Infamous is an open world action adventure “mid 2000s edgy superhero simulator” developed exclusively for the Playstation 3 by developers Sucker Punch studios, known previously for games series such as the Sly Cooper franchise before and afterwards Ghosts of Tsushima, which is apparently poised to become the developer’s next hit franchise if it’s to be believed. From what’s to be believed about the development history, it was created to be a huge change of pace from Sly Cooper, which was traditionally a more child friendly heist game to something new and fresh, pitching numerous games before settling on something they called “True Hero”. This was supposed to be an Animal Crossing styled game where you could make choices that affect the world around you; this morphed into something that took heavy influences from comics such as DMZ and Batman: No Man’s Land as well as The Dark Knight Trilogy for it’s dark and gritty aesthetic, morphing the series to what it’s known today. My personal experience with this game is that I played it once at a Gamestop in one of those kiosks they lock the PS3 in, and this was one of the only games that looked interesting. Trying out a mission that they had, I was extremely impressed with how you could grind on the rails, the environment around you, and how I felt the Reapers as a gang looked cool as hell. From then on I was a fan even as an Xbox 360 kid, from watching playthroughs to even buying the damn walkthrough and reading it sometimes when I was bored because I was lonely and had no friends as a kid. Finally one day on a whim, I decided that I would pick up a PS3 and whereas I don’t remember all the games I had when I first got it, I remember getting PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale, Yakuza 3 and this game.

Infamous starts out with a “shock” (bad pun intended); you see a normal, New York City styled location named Empire City in the thralls of a normal day, that is at least until you press the start button. The power goes out throughout the city and as a normal civilian you see a giant electric dome encompassing an entire city block while a voice checks someone for their pulse, ending it with “Lookin’ good, Cole”. From here you wake up as Cole himself, burnt to a crisp and waking up right in the center of the explosion with everything having gone to hell around you. Your best friend Zeke calls you worried sick, explaining that “terrorists” have exploded stuff all around the city, however you know something is up when you get zapped with electricity and feel absolutely no pain, and in another instance lightning starts striking around you, killing police in the vicinity. You run across the bridge nearby falling unconscious as your nurse girlfriend, Trish, comes to your aid. This tragedy has taken the lives of a lot of people, including Trish’s sister, and that’ll later come back into play. A plague later struck and chaos emerged, with crime getting worse and the military establishing a quarantine on the entire city when his power emerges and he's able to be controlled at least two weeks later and he’s able to control it. I love this introduction, it’s a great way of establishing the setting at hand, and leaving a little bit of mystery as to what’s going on, while leaving a couple of hints that it’s deeper than it seems to those that aren’t fully aware of what’s happening in the plot.

From here, the next mission is made to establish one of the main features in Infamous: the karma. A man proclaiming himself to be “The Voice of Survival” pops up on the TV after hacking the signal and says that food is going to be airdropped into the district square. Cole and Zeke pop over, and Trish plans to meet you there. After climbing up a nearby statue and cutting down the food, the Reapers, a local gang consisting of people in red hoodies with skulls on them, attack and plan to steal it for themselves. Cole uses his powers to fight them off when you’re presented with your first choice: you could either zap a few people and make them run away and leave you with the food (which is the Bad Choice) or you could let the people take some (which is the Good choice). However yet again, The Voice of Survival pops up on a nearby billboard and throws the responsibility for the outbreak on you; regardless Trish leaves Cole, heartbroken over her sister’s death and everyone around him except Zeke starts an active mob against him. Cole doesn’t remember much about the explosion, except that he was running around trying to deliver something for someone as a courier but that’ll soon become clear. Zeke decides you two need to escape through the bridge at the bottom of the city, and when you two meet up and attempt to break through quarantine it ends up with almost every civilian dead except Cole and Zeke again and Cole meets someone new: an FBI agent named Moya, who recruits Cole for a job: her husband, a fellow agent named John White, had attempted to infiltrate an organization named the First Sons, a group working on a project known as the “Ray Sphere”. If he finds John and the Ray Sphere, she clears his name and gets him out of the quarantine; while not exactly trustworthy he has no choice if he wants to get out of the city alive.

