Sucker Punch's inaugural entry in the open-world genre is an enthralling, marvelous start for a new series.
A bomb, delivered unwittingly by a courier by the name of Cole MacGrath, went off in the fictitious Empire City. The bomb, leveling an entire block in one of the three districts and killing many in the process, resulted great calamity. First, a plague starts circulating through town soon after the explosion, causing the government to quarantine the city; second, the streets become filled with crime and violence as gangs start taking control, the police left powerless as their ranks slowly dwindle. It's a real mess for Empire City, both figuratively and literally. (The entire metropolis is littered with debris and garbage, it's almost colorless appearance painting a bleak scene. It's rough around the edges, visually, but the imagery is striking.)
Upon waking in the midst of this mayhem, Cole discovers that he's gained power over lightning as a side-effect of surviving the explosion (he was at the very center of it). With the city in a state of absolute chaos, Cole, in his now super-powered state, is faced with a choice: use these powers for good and win the hearts of the people, revitalize the city, or use them for evil and earn the scorn of the populace, bring the city down even further.
This is the premise of Infamous, developer Sucker Punch's first true foray into the open-world genre -- a very successful one at that. Morality plays a central role, facing you with many choices throughout that define Cole and his powers take. It's a smartly designed game, using much of what they learned from their previous works to great effect; it's only problem being the inconsequential nature of the morality system, which has nary an impact on the course of the story. However, that's but a small blemish on what is otherwise an enthralling game.
Infamous is about choices and how they reflect on you. Every decision you make, every action you take affects you and how the populace perceives you. Act like a thug by attacking innocents and you'll gain notoriety; act like a savior by healing and protect them and you'll become loved, revered. Reputation is everything in Infamous, and you need to live up to it if you wish to excel.
Acts of both good and evil grant both experience points to spent on upgrades and karma -- the thing that determines you reputation. Good acts grant good karma, while evil acts grant bad karma. The more karma you accumulate the better or worse you reputation becomes and the more upgrades you have access to, thus allowing you to grow more powerful.
Though choice plays a crux role in Infamous, the impact these choices have is minimal at best. The game plays them up as though they're tough, important decisions, but in reality they're contrived and have little to no consequences. In one early instance, Cole is charged with removing the plague tormenting the city from the water supply. When faced with removal, he has two options: blow up the pumps distributing the tar and get soaked in it in the process, keeping saving more people from being infected; or overcharge the pump, keeping yourself dry but causing tons more people to get sick as a result. Nothing changes either way. The number of sick people littering the streets remains as common as before, neither increasing or decreasing based on your actions. The lack of consequence or benefit from these choices diminishes their impact.
Your moral standing, apart from changing a few lines of dialog in cut-scenes, also determines how your powers evolve. The two sides bring with them different gameplay permutations. Good focuses more on precision, taking on a more controlled form to keep collateral damage to a minimum, while evil focuses on wanton destruction, disregarding whoever or whatever gets caught in the vicinity of the attacks for the sake of being as deadly as possible. To be more specific, Cole's basic lightning attack, a quick, single bolt of lightning has different supportive functions for each side. For good, you regain energy with each successful shot. For evil, the bolts cause mini explosions each time you get a head shot. The upgrade screen explicates the effects in detail, so you can easily decide which side to go with based on what permutations sound most appealing right from the get-go.
The powers themselves are akin to firearms in practice. The standard lightning strike is essentially your assault rifle, in shooter terms, effective at both short and medium range and plenty fierce. It's the bread and butter of Cole's repertoire of abilities. Rockets and grenades round out the rest of his attacks. He's basically a walking firearm. Heck, even the controls go so far as to stick with the standard L1 R1 combo -- the former bringing up the reticle and the latter causing Cole to fire.
The familiarity of it all helps because it lends an immediate understanding of the mechanics. You never struggle with the controls; they feel very natural. Sections where you get a bit of training in with each new power in the sewers also ensure that you know the ins and outs of Cole's abilities. The sewer segments are very linear, very brief affairs, each lasting only a few minutes at the most. A lack of lighting makes a few jumps here and there on the frustrating side, but what light Cole creates himself casts itself far enough ahead that the tunnels aren't frustrating to traverse in most cases.
Traversal, in fact, is one of the best parts of Infamous. Cole is a very nimble fellow. He can climb just about any object in the vicinity, requiring no input on your part except pressing X to jump to grab onto the nearest climbable surface (he needs to be airborne before he can latch onto stuff). Because there isn't any button input required to get him to latch on, you're able to focus squarely on directing Cole. Not only is this practical, but it also makes trapezing around the city a lot of fun.
Chaining together a long string of actions to get around -- sliding along cables and rails, then jumping off and gliding to another cable, for instance -- without once loosing momentum is hugely gratifying and an ultra fast means of travel, thus remedying one of the most tedious parts of any open-world game.
Cole's agile nature comes especially handy in combat. In Infamous, battle is very unforgiving, pitting you against vast legions of gun-toting foes with impeccable aim. Swift footwork (that is, constant use of the dodge button) and a swift, steady hand are necessities to survive the many encounters you face, for you're always outnumbered and the enemy is quick on their feet. The odds always bring about rapturous, exhilarating skirmishes, with bullets, rockets, and bursts of electricity flying all over. Victory is often hard to attain -- mostly on account of the abundance of rooftop snipers, particularly those wielding rocket launchers; near instant death from taking a hit from of one those rockets -- but punishment is light, restarting you almost exactly where you died during missions. And once victory is obtained, there's a strong sense of triumph that follows.
Almost all of the large scale skirmishes are limited to missions, both side- and story-focused. Encounters outside of jobs are limited to small groups, seldom chancing upon small armies during your regular exploration. That occurrence rate decreases as you begin taking back territory, which is accomplished by completing side-missions. Recaptured territory removes any and all enemies from the scene, making it safe to pass through at all times. An enticing incentive, definitely; especially in the later half of the game where armies become something of a commonality for a time.
Missions charge you with decent variety of tasks. From escorting captured enemies to the police station for interrogation or some nondescript location for execution and following couriers, to time trials of sorts and general combating of foes, Infamous presents a wide variety of tasks to undertake. Apart from side missions, there are also collectible items hidden throughout Empire City; those items being dead drops and blast shards. The former being audio logs that delve into the background of the story while the latter grants more battery cores (i.e. the energy that many of Cole's abilities draw upon) once enough shards are obtained. They're decent distractions, and the insight the dead drops bring for the story is well worth hearing.
As Sucker Punch's first dedicated effort for the open-world genre, Infamous is a marvelous title. The company clearly knows what it's doing with games of this vein, avoiding many of the usual pitfalls of the genre. Infamous is truly something special.