In recent years, developers of superhero games have embraced the open world gameplay for their latest titles - Superman, Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk have all appeared in open world action games with varying degrees of success. Popular licenses are notoriously inflexible as any superhero game developer will testify, so the team at Sucker Punch has decided to create their own comic book-style superhero in their latest offering, InFamous. A mix of high quality action, a huge detailed world and an intriguing story help to make InFamous something that most other recent superhero games were not: great.

Sucker Punch does its best to embrace the comic book style of presentation and story-telling throughout InFamous. The game starts out with a fairly typical origin story, the player’s character, Cole McGrath is a fairly honest bike messenger whose latest package just happened to contain some sort of weapon of mass destruction that levelled a good chunk of Empire City and left him with crazy electric powers. To make matters worse, the attack has resulted in Empire City being quarantined, setting off a bunch of gangs and a few other super-powered loonies to terrorise the remaining populace.


With the help of Cole’s bumbling but well-meaning friend Zeke and now ex-girlfriend Trish, players need to defeat the evils tearing the remnants of Empire City apart, and discover who was behind the explosion that gave Cole his powers. The story does have slow moments, but the way in which it is communicated, mainly through the lovely hand drawn comic scenes (and the in-game “dead drops” which explain the back story), is really good and it all leads up to a really good ending that’ll leave you salivating for more.

Cole is made out to be an everyman, so a big portion of the game is dedicated to the moral quandary of having superhuman abilities. Do you use your newfound powers for good, or do you use them to take over the city? Yes, it’s another game with pretty cut-and-dry choices between good and evil, but there is functional purpose behind Cole’s alignment in that it helps to determine which powers he develops (and the colour of his lightning). Several situations arise during the game that require you to make a choice then and there between a good and evil option – the first requires you to decide whether you will share a bunch of food with the people, or take it for Cole and Zeke, but they get a bit heavier as the story progresses. You’ll want to stick to a particular karmic path for the duration of your playthrough, as your rank is tied directly to the potency of your powers – sitting in the moral grey area will leave you weakened.

Before one can be a jacked up lightning-wielding bad-ass you have to unlock Cole’s various powers, which are essentially tied to story progression. Cole needs to re-establish power across Empire City’s three islands, and every time you do, you get a new ability. You start out with the basic lightning bolt attack, which is kind of weak, making the game seem overly difficult. Fortunately, it doesn’t take too long to start gaining new abilities like a shockwave to blow people out of your way, a lightning shield to absorb gunfire, electric grenades and rockets and a really spectacular lightning strike. Powers have varying effects based on Cole’s alignment; when you’re on the side of good, most of your abilities act in a way that minimises collateral damage, e.g. by temporarily suspending enemies in the air, or knocking them back. On the other hand, evil powers will soak everything in Cole’s path in electricity. Experience points are required to upgrade powers, and are earned through defeating enemies, completing missions, and helping out people on the street.


If you’re intent on being good through the game, it means you have to put up with being a little weaker. That reduced destructive power can be a real burden when the game throws a lot of enemies at you; an occurrence that happens all too often. Getting overwhelmed like that can be particularly frustrating due to Cole’s slow regeneration ability, unless you’ve got a nearby power source to draw energy from, which in turn just exposes you to more enemy fire and usually results in a cheap death. That’s not to suggest that the game’s combat is remotely bad though; the depth of powers lets you unleash some amazing attack combinations on your enemies. Most of the game’s enemies are not to be taken lightly though as they’re both smart and dangerous, particularly the conduits, which also have super powers.

Navigating Empire City is a breeze thanks to Cole’s parkour talents, which have only been enhanced by his newfound electrical powers. Sucker Punch has drawn on their substantial experience in developing platform games to make exploring Empire City a game within itself. Cole can scale just about any surface (with the exception of chain link fences, for reasons unexplained), making climbing buildings a breeze. You can’t travel across the city as fast as you can in other open world superhero games, but Cole isn’t a complete slouch – power lines and train rails serve as a means for speedy transit. Some players might get a bit annoyed at the fact that the game gives a high level of assistance when it comes to platforming, as Cole is guided towards grab-able and climbable objects when he draws near them. The overall experience is a positive though, thanks largely to some excellent platforming set pieces in the middle of the game.

InFamous’ main set of around 40 missions will take players at least 15 hours, but there’s plenty of side content on offer to stretch that out. Side missions allow players to claim back parts of the city from gang control by running through your usual set of non-story duties like racing between checkpoints, protecting groups of survivors or buildings from gang attacks and stuff like that. There’s also a set of 350 electrical shards to find; grabbing these increases Cole’s electricity meter, so it’s not entirely useless. Players can use his sensing power to detect them on the radar, making the search much less frustrating. There’s also a “stunt list” which encourages the player to defeat enemies in a particular fashion in exchange for an experience boost.


Sucker Punch has done an excellent job with InFamous’ visual design, though it is not without fault. The city is rich with detail and carefully crafted so as to not just be another bunch of tall grey boxes like we experienced in the recent Spider-Man and Hulk games. Each portion of the city has a unique identity and is rich with life and activity. The character designs are quite good, fitting in line with what you’d expect from a comic book-inspired concept. The game’s problems are two-fold; the frame rate has a tendency to die whenever the action heats up, and the character animation is not up to the standard you’d expect, particularly from a studio like Sucker Punch whose previous game was noted for silky smooth animation. The game features a reasonably good cast of voice actors, and the soundtrack is better than expected.

Superhero games have largely been disappointing in recent years, but Sucker Punch has done an excellent job with InFamous, creating an intriguing character, a rich, detailed world and an engaging story. That would all mean nothing without solid gameplay, and that’s something that InFamous has in spades. It falls short in a few places; the difficulty balance is a bit out of whack and the binary moral choice system is a little too forced in this case. The game also has a few technical issues that you wouldn’t have expected from Sucker Punch, whose recent games have featured great animation and rock solid framerates. Fortunately, InFamous’ strengths greatly outnumber its weaknesses, resulting in one of the finest action games on the PlayStation 3 this year.