inFAMOUS is a decent experience overall, but its frequent foreshadowing towards that bomb-drop of an ending is unforgettable. Certainly blew my mind as a kid, quickly becoming one of the most memorable video game endings during my childhood. And that still holds up.
There's a lot to like here, from each new ability instilling a sense of great power to the city's hopeless atmosphere. The script is dark and delivered with a satisfying dryness. Cole never feels like a goody-two-shoes hero, even when the player is at the maximum in the "Hero" meter. There's a lot of morally ambiguous lines of dialogue, and it seems he's constantly struggling with a balance between selfishness and selflessness, even if the player is making the "good" choices.
Many of inFAMOUS' side-missions are not fun, with some of the worst being when the player is doing cool tricks for a photographer, or when you need to steathily follow a guy with a package (in a game where stealth is non-existant), or when you need to scour every corner of a building to find surveillance devices to destroy. These all suck. I stopped trying to complete them after the first island.
The game's main missions are fun, with the setpieces where the player is climbing the tower or exploring the junkyard city being pretty memorable. All of the gangs are also friggin' cool. The Reapers are like weird shadowy people, and the junk fellers straight up just have scrap all over them.
Zeke is pretty obnoxious, although I respect how flawed Sucker Punch attempts to make him. His decisions throughout the game paint him as someone the player is supposed to hate, but his constant self-doubt and self-loathing makes him feel real.
While all of this might make it sound like inFAMOUS is a great game, the base mechanics that surround this experience aren't particularly fun. There's really nothing to do in Empire City. You can do the game's side-missions, but they're small objectives that feel surprisingly inconsequential. inFAMOUS seems like it could've been more effective if it were a linear experience, as the game essentially came down to me just running from one part of the city to another to get to the main missions. However, the benefit of the cities being open means that you can freely parkour and grind on the train rails. That stuff is pretty cool.
My overall verdict here is that I like inFAMOUS' main campaign. Cole's electricity abilities are satisfying and even though the story can be a bit boring, there are some cool twists and turns. But I hate inFAMOUS' side-missions and I think the open-world is subpar. Its XP progression systems are fine, but I never felt any incentive to collect blast shards or jump around the city for fun.
There's a lot to like here, from each new ability instilling a sense of great power to the city's hopeless atmosphere. The script is dark and delivered with a satisfying dryness. Cole never feels like a goody-two-shoes hero, even when the player is at the maximum in the "Hero" meter. There's a lot of morally ambiguous lines of dialogue, and it seems he's constantly struggling with a balance between selfishness and selflessness, even if the player is making the "good" choices.
Many of inFAMOUS' side-missions are not fun, with some of the worst being when the player is doing cool tricks for a photographer, or when you need to steathily follow a guy with a package (in a game where stealth is non-existant), or when you need to scour every corner of a building to find surveillance devices to destroy. These all suck. I stopped trying to complete them after the first island.
The game's main missions are fun, with the setpieces where the player is climbing the tower or exploring the junkyard city being pretty memorable. All of the gangs are also friggin' cool. The Reapers are like weird shadowy people, and the junk fellers straight up just have scrap all over them.
Zeke is pretty obnoxious, although I respect how flawed Sucker Punch attempts to make him. His decisions throughout the game paint him as someone the player is supposed to hate, but his constant self-doubt and self-loathing makes him feel real.
While all of this might make it sound like inFAMOUS is a great game, the base mechanics that surround this experience aren't particularly fun. There's really nothing to do in Empire City. You can do the game's side-missions, but they're small objectives that feel surprisingly inconsequential. inFAMOUS seems like it could've been more effective if it were a linear experience, as the game essentially came down to me just running from one part of the city to another to get to the main missions. However, the benefit of the cities being open means that you can freely parkour and grind on the train rails. That stuff is pretty cool.
My overall verdict here is that I like inFAMOUS' main campaign. Cole's electricity abilities are satisfying and even though the story can be a bit boring, there are some cool twists and turns. But I hate inFAMOUS' side-missions and I think the open-world is subpar. Its XP progression systems are fine, but I never felt any incentive to collect blast shards or jump around the city for fun.