inFamous

[Sombre]

I don't think this is a good game at all. Infact, I'd say it's actually quite terrible. I'm playing it at the moment,

specifically the point where Zeke abandons you to be with Kessler

. It's just ridiculous. The enemies take insane amounts of punishment, and their AI is just bizarre. There's no seeming way to get to one place without being riddled by bullets consistently, it's so sporadic- either jokingly easy, or ass rapingly hard. I can't make it to the next sewer, because I get annihlated when I'm within 50 feet by the INCREDIBLY long ranged enemies, all the time, who have infinite health. Climbing is another problem. Because it's so context insensitive, I can't climb what I want, it just does what it feels like, it's like the world is metal and my guy has a magnet for a dick. Endlessly frustrating.

[syntheticgerbil]

Wow, I didn't even realize we had a thread for this game. I beat it last month and got every trophy, so I did all that shit, but I was very unimpressed.

I agree with just about everything you have to say Sombre. Besides the ridiculously shallow and underdeveloped story line, ugly graphics (well mostly the characters), the bad voice cast, the monotony of almost all of the side missions, and the obnoxiousness of enemies constantly on your ass at every point in the game, I found all of the powers and rooftop stuff to be quite nice.

Since I bought this because I loved the Sly Cooper series, it's really too bad Sucker Punch didn't make a good game out just the simple power mechanics, which were my favorite part. While I see people complaining around the internet about the difficultly of guys shooting at you almost nonstop when you're just trying to get your ass around the city and do your tasks, I was instead just constantly annoyed rather than feeling defeated since I could easily deal with them as powers handled very well I think. Not really an excuse, I just wish they were applied towards enemies in a more involving way (although a few parts did this).

[Gwardinen]

Just finished this ahead of the upcoming release of inFamous 2. My main comment is that I now wish I'd played Good Karma because the powers all being red just looked kind of stupid to me. Also at the end of the game your powers get a kind of blackness within them, which only looks weirder and less electrical. By contrast, I looked up a video of the end of the game in Good Karma and there's a white glow within the blue which actually looks more appropriate to electricity than even the blue does.

I will probably play Good in the sequel purely because of this.

[Nappi]

I played this game some hours today after exchanging it for my personal details some time ago. It seems that every aspect of the game is a bit flawed in one way or another: the graphics are pretty horrible, the city colourless, the controls somewhat clunky, parkouring not as smooth as it should be and so on. Nevertheless, I'm still enjoying the game quite a bit for some reason. So far the open world stuff has been quite nice. For instance, I love the fact that I can actually free parts of the city from enemies permanently by doing the side missions.

I thought I'd never say this but I'm actually considering buying Prototype Infamous 2. Based on the Quicklook the graphics, at least, have improved a great deal and New Orleans much more interesting and colorful setting than the bland New York of the first game.

[JonCole]

I played this game some hours today after exchanging it for my personal details some time ago. It seems that every aspect of the game is a bit flawed in one way or another: the graphics are pretty horrible, the city colourless, the controls somewhat clunky, parkouring not as smooth as it should be and so on. Nevertheless, I'm still enjoying the game quite a bit for some reason. So far the open world stuff has been quite nice. For instance, I love the fact that I can actually free parts of the city from enemies permanently by doing the side missions.

I thought I'd never say this but I'm actually considering buying Prototype Infamous 2. Based on the Quicklook the graphics, at least, have improved a great deal and New Orleans much more interesting and colorful setting than the bland New York of the first game.

I actually agree with you on a lot of this stuff, including the inconsistent graphics and somewhat clunky controls. I remember arguing pretty often with people over the controls, but I just feel like Cole controls like he has magnetic hands when you're trying to climb a building (making recovering blast shards really annoying sometimes) yet I seem to miss almost every jump that I think I can barely make from building to building. Also, the morality stuff is pretty hamfisted.

That said, I really did enjoy the story for the most part and the combat felt really great. I recently just picked it up myself not because of Welcome Back, but because I moved my PS3 to the girlfriend's house and didn't have much to play. I was pleasantly surprised for the most part and I think I'm gonna pick up Infamous 2 considering I've heard it fixed many of the small issues I had with it.

[Nappi]

I remember arguing pretty often with people over the controls, but I just feel like Cole controls like he has magnetic hands when you're trying to climb a building (making recovering blast shards really annoying sometimes) yet I seem to miss almost every jump that I think I can barely make from building to building.

Yeah, I still haven't quite figured out the climbing and dropping off ledges stuff. Also, the horizontal camera movement was inverted by default which is very weird decision in my opinion. I can't find suitable the camera sensitivity settings either and have to choose between too fast camera movement while running and too slow movement while aiming.

