There's a sort of new trend going on in the third-person genre, one that can be directly linked to the massive success of Resident Evil 4 and Gears of War. Resident Evil 4 introduced an over-the-shoulder camera perspective that did away with the typical third-person perspective for shooters, and years later Gears of War would go on to perfect the setup, creating a trend of games that would strive to achieve the same effect as Epic's game. InFamous, Sony's latest action title, follows this trend, but unlike others, it doesn't use guns.
We've got our preview build of the game some weeks back, and while its an early look into the game, it still gave us a proper impression of the gameplay, which is key. For starters, your main source of power as Cole McGrath is…well, yourself. After getting caught in a massive blast, Cole has slowly gained the ability to control the use electricity that flows through his body. It started out as being barely able to cast a spark, to generating massive shockwaves and withstanding massive jumps from buildings. And the more you play the game, the more powerful Cole will become in your control.
Because Cole was the only survivor of this explosion, an airwave hijacker who calls himself "The Voice of Survival" convinces the city that Cole is a terrorist, turning the population against him. And so this sets up a moral dilemma that you'll encounter throughout parts of the game with civilians. In the first mission, you will put your morality to the test after helping the city receive their supply of food. The test is simple: do you scare the civilians off and take the food for yourself and your buddy Zeke? Or do you let them have the food and wait for something else? Karma plays a major role in the game, and your actions will have an effect on your progression, which makes for a more dynamic experience.
The color of your energy blasts determine your karma level, red being evil, and blue being good. If you go down one path, you can always have a change of heart and take the righteous way, so you won't be forced to stay on the same course of action all throughout the game. We noticed that with different actions, the civilians reacted to Cole differently: if you're evil, they'd run away; if you're good they'd cheer you, give you things, and etc.
Now, as far as the action goes, InFamous plays a lot like other third-person games do, but instead of guns you're using powerful blasts of electricity. You can either shoot electricity using the over-the-shoulder camera, or send out powerful shockwaves that are strong enough to repel massive fireballs and various other attacks, for example. Your fighting style will also differ, depending on your karma level, with good and evil featuring two different styles: aggressive for evil, and defensive for good. But don't get that classification wrong, because Cole is damn powerful in either form, and you'll have anywhere in the neighborhood of 70 different powers at your disposal.
When battling enemies, gameplay felt straightforward, although fell short of feeling amazing. On the smaller enemies you'll primarily use your standard electrical attack, where as boss fights will require the combined use of a number of different powers. Scaling the buildings in the game felt nice, and jumping around Empire City while thousands of feet up is a lot of fun.
Visually, I'm going to refrain from making any final judgments here, as this build indicates some rather early and unfinished work. I will say that the the game world is large, and the framerate has been pretty solid. As far as all of the other details, you'll have to wait until I review the final game for that.
InFamous is going to his May 26th. The build I have in my hands is fairly early and so perhaps the final product will boast tighter action to make the experience feel more amazing. And seeing as how there are a number of bugs in this early preview build, I'd say that there's a good chance that most of the problems will be addressed in the final game. Stay posted, folks.
I cant wait for this 1 gonna be a good year for us Playstation owners!
70 powers ? O-O
I've already pre-ordered.
Being that I've always had a fantasy to have the exact same powers Cole gains, I think I'll enjoy the game quite a lot more simply because it's the first decent outlet of this fantasy I've had.
I don't feel like touching an electricity tower to test if I get these powers too.
I might have to rent first, or wait and see how it stacks up to Prototype. While inFamous sounds sweet and looks sweet I gotta be pickier with where I spend my summer dollars. I assume you'll be handling the review Arnold?
These karma games must be gaining momentum, I just finished a survey study for Play Insights that was all about the good and evil options in games lately.
What's Play Insights?
Oh well I completely agree the two are identical apart from Alex Mercer is cooler that Cole McGrath :O
They are releasing a public demo a few days before the game comes out. That way you can try it out for free. 😉
Yeah, just did their survey too, and it got
me wondering if they did it based on a few RPG's, or it was all the talk about Infamous itself that may have motivated their survey.
(or maybe one of the those same games developer's could've paid to hold the survey).
Just google em city, they have u take surveys about games then enter you to win stuff.
Looking forward to inFamous. And did you say near 70 different powers? Whoa.
already pre-ordered :DDDDD
70 different powers?! Hope the game's long enough for us to use them all.
70 different electrical powers and abilities, I believe.
I out 20$ down already, gonna put the rest down next payday 🙂 can't wait, honestly though the main reason I'm preordering isn't for inFamous 😉
Sounds good to meeh arnold. II already have infamous preordered next week imma go in to gamestop and pay it off.
Last edited by Cpt_Geez on 5/3/2009 10:44:54 PM
Aww so the battles don't feel amazing yet?
Don't mind though, I think this game is gonna' rock the Dragon =D
Infamous & Prototy are totaly diffirent games to me. I have to say that i am more swayed to Infamous than prototype wich looks like a destroy everything kind of game. I checked a promo vid for prototype that showed 10 things u can do most of the were just rediculous stuff that i would not enjoy doing in a sandbox game. Storywise i think prototype is going to be better gameplay wise infamous catches my imagination.
Just wondering, in the last paragraph, first sentence, is it supposed to be "going to hit", instead of "going to is"?
This game looks good. Really looking forward to your full review because I'm still up in the air about whether to buy or not.
Splinter Cell did over-the-shoulder before RE4. And better.