Infected is a fun, albeit short, zombie slaughter game that is fast paced and offers a challenge, but not many thrills.
* Story
The story is flaky and not very deep in any way shape or form, but the story isn't the game's strong point. There is a virus spreading throughout the world which turns people into zombies. Through the cut-scenes, you find out where the virus came from which is a funny moment in itself, and I'll leave that up to you to figure out... While playing through the missions, you will run across many civilians who have not been infected. If left alone, the zombies will eventually attack and infect them and turn them into zombies as well. If enough zombies appear in one area, they go berserk and that's where the fun begins as all the zombies go mad.
The reason you are the lone man destined to save humanity is because your blood is immune to the virus. In fact, it's so immune that a single drop of your blood injected into a zombie will cause a chain reaction that literally blows them up.
* Gameplay
The gameplay for the game is easy to adapt to and play which is very nice. Infected is a third person shooter that uses the analog stick to move and turn. The camera always stays behind you and above your shoulder so it's almost always in a good position. While running, the L button brings up a level map which gives the location of all civilians (green dots) and zombies (red dots) with bigger enemies being bigger / brighter dots. The R button locks on to a zombie close by, but at times, it seems to be a random zombie and not always the one you're looking at. This quirk can be frustrating, but sometimes tapping R again will change the zombie you're locked on to. Alternatively, you can press the L button while locked on and the targeted zombie will change to another seemingly random one.
You start each mission with a handgun that will automatically upgrade to a shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher and a "BMFG" which does a devastating amount of damage. When you kill a zombie, your weapon will gain experience and level up to the next most powerful weapon. As time passes, the experience begins to slowly drain and your weapons will downgrade if you don't kill a zombie in a certain amount of time. You fire your weapons with the X button. There are also grenades which you will very rarely use and chainsaws which are fun each time you get one. Aside from the chainsaw, your guns won’t kill the zombies but wear them down. Once they are worn down and turn red, you use your blood gun to inject a drop of your blood into the zombies which will splatter them into a million ooey gooey pieces. You fire your blood gun with the Square button.
* Graphics
The graphics are decent, but could be better. The game plays smoothly and I can't recall any time where it slowed down because of a large amount of enemies / guts on the screen at once. One quirk I noticed is that you can walk through most light poles and newspaper stands, but this can be used to your advantage at times. Some of the animations of the civilians look downright silly, but it's probably just some more of the game's humor.
The effects are very well done. The fire and explosions from your weapons are great and the blood splattering effects are great without being overly grotesque. It is a bloody game, after all.
* Sound
The game's soundtrack is alright. It matches the style of the game well without being distracting. The sound effects are good as well, from the grunts and groans of the zombies to the squishy sound they make when you splatter them. The voice acting of the cut scenes is good and funny, although it was hard to hear every detail at times (headphones helped).
* Multiplayer
Infected has a multiplayer mode that was meant to have its main unique feature; the ability to infect other people's PSPs. When you play online (either infrastructure of ad-hoc with 4 players or less) and you win, the Avatar you create for yourself will 'infect' other player's PSPs. Once your system is infected, their avatar will appear as all the zombies in the campaign mode. You can play and win 3 campaign missions to remove the infection, or you can play online and spread the infection to other's PSPs. This is most definitely an interesting feature, but I did not get the opportunity to infect anybody else’s systems.
I did get a chance to play multiplayer (ad-hoc) with 8 people in the various modes (deathmatch, team deathmatch, "Mad Cow" and "Savior") which was actually fun. The deathmatch games are your typical deathmatches. In Mad Cow, there is a "cow" in the level that when you pick it up, you become the cow. The other players then hunt you down to kill you and take the Cow uniform. The person who has Mad Cow the longest is the winner. This is one of our favorites to play. In Savior mode, you run around the level picking up civilians and take them to the helicopter pick-up point in the level. The player who saves the most civilians wins.
The biggest flaw with the multiplayer is the spawning back into the level. Quite often, you will spawn back in facing one way only to have another player right behind you shooting you in the back. The "respawn AI" was simply flawed. There also isn’t a lot of variety in the levels which can lead to the multiplayer becoming a tad boring over time.
* Overall
Infected is a fun game, there is no doubt about that. The single player campaign will take you 6-8 hours to complete, making it a relatively short play. The multiplayer modes do add more time to the game, but overall, it's far too short of a play. The replay value is unfortunately limited as well. Once you master the controls of the game, the missions become far too easy to play. There are additional avatars to unlock, but unless you play online a lot and want to infect others, there is little point. Despite its drawbacks, Infected is still a fun game to play that will offer several hours of good enjoyment.