Ok, so... inFamous. Great game. Well.... it's a good game, I guess I wouldn't go so far as to call it great.
First off, the story absolutely blows goats. Even though it has these badass, comic-style cut sequences that are actually really fun to watch, I have no idea what is going on in the game. I've taken as evil a path as is possible for me to take, but really I don't know what that means beyond poisoning people's water supply, visiting random violence on pedestrians and blowing up a police station. The story is just... unimportant, really, and that's too bad because the game is REALLY fun to play.
Seriously, this game is FUN AS FUCK. As you progress and provide more of the city with electricity, you start to unlock powers. Also, it's got an XP system that lets you level up your powers to ridiculous levels. So, much like GTA, that makes it fun to just run around the city, climb stuff and blow things up for hours with no purpose whatsoever.
So, for instance, you have a sort of "force push" kind of power that lets you shove things. Initially, you just use it to shove bad guys off rooftops or push cars into old ladies because you have to be pretty close to objects to effect them... but if you power it up a couple of times, suddenly your push can send 2 or 3 cars cartwheeling down the street 60 or 70 feet, taking out an entire line of bad guys.
Almost all of the powers available to you can be upgraded in this way, so it makes for a real feeling of character progression... that your character is growing more and more evil (or good) and impossibly powerful. Your appearance changes too. My guy's skin is almost grey now with these nasty black veins running all over the place.
Even though it's a video game, there's something satisfying about leaping off a 45 story building, hammering down on the pavement and sending everything within a 20 foot radius flying in an electric explosion.... inFamous is full of visceral, stupid shit like this that makes it really fun to play. I love shoving an angry mob of pedestrians and watching them go from angry to terrified in a split second.
So yeah, it's definitely not a perfect game. A lot of the missions are really repetitive and the city is kind of amorphous and nondescript. Compared to GTA 4, inFamous doesn't even hold a candle to it as far as city design is concerned.
But, for a first effort, inFamous is a lot of fun to play. It makes me psyched for a sequel. What they did get wrong were things that I feel are relatively unimportant to my enjoyment of the game. It's a very satisfying open environment with a solid FPS feel when it comes to fighting, complete with grenades, rockets, sniping... the whole lot. Plus, the scale of your superhero-ness is just awesome. If you've got a PS3, definitely rent this game or wait for it to hit a bargain bin at the very least. It's definitely worth checking out.
