Infamous is a terribly flawed and exceedingly boring game masked under high production values and slick presentation.
You play as Cole MacGrath, a lowly bike courier living in the fictional metropolis of Empire City. During one of his runs, as he's delivering a mysterious package, Cole gets caught in a massive explosion that levels six blocks, instantly killing thousands. Yet somehow Cole survives the blast and finds out he's gained superpowers in the process. After the blast, Empire City succumbs to anarchy and the government thinks it best to quarantine the entire mess. As Cole tries to escape the crumbling city with his friend Zeke, he gets caught and persuaded to return and find an artifact called the Ray Sphere, the object behind the mysterious explosion and Cole's incredible powers. From there the story twists and turns, adding new characters and mysteries.
The story is told through cutscenes that mimic a graphic novel, with static animation and detailed artwork. The presentation is very cool and slick and whilst the story isn't exactly bad, it doesn't really wow or grip you. The characters don't seem all that likeable or even fleshed out, making Cole's various relationships and the descent into his psyche feel somewhat flat. There's an interesting twist at the end, but otherwise the cliffhanger ending leaves too many questions unanswered, leaving a bitter taste in your mouth. And the much touted Karma system, which allows you to be as evil or good as you want to be, doesn't impact the story itself, but only certain elements of it, sapping much of the replay value.
But the thing sapping more of the replay value is the game itself. Infamous seems so lazily developed and misguided in its intentions as to make it almost unplayable. As an open world superhero game, it is shockingly inept. The city is expansive enough but there is little, if anything, to do in it. The entire city feels bereft of character, none of the three islands comprising Empire City have any real character. They are evidently mere obstacle courses designed to showcase the freerunning mechanics of Infamous. Even as such, they fail miserably. Whilst Cole is an incredibly acrobatic character able to ascend almost any skyscraper, not to mention sliding across power cables and other feats of derring-do. But once the novelty of being able to climb a 20 story building wears off, you'll notice how shallow and poorly developed the entire mechanic is. In order to make it a tad easier for players to control Cole in his acrobatic endeavors, as well as to make it look as smooth and effortless as possible, Cole has been given some sticky fingers. What this means is that Cole will automatically latch onto nearby ledges, poles and other suitable extensions, so you only need to point him in the right direction and press the jump button. While it is undeniable the game is easier thanks to this design choice, with it come a few glaring problems. For once, all of the fun is sucked out of the parkour since you only need to tap a button and Cole will do the rest. Forget about picking the right ledge or carefully lining up a jump, just press jump and Cole will grab whatever he wants, even if it's nowhere near where you were trying to guide him towards. After a few hours you'll realize the quickest way to climp up buildings is to simply keep mashing the X button and letting Cole do the rest. The second glaring problem is tied into the first. Since Cole's actions are so automated, you never truly feel like you're controlling him and the game isn't shy about letting you know that. Oftentimes Cole will simply refuse to go where you want him to, instead choosing for you which way to climb. Wooded areas are the most exacerbating in this regard. On many an occasion, as I was running from a group of enemies, I would try to cut through a park, leaping madly to dodge the bullets chasing me relentlessly. This was a big mistake. Instead of effortlessly jumping from one tree to another and swiftly clearing the woods, Cole kept on jumping from tree to tree like a dazed monkey. I was caught in this prison of wood, unable to escape. I would try to point Cole out of the trees and try to have him jump in that direction, only to be denied and see Cole choose a different tree and an entirely different direction. And even if you manage to avoid wooded areas entirely, the very same problem keeps popping up even when moving from building to building. Needless to say, this led to quite a few failed missions and unfortunate deaths.
