I have to admit that watching the video review of inFamous was the spark that ignited my interest in buying a PS3. I don’t normally go in for open world sandbox games, but for some reason this one looked different.
My problem with sandbox games is the repetitive nature of the fetch quests. Go here and bring back this, rinse and repeat. GTA was like this for me. There was little to do in between these side missions, so I got bored easily. Plus I hated the vehicle missions.
I was happy to find inFamous had more in common with games like Naruto: Rise of a Ninja than of GTA. There was plenty to do in between side and main missions, and it felt more like an open world platformer than anything else.
I chose to go the Hero route for my first play through, which wasn’t as hard as you might think. Sure, you have to heal a ton of people, but I never really lost more than half a slot of karma at any point during the game due to dealing with enemies in proximity to bystanders.
The game itself never felt insurmountable, but did have quite a few annoying enemy cluster parts, where you were completely swarmed with enemies around the objective point. The bosses were fairly easy to deal with and figure out on the normal setting.
I have two gripes with the game, which aren’t really all that big. Cole is very clingy to his environment, which makes climbing things fairly easy. Getting down can be a hassle though, as he wants to attach himself to every little ledge on the way down. I was caught out several times simply because he wouldn’t immediately drop to the ground.
My other complaint is with the ridiculous accuracy of the enemies’ firing range. I was repeatedly getting shot from what seemed like a half mile away at times. To be fair my electric shock reached that far, so I guess all’s fair, but it was annoying trying to find the apparent sniper five buildings over hitting you over and over again.
Those two gripes aside, inFamous is a great game. I’m happy with the outcome of the story and look forward to playing it again as a villain to see how much things change.
