inFamous

He's electric

Blue or red? Good or evil? Chalk or cheese? Bread or crackers? Life is full of tough choices, and the decisions that we make during the course of our brief time on this little blue planet can ripple throughout eternity. Especially that bread or crackers one. In inFamous - another third-party exclusive for the PS3 that is Sony's latest great-white hope currently having high hopes for success thrust upon it - you're constantly asked to make quick moral decisions, which shape the destiny of the game's protagonist and ultimately the outcome of the game.

Playing as delivery guy Cole, you're imbued with special electrical powers when a package you're delivering turns out to be a bomb that levels several blocks in Empire City. With the city then pitched into darkness when the main power grid goes down, chaos ensues as the anarchic, hooded Reapers crawl out of the woodwork and start indiscriminately shooting people and taking them hostage. It then falls to Cole and his dramatic, high voltage powers to restore order to the streets of Empire, whether it's through brave, lawful and heroic means or reckless, destructive and criminal actions.

Immediately calling to mind the moral choice of whether to save or harvest the Little Sisters in BioShock, the path you choose during inFamous' story actually has a direct effect upon the gameplay, granting Cole unique abilities based upon the choices you make. For each action you execute, you generate points that count towards your moral standing in the world as indicated by the meter in the top left corner of the screen. Good actions earn blue XP points, whereas evil actions earn red ones. XP points can then be used to unlock or upgrade Cole's abilities from the pause menu at any time, and different attributes and moves can be acquired depending on whether you're good or evil.

An evil-aligned player will receive destructive red lightning powers for instance, enabling Cole to project a more destructive stream of electric death than usual. Good players can still unlock powerful abilities such as sticky electric bombs, but the path of evil invariably grants more devastating skills with which to wreak havoc. Choices continue to occur throughout the game, with Cole able to either humanely tether Reapers to the ground for the cops to pick up later or Bio Leech their life force from their limp bodies. Certain missions can only be played if you're sufficiently good or bad enough with completion of such tasks removing enemies from that region of the city and locking out the evil mission in that area if you're good, and vice-versa.

The spirit of developer Sucker Punch's Sly Raccoon lives on in Cole's athleticism and perfect balance walking along tightrope wires, but it would be far more accurate to say that inFamous is an open-world game that fuses the superpowers and freedom of Crackdown with the agility of Altair in Assassin's Creed. Cole can lithely jump between rooftops, intuitively grabbing onto any climbable part of the scenery or balancing on beams or wires like Philippe Petit (the man that walked between the two towers in New York on a tightrope in 1974, in case you're wondering). A fall from a great height won't kill Cole either, so you can leap from tall buildings without fear that you'll end up a red smear on the road below.

As powerful as Cole is though, it doesn't mean squat if you haven't got an overall goal to accomplish and yours is to restore electricity to the blacked-out streets, re-establishing order and civilisation in the process. Empire is comprised of three large islands connected by bridges, which Cole must gradually re-illuminate section by section. To do this, Cole must fight his way through the sewer systems in order to locate and activate the broken circuits. Each time you fix an underground power source, another portion of the neighbourhood is rejuvenated, with lights flickering back into life and the scared, oppressed population walk the streets without fear once more. Completing yellow marker missions then liberates a small section of the map from the Reapers, rendering the close vicinity safe and hospitable, with police stations and clinics reopening their doors.

As you steadily repair the city one piece at a time, posters bearing your face will pop up, gaining you a reputation amongst the people of Empire. Being good will have them clapping, whistling and trying to take your picture, whereas being evil will have the opposite effect upon your status. Either way, Empire City is a big place and will take you a good while to clean up or destroy depending upon which path you choose. Visually, the streets still bear the scars of the devastating blast, burnt out, crumpled cars, rubble and debris lining the sides of the roads as people drift by, some huddled around burning oil drums for warmth. It's a dystopian vision, complemented by what initially seems like a jarring art style, considering the bleak darkness of the game's narrative.

Punctuated by ink-spattered illustrations, the in-game graphics themselves are slightly cartoon-like, reminiscent of these intermittent story-driven sequences. Somehow, the cut-scenes don't hang together quite as well as they might within the context of the rest of the game however, and the dodgy animation and sub-par lip syncing applied to some of the NPCs doesn't particularly help matters either. In fact the animation and gestures of Cole's buddy Zeke at the beginning of the game actually caused me to hate him, which clearly wasn't supposed to be the case.

Eventually the look of the game grows on you, and once you're entrenched and engaged by the experience's many immersive activities, the entire thing begins to make sense and develops into one of the finest sandbox titles available for PS3. It may not reinvent the wheel as far as the open-world genre is concerned, but in crafting a suitably compelling and eminently playable title, Sucker Punch have shaken off the child-friendly shackles of their Sly Cooper games and produced something distinctly dark and mature, that simply demands to be played.

85%

By Richard Walker