Basically from here is where I quickly summarize plot points to make it to the end quick; from here you end up attempting to reconcile with Trish by helping her save people, take back the city from their respective gangs by doing side missions, attempting to assist Zeke in getting laid and helping Moya find traces of her husband via dead drops (leading to story bits once you collect all of them) and through covert activities. Eventually you restore the Neon District’s power supply and fight Sasha, the leader of the Reapers, who has taunted Cole about his former girlfriend Trish and is claiming that he loves him. You’ll also at one point (before the Sasha fight) run into a strange man in a white robe named Kessler, who shoves his hands onto your head in an ambush to show you horrible visions before disappearing entirely; this’ll all work out in the end to a twist I actually really like, and all of this’ll also all come to ahead later so bear with me, but after a battle with her she gets kidnapped by the shadowy First Sons and you land in the Warren District, controlled by the homeless vagrant Alden.

You continue through various missions until Cole, Zeke and the police end up capturing Alden; though before or after this mission depending on your Karma you either finally reconcile with Trish or she ultimately rejects you for being a bastard. Nonetheless, after the mission where Cole, Zeke and the Police try to protect Alden from being reclaimed by his Dust Men brethren (the Dust Men being a group of heavily armed homeless men with guns and suicide bombs), you’ll begin to truly notice Zeke’s arc if you haven’t before. Zeke’s arc once you get into the Warren consists of jealousy, stupidity, and greed; he got captured once before because he wanted to be a hero like you and tried to sneak into a place to find info for you, and in this mission he abandons protecting Alden to play hero outside in the courtyard, which somehow leads to his escape. Though in this case I’ll defend Zeke’s actions here, though for the wrong reasons. Everyone guarding Alden is a trained cop, and if he hadn’t abandoned his post he probably would’ve been killed alongside everyone else, especially for his lack of training so even if it was for the wrong reasons it’s still understood (though I could’ve misread things here). I’ll even point out that though I love the story and the environment, some of the characters are kind of trope-y. To me, Zeke is a caricature of what a nuanced character should’ve been, someone with flaws who instead kind of comes off as a douchebag who throws a temper tantrum over his jealousy of Cole’s powers instead of recognizing the situation he’s in. I’m not saying that there aren’t people like him, it’s just that the way he feels characterized personally in the game is just one I don’t really care for. A lesser offender is Trish, who stereotypically treats you like trash a bit but can be reconciled with the fact that her sister died and she’s still trying to deal with the reality that even though you were the love of her life, it doesn’t help the fact that you are technically the reasons she died. Regardless though, Zeke is the main offender and when you two attempt to take control of the Ray Sphere in his possession, he eventually betrays you for this game’s main bad guy: Kessler, who promises him that he will be able to give him the powers that he’s been seeking after Zeke attempts to activate the Ray Sphere and kills thousands of more people only for it not to work; again it’s kind of a “fucking seriously?” moment and doesn’t make him feel redeemable in the slightest. After he betrays you to Kessler, you escape Alden’s giant tower before learning of the oncoming gang war between the Dust Men and the First Sons over Alden’s “birthright”. You fight Alden in a boss battle on the bridge and after you defeat him you learn that his “birthright” was that his father used to lead the First Sons, and that he was destined to be the heir until Kessler came out of nowhere and overthrew him, leaving Alden homeless and on the streets as a child.

Fighting through the Historic District is the most poignant and memorable part of the game to me, with each act having it’s strengths but with this final act being the most significant of them all; you work with John White (who turns out to be NSA, not FBI) and learn that Moya isn’t his wife and that he doesn’t even know her, Cole has been being used this entire time while trying to search for the Ray Sphere. Of course this was predictable for me as well, Moya’s demeanor has never really been anything other than that of someone using her plaything to do what she wants so that was also kind of predictable. While you fight the First Sons and Kessler, he kidnaps Trish and kills her in a karma choice gambit, with your karma determining whether or not she’s proud of you or disowns you entirely; and all the while he contacts you a bit about your progress as a person, with ominous premonitions on “preparing you” for something, with Trish being only one test. Zeke attempts to contact Cole as well to apologize but rightfully gets the cold shoulder for being a selfish bastard and after cutting Moya off, John and Cole finally find the Ray Sphere as it’s about to be brought out to sea. From here you get one of, if not the most important choices in the game: activate the Ray Sphere one last time or destroy it; activating it gets you more power and more people die while destroying gives you nothing, but either way John dies in the Ray Sphere blast and the entire dock goes into the ocean. With this, Kesslar challenges you to a final battle at the original site of the blast and several things are learned after defeating him, with the attempted help of Zeke who wants to redeem himself but gets thrown across the crater.

