Look ma, electric hands!

Sucker Punch’s new IP hit store shelves this week, and I eagerly traded in my recently bought and unused Xbox Qwerty Keypad for some super hero/villain sandbox action. No not that one, nor that one and definitely not that one: as you can see, InFAMOUS has a bit of history to contend with. So how did the first few hours of the game sit with me?

The game literally has an explosive start that really put me in the right frame of mind to jump right in. It wasn’t even the opening cut-scene (which are presented in graphic novel format with a jittery camera following the pages, a very cool effect) but rather the main menu.

Imagine this: a peaceful area of the city in the background with the sounds of people talking and cars going by. Basically your usual day in a metropolis. An innocent ‘press start’ flashes on the screen. I was doing dishes as I put the game in and waited for it to load (which thankfully wasn’t long) so this quiet scene continued on without jumping to the obligatory cinematic when you’ve left the title screen running for too long.

So anyway, it’s calm and you decide to get the ball rolling and press start: KERPLOSIONZOOEY! People start screaming and some sort of electromagnetic wave expands out towards your vantage point. Everything starts shaking and the chaos continues until the screen cuts to black. Unexpected and it shows that the dev team was paying attention to aspects of the game that are usually left unexplored.

Game begins. You meet Cole who keeps blacking out before and after mandatory getting familiar level. Then you meet your best friend Zeke, a man who will un-ironically say ‘HooooWeeee’, and you taken through another series of events to familiarize yourself with the controls. You listen to some banter as you follow the yokel around the city and there are just some horrible lines that were thrown in to clarify certain design choices:

“Hey Cole, remember that time we got that gun.”

“Yeah.” You say in your gruff and cliche voice that all generic heroes need to have these days.

“Remember how you blew it up real good with all that juice flowing through you?”

“Yeah.” You say again.

“Ooooooh boy, it blew up darn good cause of your powers. So I’m going to get this gun but you can’t use it cause the stuff jumping from your body will blow it up.”

“Yeah. I remember. I can’t (dramatic pause) use guns.” You say.

“That’s right boy. No guns for you compandre. Ever. You can’t use guns in this game Cole! Do you get it?”

“Yeah. Now if only they’d invent a car that wouldn’t explode when I got into it therefore making jacking cars impossible in this game I mean city.”

Hurray for justification.

At least you could start frying people and Zeke with electricity. This wasn’t as fun as it sounds because the reactions of spongy human body to voltage was not as over the top as I was hoping for. Where’s my convulsing dammit!?

I finally reach a point in the mission where I get to make one of the karmic choices that determine if you’re going to be good or evil. The opposite-ends-of-the-spectrum of these decisions have already been talked about and I unknowingly went with savior to the people. Did that in Bioshock as well and this time I wanna be the bad guy. It didn’t take me long to find out how easy it was to become evil though.

Taking the angelic route is apparently the tougher choice because your Karma Meter will go down for each bad act you do (which generally consists of hurting/killing/frying civilians) and after on of my infamous killing sprees, I was demoted from hero to thug. However, if unlike me you’re turning away from the Darkside, friendly fire can start reducing your karma rather quickly. I like this fact so it makes gameplay not so cut and dry; you have to be careful with your powers instead of blowing everything to hell… if you want to be good.

Me, I was free to blow up whatever I wanted which end up being not that much. You can blow up cars but not drive them (see above) and zap other urban scenery to see electricity surround the object (I swear that I electrocuted a civilian standing by mailbox when doing this once and it was awesome. Haven’t been able to do it again unfortunately). But you can’t blow up that light post or fuse box. That’s the problem with sandbox games; you want everything to either be interactive or filled with nitrogen like so:

So I finished a few stages and enjoyed the smooth parkour that Cole can perform (even though Assassin’s Creed is still the king of fluidity) in the many platforming sections of missions. Enemies thus far have been the carbon copy hoods which use to be gang bangers or something. All they really do is shoot at you in big clusters. During free-roam, they’re situated atop of buildings making that much more frustrating dodging them but that much more satisfying when you scale a building and punch them over the edge. Unique kills like that net you more experience points and I found myself trying to perform an electrifying headshot or sizzle multiple enemies to boost my score. Points awarded to the game for putting incentive against just going around and zapping every enemy the same way.

I only spent about 3 hours on the game where I spent most of the time fulfilling my ‘explorer’ category as a gamer by ignoring the main story and just roaming around the city, seeing the sights and killing the citizens. I found my tour of Empire City to be boring actually. The survivors of the electro bomb at the beginning of the game just shamble along with no real purpose. They don’t really react to your presence (something I’m told will get more apparent the more you move away from neutral in the karma meter) and as I said before, shocking innocents isn’t as fun as I thought it was going to be.

The lack of the ability to drive or jack cars does set InFAMOUS apart from GTA but it is also limits one of the big things to do in a sandbox game. The side quests that I have seen thus far have been lame ‘find x‘ hidden among the rooftops.

I also have some issues with my superpowers and an electricity gauge that tells you how much juice you have left in your body. When you use this all up, Cole needs to recharge from the various items still carrying a current in the city. With the three powers you start with, only one drains your power – shockwave – and at the initial stage it’s really not that useful. This kind of makes the electricity gauge moot at the beginning.

Up to this point I have enjoyed the game but not as much as I was hoping. I think first impressions are key when it comes to video games and InFAMOUS’ effect has been a mild charge thus far. I am looking forward to unlocking more powers, getting more evil, terror-fry-zing the citizens even more (hopefully) and advancing the meh story… I guess.

Keep an eye out for the full review, it’ll be a shocker!