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inFamous is an action/adventure game developed by the masterminds behind the Sly Cooper series – Sucker Punch Productions. Developed and released as a PS3 exclusive, inFamous mixed the impressive powers and gameplay mechanics you’d expect from a superhero comic with the platforming prowess of Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted. It’s release nearly two years ago saw fairly positive responses from players, other developers and critics alike. But with a sequel to inFamous about to be released, and an offer of picking it up for free as compensation from Sony, how does it measure up now?

The game starts off with a bang. Literally. You are Cole, a delivery boy sent to deliver a packages around Empire City – a fictional city based on New York. One day, one of Cole’s deliveries goes catastrophically wrong, his package explodes with him at the epicentre. This is no ordinary explosion though, the bomb sends an electronic shockwave for several hundred metres – absorbing all of the electricity nearby. This electricity is forced into Cole, causing him to develop electric superpowers – the premise on which the game operates.

Heavily stylised comic-book cutscenes do a great job of advancing the story.

The story focuses on Cole’s struggle in Empire City as the population turn on him for causing the explosion, and his quest to find answers on why it had to be him to develop superpowers. As the story develops, you are given various choices which affect how NPCs in the game react to you, each choice you make will either give you bad karma or good karma. Karma is used to measure what sort of superhero you are – whether you are one with the citizens at heart, or a supervillain who only looks out for himself. What was sad to see though, is that no matter which way you play the game, the main story plays out in exactly the same way (with the exception of a few different cutscenes).

The story is advanced through heavily stylised cutscenes – much resembling the comic-book style which the superpower element of the game is taken from. Each cutscene is beautifully detailed, and its clear a lot of effort has gone into making the artwork such a great aide to advance the story.

One of the best things about the karma mechanics are that each karma has unique powers as well as tweaked powers. For example, throwing an electric grenade as a villain will spawn smaller grenades next to it to make as much damages as possible (also damaging nearby citizens). As you grow more evil or good, your electricity and character will change – as a very evil character your electricity will be black with a foreboding red glow, and you will look visibly repulsive; whereas when you play as good Cole your electricity will be white with a soothing blue glow and you will remain looking normal.

Cole's appearance changes depending on the choices you make throughout the game.

The gameplay is a lot of fun and provides a unique experience not found in any other games at the moment. When you start playing your superpowers are only basic – shooting electricity and maybe throwing a few grenades – but as the story progresses, you’ll come across substations (a way of improving your powers), which will give you the ability to snipe people from afar; block gunfire with shields; and even open the heavens to unleash lightning on your enemies.

Platforming also plays a large role in the game, there are sections littered around the game where platforming takes the helm, and you’ll be forced to climb massive towers or navigate underground sewers. Most of the platforming sections are used to help you get accustomed to newly gained skills although there are some places where you are tested. The platforming in general feels a little bit clunky, Cole may not be as responsive as you’d like – he tends to ‘stick’ to certain objects in order to help you control him – and it doesn’t feel quite as slick as Assassin’s Creed or Prince of Persia (although granted, those games are built around platforming).

Nor is the game particularly pretty compared to the aforementioned games (although inFamous is now nearly two years old, so maybe I’m being harsh), the setting is decidedly bland and the city doesn’t feel particularly lively – with greys as far the eye can see. The character models aren’t much better, with the facial animations perhaps the worst of all – literally just basic mouth movements. That said though, the electrical effects on the superpowers are by no means ugly, even if they do provide the only real colour on the screen.

The city looks bland but the 'special effects' are much more prettier on the eye.

Overall, inFamous’ storyline will take about 10 hours to finish, but there are numerous things to do like collect Blast Shards (to improve your endurance), collect Dead Drops (to further your understanding of the story) or complete faction side missions (to amplify your Karma levels) which will keep you going for a good while longer. I’d recommend playing through the game twice, to experience both sides of the coin and see all of what the game has to offer, and although the second time round is not quite as thrilling, it’s hardly an appalling play-through.

inFamous is an exemplary testament to the ‘graphics aren’t everything’ ideology – the concept, gameplay and story all tick the right boxes, but the graphics let it down. Although the karma system isn’t perfect, the diversity between the two extremes is great enough to warrant playing through the game twice – even if the story plays out almost identically each time. The unique superpower mechanics are great fun to play around with, and although the setting is bland and boring, the story that accompanies it is much better and sets up nicely for a sequel whilst maintaining a sense of achievement when you finish. The game aims for a cross between Assassin’s Creed and Uncharted, and although it doesn’t quite hit the quality of those two heavyweights, it certainly provides more than capable foundations to improve on in the future.