If you had followed some of the foreshadowing hinted throughout the game (ex. Sasha calling you Kessler and telling you she loves you, Alden comparing you and Kessler as “one in the same” which could be mistaken for a comparison, the John White Dead Drops, and some other clues I didn’t catch thanks to TV tropes) everything went down like this. Kessler was the one who hired you to bring the Ray Sphere to a certain location to “open the package”, leading to the events of the game. Sasha and Alden are connected to Kessler because Sasha used to date him and Alden used to be the heir of the First Sons and we’re eventually planning on overthrowing him together before Sasha got thrown out and turned to drugs (where her toxin is later used out of torture as another test of Cole’s character), the Dead Drops hinting at “Kessler” activating the Ray Sphere and “some kid” was located next to it, the strange visions and even the “Voice of Survival” being killed on live tv after fulfilling his purpose (which was to turn everyone against Cole). Kessler is actually Cole MacGrath from the future, a future where instead of fighting a world ending being known as The Beast, decides to run away with his family, having married Trish with Zeke as his best man. However, by the time he wanted to fight back it was too late, everyone died and the world was near the end after the Beast had chased Kessler across the planet. With one goal in mind, Kessler traveled to the past in order to change several moments: turning people against you in quarantine, killing Trish, showing you these visions, scolding and taunting you; these were all to prepare you for an even greater threat looming in the horizon. After Kessler dies, Cole comes to reckoning with his powers and prepares for what’s ahead, with the final ending (either Cole ruining the city and making it worse or helping Empire City heal) determined by your karma (shoutout to the evil version being corrupted with toxic veins covering your body), with Cole finally lamenting that he’ll probably always be alone in his path as almost everyone close to him has betrayed him or died, and that anyone can turn on him at the drop of the hat if he makes one mistake.

Overall what do I think of this story? I liked it a lot; there was some weak mischaracterization on some people, with only one character I didn’t really feel fit much (that being Zeke), and while not everyone was super fleshed out, I actually thought most of them we’re interesting and I wanted to know more about them. I liked Cole as a character, his gravelly voice mixed in with his frustration at the situation and the love he has for his friends make him a flawed but memorable character and thought Kessler was memorable and that twist with the foreshadowing was fantastic. I enjoyed Sasha’s toxin power being sort of a parallel to her being a toxic person (with her relationship with Kessler being hinted as toxic), and the plot dealing with the hunt for the Ray Sphere was compelling. I’ve heard arguments on whether or not the Karma system was good or not, with arguments against it saying that it wasn’t “nuanced” enough. I don’t necessarily mind, I see where they’re coming from but sometimes I prefer it to be blatantly obvious good or evil, as I don’t always want to have to constantly think about every possible unknown factor in a game to get the ending I want. Even then, depending on what you plan on doing if you’re going for a Good playthrough you’ll have to balance combat with the environment around you making sure you don’t get hurt anyways, which leads into the next section: the gameplay.

The gameplay consists of what is usual in an open world action game of this type; you go around and fight gang members and/or police, obtain collectibles, complete missions along with side quests, and generally climb around the city to your heart's content. What I’ll start with here is your main power/transportation: your main power is electricity, which means shooting lightning bolts out of your hands along with other powers which include a force field, healing people or leaching the life out of them for a energy refill, a sort of force push, amongst other powers that you unlock over time with story moments and experience point unlocks. Your powers won’t last for long however if you use anything other than the default lightning bolts so you’ll have to recharge through numerous environmental elements such as neon signs, circuit breakers, destroyed cars, light posts and pretty much anything that contains electricity which actually feels really good and ties into the environment neatly. There’s also a bit of a strategic element to this factor, as draining these elements bring your health back up in a jam if you need it from the damage you take, and can actually be kind of stressful in a strategic kind of way if you’re retreating. Keep in mind that your health comes back naturally over time, but it’s a lot quicker to just drain something though after you drain it, depending on what it is it either takes a while to come back to full power or it doesn’t come back at all. The powers are varied enough that it feels pretty solid for whichever approach you take, and feels pretty powerful eviscerating an area full of goons trying to wipe you out.

