inFAMOUS - Red Light, Blue Light

I like Grand Theft Auto. I like super powers. I like open world. inFAMOUS combines things that I like into one fine game that robs me of several hours of sleep. You are Cole, a messenger who delivers a bomb that destroys several areas of a large city. This weapon also gave you a power over electricity. You put these powers to use either heroically or thuggishly to find out who was behind the whole thing.

The world the game drops you in is huge. You can scale to the top of pretty much everything you can see and the sections of each of the three parts of the city are enormous. No two places in this game look alike. You can get around by jumping from rooftop to rooftop, riding the metro rails, or just running around on street level. The world is inhabited with sever people, police, and each section of the city has their own enemies. The story is carried out in the same fashion as the GTA games with missions appearing on your map. There are also numerous side missions which not only give you extra XP to upgrade your powers with but also they help you take over sections of the city to keep the baddies from spawning there and sniping you from rooftops all the time.

Cole is a great character to play as far as what he can do. One of my favorite things to do is jump off the highest skyscraper I can find and land with a fully charged thunder drop which leads to a huge explosion with all the cars exploding and then force pushing people in the air and shooting them with lightning bolts as they fall in slow motion. This game makes it so easy to look awesome it’s ridiculous and oh, so satisfying. It also has a very Sly way of making you want to play through it a 2nd time. Cole’s special attacks changes depending of if you are playing good or evil. To upgrade his powers you have to go into the upgrade menu. This menu cleverly lets you see what the counter version of the power you’re upgrading looks like, and trust me – the grass always looks greener on the other side no matter how you play him. The story changes a bit as well to accommodate the actions of the player. One other thing the game does well is assist you in discovering the “hidden items” that plague so many games. You can tap the L3 button which will tell you if you are near something and if you are you can go find it. No more pouring over areas looking for something that may or may not be there for completion’s sake.

inFAMOUS is not without flaws though. For one the AI of the people in the city could be better in that if there is an guy shooting electricity out of his hands at people shooting automatic weapons at you, maybe you don’t want to run directly in the line of fire. I could understand if it were the police or soldiers, but not pedestrians. Also it’s great that every ledge, pipe, rail or power line sucks you onto it seamlessly without it feeling weird like in some games that auto-correct jumps and landings, but sometimes you just want to freefall but Cole won’t stop grabbing stuff. There’s a few bugs as well with Cole clipping weirdly and being stuck at the top of a ledge unable to climb over without a few extra jump button presses. These are very small gripes in an otherwise great game.

Grade A-

Meta Grade 90