|
dkirschner's Infamous (PS3)
|
| [November 8, 2013 05:38:35 AM]
|
Finished Infamous. It was pretty cool! It's a sort of open world game like GTA meets Assassin's Creed, though not as grand in scale as either. All I knew about it before hand is that you shoot lightning and that there was some good/evil system. That's the nuts and bolts of it.
You play as Cole MacGrath (or McGrath...or Magrath...) and the game begins with you in the center of a giant explosion that's left part of a city in ruins and left you with nascent super powers. Turns out a terrorist organization used you to courier a bomb that blew up en route. Turns out you're a 'conduit' so it doesn't kill you. You discover you have powers, come into contact with an FBI agent, go on the trail of another agent who was captured by said terrorist organization, strengthen your electric super powers, and attempt to track down the terrorist super weapon. The story is pretty good up until the finale, where they used some cheap tricks to set up a sequel. More on that later. There are several questionable moments/holes. The characters are all serviceable, but there's not much to them. Cut scenes are told in graphic novel style, which fits the gritty super hero theme.
The good/evil system works with the gameplay but isn't great with the story at a handful of points. I don't want to give any specific examples for fear of spoiling. I played as evil Cole. Even though I did many evil acts, the story carried on and all the story NPCs continued working with me. There's a particular evil act I did in the end that makes hardly any sense given the bad guy's motives and the game's ending. The bad guy's motives, revealed after you defeat him in the end, are just silly. They are the cheap tricks to set up a sequel, where he spills info about a bunch of shit that wasn't in the game and that I didn't even think was possible in the game's universe. I went on and started the second game to see how it begins, and also evil Cole at the end of the first game makes 0 sense in the context of the beginning of the second, even though I took the option of continuing my Infamous 1 evil story. If you're evil, at the end of Infamous, Cole is basically on top of the world with his powers, rules the city with an iron fist, and is a selfish mass murderer. In the beginning of the second game he's befriended his old friend Zeke again from the first game (play the games, this makes no sense, big plot hole) and is working with some other FBI agent. If he's a super badass who does whatever he wants, why is he out taking orders from government agencies? He has super electricity powers that no one else possesses...
Anyway, the meat of the game is your sizzling electric powers. You unlock more as you go, lightning bolts, grenades, sliding on electric wires and train rails, summoning huge lightning storms, and on and on. There are a lot and they are all cool. You can cause A LOT of mayhem, picking up and flinging cars, blowing up objects, tossing missiles and grenades like there's no tomorrow. It's a ton of fun. The whole setup with electricity is really well done. You need electricity to take full advantage of your powers, but the bad guys obviously don't want you to have electricity, so the game starts with sections of the city off the power grid. Main missions sometimes involve turning on the power to sections of the city, and then you can go there and do stuff. Trains start running, lights turn on, side missions become available, and so on.
There are plenty of side missions to do. I actually found them all good fun. A handful involve killing enemies for one reason or another. One type called 'photographer' involves you doing specific things like 'blow up a car' or 'blast an enemy into the air, then hit him with a grenade' and the photographer takes awesome action shots. In another, you follow a courier and steal his package. Some types open up after story missions of that type. So I had a story mission where I had to disable armored buses that were driving around killing people. That becomes a side mission type. You can also try and do all the 'stunts,' which are destruction-related tasks sort of like the photographer missions. I did 11/21. Whenever you do one, it tells you what the next one to try for is. If I kept playing the game, that's the first thing I would try and do! I got stuck on 'shoot an enemy in midair with a lightning bolt and in the same jump hit him with a ground blast.' I could never get it quite right. There are also the requisite open world collectibles. I was happy to see they served a purpose in this game. Collecting blast shards, which are little blue objects scattered literally anywhere, on the sides of buildings, under bridges, in garbage piles, nets you additional max energy. I enjoyed collecting them for a while, then it began to feel like pixel hunting and I needed more and more shards to get an energy boost so it quit being worth doing. Then there are dead drops, which are little story bits providing some back story on two of the characters. I got almost all of those, 30/32, usually searching for them on the way to missions.
Doing side and story missions nets experience you use to upgrade powers and sometimes nets 5 blast shards, which is a lot! Finding 5 shards can take a while if you're collecting one at a time off the sides of buildings, but some of the side missions take just a minute. Side missions also clear the area of enemies. I did them all on the first island, about half on the second and none on the third. Some side missions are good/evil ones. If you do an evil one it blocks the good one and vice versa. Many of the good/evil options are so black and white it's funny. And Cole has these voiceovers like "Hmm. I could save this person from getting mugged. Or I could just walk away." HMMMMM. Suffice it to say, it is REALLY EASY to choose good or evil and not screw it up.
That's everything off the top of my head. Should knock out Infamous 2 over the weekend. I hope the characters are more interesting and that there are less plot holes and things that don't make sense. Other than that, I'd take more or less the same game, with usual sequel streamlines and improvements!
add a comment 
|
|
|
 |
dkirschner's Infamous (PS3)
|
|
Current Status: Finished playing
GameLog started on: Saturday 2 November, 2013
GameLog closed on: Thursday 7 November, 2013 |
 |
| other GameLogs for this Game |
|
This is the only GameLog for Infamous. |
|