Another aspect of this is parkour; Cole has been free running and climbing and as such that is your main and only way around the environment. There is no fast travel and no vehicles, it’s only you and your movement. In spirit it’s a great concept, and when pulled off properly it works great; with this in mind there are upsides and downsides. The main upside is that it’s not really restrictive like the Assassin’s Creed games were at the time, you move by tapping X and continuously tapping it as you climb the buildings and you move the directions that for the most part feel pretty fluid. However the parkour in this game is very…particular as well; you’ll sometimes try to climb certain places and miss your mark entirely because Cole decides to go a different direction, and sometimes Cole just refuses to walk into a small area a particular way because there’s an invisible wall that pushes him back and so you have to kind of finagle yourself into the area via jumping over it or running around it which pretty much works the problem out though sometimes trying to get certain blast shards leads to dying if it’s near the water (because water and electricity equals death).

Then there’s the environment mixed with the combat; the amount of times I died because I was beating some guy up next to a car from full health is strange, same with killing a guy who morphs into an empty barrel which somehow kicks me in the head and kills me instantly it’s pretty frustrating in an unintentional way (though it could be explained due to a smaller team and budget). Also grinding the rails and across telephone lines feels pretty solid, though it takes time to truly master hopping from wire to wire as the physics of motion can really make you overshoot or miss entirely if you don’t do it early enough or if you don’t slow down. Overall this aspect is pretty solid for the most part, everything kind of fits together minus the strange parkour sometimes but it can be done pretty well, surprisingly so even on the hardest difficulty (which I did for the plat of course) which wasn’t really frustrating due to the open ended nature of the game compared to something like Uncharted’s difficulty. However, the hard mode also gives you less XP which means you’ll have to hit up some spots to grind out enemies for a long time or knock everything out in one go and go into certain missions underpowered. This can be especially frustrating considering what powers were upgraded beforehand to fight against some of the special enemies (or the deadliest enemy in the game: Turrets).

Each gang has their own special gang members, or conduits, that set themselves apart from the normal run and gun soldiers. The Reapers have giant white hoodie fuckers that teleport everywhere and can be a general nuisance, whilst the Dust Men have guys who shoot out little garbage crabs and also wield a rocket launcher to the First Sons having guys who can grow a bit taller and stomp you out. However with this in mind, I like the variation of each gang and how it makes them unique, and truth be told outside of side missions I wish I could see these guys try to stomp each other out more. Speaking of which, feeding into the XP thing: Missions/Side Missions. Other than the main forty story missions, the world mostly consist of you going around on side errands, some of which are unique to the mission and have karma moments and some repeat; like draining listening devices off of buildings or escorting certain NPCs and shocking them when they try to escape to just killing them off. What I can say is that if you’re trying to go for all the powers, especially on Hard, you won’t be able to get enough XP to unlock all the upgrades unless you grind enemies for a while; and when you beat these missions they both barely give you XP as a reward and on top of that they remove most of the gang influence from the territory making it so that it’s harder to find these gang members to grind. It’s kind of a frustrating process to deal with and as such if you’re going for the platinum you have to keep an eye out for that sort of thing, however if you’re a casual player then it’s not a really big deal.

Collectibles such as the Blast Shards don’t give you much XP either, with 350 overall to collect and I believe around 5 XP with each one you’ll get about 1,750 XP for all of them, and that’s not really enough to cover much in the way of upgrades. However they are useful for two things: upgrading your power meter so you can use more and for when you play Infamous 2; if you collect half the blast shards then you get a whopping TWO extra blast cores. Overall, this side it’s not too bad; it feels good to use the powers and strategy to fight and when you do it really well it feels amazing, it’s just some of the other things that can be kind of iffy to deal with. Also, there isn’t much in the way of replayability after these missions and extra objectives (including stunts, which require you to perform certain tricks for XP as well as a trophy) so it’s a bit of an empty world otherwise and I wish there was something more substantial but for what we got I guess I can’t complain too much here.

