail on occasion, but when it came to fighting bad guys, I never once felt the geometry of the city was a liability instead of an asset.
1) "You are powerful. As Infamous progresses, you get more powerful." Those ten words are Infamous in a nutshell. Never mind the godawful story, bad writing, shallow characterization, and mostly uninspired world building. The bottom line is that Infamous is a game about wielding superpowers (I never once wished I had a gun). It accomplishes this goal admirably, gradually scaling up your power in gratifying increments until, finally and literally, the sky is the limit.
Top Ten Stupid Things - besides the ones I deleted and maybe I missed, are actually decent things.:
8) Just when you think Infamous isn't going to pull any of Sony's mandatory Sixaxis shenanigans, you get your final power. Because it wouldn't be a PS3 game without a Sixaxis controller gimmick!
6) The following is an actual approximation of the way "karma" decisions are presented in Infamous, each accompanied by a short monologue delivered in grave and thoughtful tones:
"Hmm, I've discovered a hungry puppy. It's whimpering pitifully and looking at me with its big puppy dog eyes. Do I kick it, which might turn the people of Empire City against me? Or do I pet it, which will ingratiate me to the citizenry but might make me look weak and girlish?"
Press the X button to kick the puppy.
Press the triangle button to pet the puppy.
5) Infamous is great about not letting you accidentally run off a ledge. Thanks for that, Sucker Punch! However, there is no easy way to go from standing on a ledge to dangling from it. Which wouldn't be a big deal if Infamous didn't constantly position collectibles in such a way that you have to jump off a ledge and then quickly turn around and grab it. This is worst when it's over water, which is instantly fatal to Coll.
4) Coal's powers unfold without any meaningful choice. He'll get a new power at exactly the scripted moment he's supposed to get it. So what are you supposed to do with your hard-earned xp? You get to buy incremental and mostly superficial upgrades. Do you boost your melee damage by 10% or your damage reduction by 10%? Do you improve your lightning bolt or your shock wave? Even the powers that supposedly distinguish good from evil are only marginally different. It's like a game of Jedi Knight in which your choice of Force powers is a red lightsaber or a green lightsaber.
3) The city is repetitive and mostly uninteresting, with only a couple of memorable landmarks that are memorable because the missions where you have to climb them are such a pain in the butt. After a whole game of letting you scale nearly any structure by spazzing out on the X button - there is little finesse in the way Koal climbs - you have to hunt and peck and aim your jumps and look for the grabbable bits. But at least the view from the top is - oh, that's it? A bunch of distant soupy silhouettes?
2) You know that terrible hackneyed moment in a comic book when the villain strings up the superhero's girlfriend on one side of town, and six doctors who might one day cure cancer on the other side of town? Then he sets a timer so that the superhero will only have time to save one of them? Then he spells out the moral dilemma in very careful terms so that even little kids reading the comic book will understand? You know how stupid those moments are? Well, Infamous doesn't.
1) For a historical accounting of how long it takes the social order to fall apart, we need look no father than the 1987 documentary Escape from New York. When Manhattan was closed off into a maximum security prison after the crime rate had risen 400%, it took years for the social order to break down and rebuild itself under the aegis of a themed gang led by Isaac Hayes. However, Infamous is on an accelerated timeline. After a cataclysmic event, society falls apart and rebuilds around themed gangs within a few days. A massive junk skyscraper is erected almost instantaneously, which just goes to show how much you can get done without unions. Various supervillains with fiendish plots spring up within a week. Plagues and mind control toxins and government conspiracies and sidekick betrayals and sidekick redemptions all happen in the first fortnight. And the whole thing is wrapped up in three weeks. New Orleans should be so lucky.
1a) With perhaps three exceptions, the missions are on par with what you'd expect in a throwaway GTA clone with a Spider-Man or Hulk license. The same is true with how you interact with and affect the city, which is peppered with meaningless side missions that do little more than satisfy completionists while leaving the rest of us unimpressed. Sometimes Coll uses his electric power to literally herd shuffling compliant bad guys from point A to point B. These sheepdog missions are the silliest thing you'll do in Infamous, short of sitting through the comic book cut scenes.
1b) Part of the appeal of an open-world game is navigating the world, but there should be shortcuts for long distances. Infamous doesn't do a good job of providing this, which isn't a big deal. For short distances, you can grind elevated rails or power lines. But then the last third of the game comes along and you've got to traipse back and forth across the city. Oh, and in case you're wondering why Cull can't ride in cars, there's a bit of throwaway exposition about this early on; if he sits in a car, it explodes.
1c) It's a shame a game with this much potential has such an insultingly bad story. The guys at Sucker Punch have left behind the kiddie vibe of their excellent Sly Cooper games, but they haven't left behind the cartoon superficiality. The plot of Infamous makes zero sense, even after the laughably bad resolution. There isn't a single likable character here. The villains just seem to appear from time to time. Sometimes you fight them in a bad boss battle. Sometimes the game seems to simply forget about them.. And the dialogue is uniformly horrible, from the growling hero to the funny [sic] sidekick to the conflicted romantic interest to the villain who suddenly appears at some point as if the game almost forgot it needed a villain. In fact, one character whose significance isn't clear unless you bother digging up B-side audio recordings scattered around the city is randomly blown up at the end of the game. Infamous may very well be one of the worst written big-budget games since Too Human.
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