Tancap Blog

Take one open world action game, mix in 1 comic book, and add a pinch of role playing. What do you get?

inFamous is a great fusion of open world gaming in a comic book style universe. As the game unfolds, some terrible event has occurred destroying a large part of the city and has left you with the power to manipulate electricity. As you proceed playing the game’s story, you will periodically be faced with making a choice that will define your character as being good or evil. These choices not only effect the powers you will gain access to, but also your physical appearance and even the state of the city itself. If you make good choices, the city will begin to recover, and other people will help you attack other enemies. If you make evil choices, the city will continue to deteriorate, and other people may attack you. The main story line is told pretty well through a mixture of cut scenes and cell phone calls. Also well done are several boss battles that require some thought to fight effectively. While the graphics are not much better than average for an open world game, the frame rate never drops. It seems that a couple of sacrifices were made graphically in order to make sure the frame-rate never dropped. There are quite a few weapons on the dark side that can cause a lot of explosions to occur simultaneously, but I never noticed any frame-rate issues.

The side missions are a bit of mix bag.  Most of them are quite good and are slightly different depending on whether you decide to be good or evil.  They try to mix things up more than the simple fetch quests that are common for these types of games. The main problem with the side missions is that there simply aren’t enough different types and about 2/3 of the way through the game you will likely get bored doing things like destroying surveillance devices on a building for the 12^th time.

Sound is generally very good and the music usually does a good job of setting the tone. The main storyline is a bit short, but having the ability of going back and playing the game as the opposite side of what you played the first time adds value to its replayability. There are some glitches that can cause problems with some of the scripted missions.  During play I found a couple of situations where the game wasn’t planing on me gaining access to areas from the direction I came from that would cause me to have to leave an area and then come back the way the game wanted me to. For example, there is one mission where you need to infiltrate an enemy stronghold to flip a switch to open a gate to a locked area. Instead of going through the front door, I found a hole in the side of the fence in the back. The game wasn’t planning on this and as a result, none of the enemies spawned and the switch to open the gate wouldn’t activate. However, overall the game is well paced and quite frankly, a lot of fun to play.

Scores:

Graphics:

Not bad for an open world game, but not great either.  There are some glitches to be seen.  On the plus side, frame rate was consistently high.

Sound:

Sound effects are generally well done.  Music does a good job of setting the gone.  Voice acting is also well done.

Gameplay:

A great fusion of open world game and comic book story.  Characters are interesting.  The various powers you will gain are unique and fun to use.

Controls:

Controls are generally responsive and it is fairly easy to pull of some of the more complicated moves necessary to get around the city quickly.

Originality:

A fairly unique fusion of gameplay elements with a comic book story.

Overall Single Player Experience:

The single player game has great gameplay, a good story, and good controls.  Can’t ask for much more except for a few less scripting glitches.

Reviewer’s Opinion:
One of the best games I’ve played this year.  A great open world game.