The atmosphere/soundtrack/sound design/art design are pretty top notch for the most part if I were to say myself. The atmosphere is as said earlier inspired by gritty superhero comics and movies; and you could blatantly tell due to a lot of the main colors being gray and black, a hostile environment that is basically drained of its life, which made me feel uneasy playing it (especially in areas where I haven’t unlocked the power yet. Empire City to me is definitely a living and breathing character on its own (with some of the details such as walking through small puddles shocking the area around it and maybe killing someone if they walk on the same puddle as you being a cool detail), though more of a shell or a husk of one that is slowly fading into oblivion. Though plenty of games feature cities that are gritty and near collapse, I can still remember pretty much almost every part of the game’s map, mixed in with the sky being either pitch black, blue or red depending on your level of karma at the end of the game. The art design of the characters really fits with me as well, with everyone struggling to survive and looking mostly tattered (though Zeke just looks like Elvis so I don’t know how I feel there), and the gangs? Oh god the gangs in this game look great, from the flashy Reapers gang wearing those red hoods to the camouflage the Dust Men have hiding within the trashy environment of the slums to the militarized First Sons organization that looks straight out of a post apocalypse movie. The comic book aesthetic in the cutscenes really play to that strength as well, with pretty much every cutscene being straight out of a graphic novel which when mixed with the voice acting is pretty solid. Compared to Infamous 2’s version of Cole, I happen to like Jason Cottle’s version of Cole MacGrath a lot more due to it’s deep and gravelly voice; he also does his role as Alden Tate pretty well too in comparison that I couldn’t tell the difference between the two roles and thought it was different altogether. Other standouts include Caleb Moody as Zeke, October Moore as Trish and one of my favorites: Phil Lamar as John White. Everyone does a pretty solid job voicing their roles and not once was I brought out of the moment playing the game by strange voice acting choices. Sound Design is also fantastic, with the lightning effects making your attacks really sound punchy, noises all sound like what they’re supposed to be, and truthfully I can’t really complain about anything sound wise. To finish it off, the soundtrack is pretty solid too, nothing that I’d listen to on the way to work but it’s pretty good at bringing you into the moment and not letting go, with a lot of dark ambience mixed with fast paced drums, which was made using environmental object sounds and using them with other, more traditional instruments. I feel that all of these things kind of line up with each other in a way that really makes it unique, if not in general than at least to me.

To finally answer the questions. Is it good and is it worth playing? Yeah, I personally think so. It has a couple of flaws here and there, some mix ups that could’ve been done better but overall I liked it a lot when I first played it and I still feel the same way I did all those years ago when I first played this on the Gamestop Kiosk for the first mission and down to playing it for real as my first Playstation 3 game ever. Following the first title there were sequels, comic book tie ins and a movie that was announced before nothing ever came of it ever again; still though this game, whilst not perfect, lives on in my heart as something that may be a tad flawed here and there but fills me with a time full of nostalgia every time I sit down and play it. I think if anything, the only true downside to this game is that, yet again, it hasn’t been ported to PC and is currently stuck on the Playstation 3 platform or on PS Plus if you really feel like paying all that money out the ass to stream the game. I’m glad I was able to sit down and finally wrap up the platinum after so many years from starting it as my first PS3 game, and eventually I plan to sit down and platinum Infamous 2 before writing up retrospectives on the other games in the series. And as for what happened a bit before/after the game was released? A rivalry with Prototype, a similar open world action game featuring a dark and gritty storyline that apparently had a challenge involving drawing the opposition's main character in lingerie after a challenge by Yahtzee which…interesting. That and more Infamous sequels, 1 of which was great, and the other one not so great, but that’s just the way things work sometimes, along with spin-off games and even comic books, which inspired the series to begin with along with a place in games such as Playstation All Stars Battle Royale and even the PS3 version of Street Fighter X Tekken. I doubt they’ll come out with another Infamous game anytime soon but truth be told I miss this series, and hope that they at least decide to re-release these games on Next Gen/PC ports (even the mixed feeling Second Son arc as I’d call it) because these games had something, a lightning in a bottle (no pun intended this time) feeling that not a lot of titles can really bring back for me.

Links;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv1AHs6-cfE&ab_channel=F4m1LyGuy10

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/InFAMOUS

https://infamous.fandom.com/wiki/Infamous#Behind_the_scenes

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1458923/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm

https://infamous.fandom.com/wiki/Infamous:_Post_Blast

https://infamous.fandom.com/wiki/Infamous_(comics)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infamous_(video_game)

https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2013/05/22/the-origins-of-infamous.aspx

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucker_Punch_Productions