Death and Cole's frailty is the perfect seque into my next major gripe, which is combat. You'd think in a superhero game you would feel, well, superhuman. Right? Wrong! Despite all his powers, Cole is an exceedingly fragile person. A few well-placed shots from the lowliest grunt enemies is enough to bleed the color from your screen, telling you death is imminent unless you get to cover and fast. While this wouldn't be a liability in many other games, Infamous' design makes it a fatal flaw. As you're unable to fight in close quarters with weapon-toting enemies (which is the majority of them) for more than a few seconds, that rules out melee combat (which is imprecise and lackluster anyway). Instead, you're forced to play the game as a third-person cover shooter. The only way to clear a group of enemies successfully is to get to high ground, snipe as many enemies as you can with your electric powers and finish off the few remaining stragglers how you like. This goes against everything we know and love about superheroes. They're in your face, getting into the heat of combat and unleashing furious attacks from close range, not hiding behind boxes and shooting unaware guys in the head.
As for the powers themselves, they range from midly cool and useful to flat out boring and uninspired. For a guy able to control electricity, Cole sure has a bland way of harnessing it. Most of your electrical attacks are different variants of projectile based attacks, such as shooting lightning, lobbying grenades made of lightning or shooting missiles made of lightning. There are a few genuinely cool attacks, such as the Thunder Drop (you drop down from a height, triggering an electric explosion and blast wave once you hit the ground) and Lightning Storm (a massive lightning strike hits the ground, destroying everything in its path), but thanks either to the frugal "mana" or busted controls, even these aren't as useful as you'd like. Controlling the Lightning Storm via SIXAXIS is so unresponsive and imprecise as to make it almost worthless at times.
The premise of the game is to have you free each of the three islands from under the grip of a ruling gang. In order to do that, you first need to restart the generators for ech part of an island. This involves you going underground, into the sewer system. Once Cole powers up a generator, he receives a new power as a bonus. There's an interesting if underdeveloped mechanic at play when Cole enters a distrcitc that's blacked out. Since the power is out, he can't replenish his powers nor quickly heal himself by sucking electricity from various doodads. Once the juice is flowing again, you can get topside and start tackling story missions and side missions. Completing side missions wrests control from the ruling gangs bit by bit. Luckily you don't need to complete many of them, since side missions are comprised of 4-5 different types, which are recycled ad nauseam. Needless to say, they get very old, very fast.
The graphics are perhaps the single saving grace in the game and even the visuals aren't without flaw. The graphic novel motif is extremely well done and suits the game perfectly. The draw distance is impressive and the city seems suitably run down and detailed. The framerate also holds steady throught the game, with only a few noticeable dips now and then. The character models however are quite ugly (Cole himself doesn't look too good either) and recycled heavily. The animations are stiff and awkward, even for Cole. Some of his moves look slick and cool but that only helps to make the rest look that much clunkier.
For the most part the voice actors do a decent job, considering the characters aren't that deep to begin with. However, Jason Cottle (voicing Cole) seems to have a weird Batman/Rorschach fetish and his poor imitation of those characters deep, almost guttural delivery just sounds silly. Luckily he's veen replaced in the already announced sequel. The city isn't alive with sound, which further hampers its lack of character. The music is mostly forgettable, though it never gets in the way and usually fits the theme of the game well.
There's no two ways about it; Infamous simply sucks. What little it has going for it is buried under poor and perplexing design choices, crappy controls, mediocre visuals, a story that fails to rouse interest and a soul-crushing tendency for repetition. Though beneath all that there is a glimmer of hope, however small, that the inevitable sequel can right many of the wrongs. While the game was meant to be played at least twice to experience the Good/Bad choices, there's just no reason to do that. The highly-touted moral choices are a joke, usually presenting you with choices either so angelic or moustache-twirlingly evil as to make them ridiculous. The writers clearly had no grasp of human morality nor how to implement it into a game. And even if you were able to overlook that fact, there's no overlooking the fact that the game is so repetitive, what little satisfaction you may get from seeing all the different story elements isn't worth the effort, frustration and rage. The final boss is also a huge letdown. At first he seems unbeatable, until you learn his move set and timing. After that, beating him is so easy the developers should be ashamed. But I guess there's plenty to be ashamed about in a turd like Infamous.