[Sully907]

I've been playing Infamous 2, and I have to say, it's pretty damn fun. The controls are spot on, maybe the best I've played for an open world game. You always feel like you can navigate exactly how and where you want to at any time, the powers are fun to use and they even help navigation, and the framerate and enemy variety, the two biggest issues the first game had, are completely fixed.

On the negative end, the open world jank rears it's ugly head occasionally. Sometimes the ambient sound in the game from passing NPCs and trolleycars doesn't even exist, and sometimes enemies will just stop attacking and stand there. Fortunately this only happened like twice in my entire playthrough, so it's a minor problem. The story and choice consequences are also nothing special still, but it's nice to have the different power options.

I'd reccomend this game to anyone that even thought the first one was interesting at all. It really is a quality experience

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm still going to play 2 on good faith from Sly Cooper, but if this is still mediocre trash this time around, I might be done.

Luckily the powers this time at least look much better, which was the best part of the first game, so that should be a perk. Hopefully this time the story is not a bunch of ill-thought out amateur garbage with useless moral points. I hate when an evil choice is just all dependent on you killing an innocent, most people who are bad or evil aren't like that straight up and that veers more into serial killer territory.

[Sully907]

The good and evil choices definitely aren't meaningful in the second game either, but the game has a lot to offer besides that, and let's be honest, there's like 2 or 3 other games out there that actually make choices of grey meaningful, dragon age and fallout "maybe"

[JonCole]

New Vegas made grey karma pretty sweet, while 3 at least had some perks and junk that benefit from that alignment. I also like how Mass Effect deals with "karma", basically abandoning the good vs evil in favor of lawful vs chaotic.

[Murdoc]

Until the sequel which made you look all wicked bad if you were a jerk... but it's a series that is magically de evolving with it's sequels.

[Sully907]

New Vegas made grey karma pretty sweet, while 3 at least had some perks and junk that benefit from that alignment. I also like how Mass Effect deals with "karma", basically abandoning the good vs evil in favor of lawful vs chaotic.

Mass Effect has some good conversational choices, but in the end, your choices still don't really matter, they don't affect how the story turns out, they don't really change the characters you get to interact with, and it becomes just as binary as infamous(Unless they magically pull together consequences for all your choices in ME3)

[JonCole]

Mass Effect has some good conversational choices, but in the end, your choices still don't really matter, they don't affect how the story turns out, they don't really change the characters you get to interact with, and it becomes just as binary as infamous(Unless they magically pull together consequences for all your choices in ME3)

I don't agree at all. While the choices in Mass Effect 1 might not have had a big impact on the whole of that game in specific, I can't possibly believe that the overarching choices you make like the choice of saving the council or not won't have any impact on your level of support from other races in Mass Effect 3. Also, morality absolutely influences you who interact with in Mass Effect (what up, Wrex).

Also, I never purported that Mass Effect was anything but binary. I was just saying it was interesting because the two halves of that equation stand for something different. There is some inherent value in changing the spectrum from good <-> bad to lawful <-> chaotic. This is obvious because in InFamous, a karma choice is something like "accept this guy's help like a human being" or "shoot him in the fucking face and steal all of his shit". In Mass Effect, a binary choice might be "siding with a friend to condone the destruction of a sentient robot race that committed genocide" or "allowing the sentient robot race to survive, giving them the chance to help you in an upcoming war against a greater threat". While these choices may not be better, they're at least different enough from the clearcut, almost painfully obvious effects from choices you make in Infamous.

[Gwardinen]

As it turns out, most of inFamous 2 was pretty daft in terms of the karma, just like the first game. The end, however, was really pretty interesting and divergent. It's just a shame that it all comes down to a last minute choice of whether to press L2 or R2. Although that said, if you want to go with the ending that's against your current alignment, you do have to bugger off and go farm some of the opposite karma. Is that a good thing? Or does that just make it even more stupid and game mechanic-y? I don't know.

Also, this is one of the few cases in which the evil ending of a game is actually far more interesting to me than the good one. Usually the good ending is canon and the evil ending is just kind of entertaining if you played that way. This time the good ending is really obvious and cliché, while the evil ending is actually emotional and contains the best scene in the game. Go figure.

[elmuerte]

I've been playing some inFaMouS 1 because I got it in exchange for my personal info from Sony.

Managed to get to "island #2"; same shit; different costumes.

The game lacks logic; why would I know about missions at random places on the map (for example).

Climbing buildings isn't really smooth as in other games.

[Gwardinen]

Climbing buildings isn't really smooth as in other games.

This was one of my main issues as well. Especially when compared to Prototype, a contemporary of the original game, Infamous seemed very slow and clumsy in the traversal department.

That said, via a combination of different level design (emphasising a lot of electric wires in strategic places and adding a vertical jump electric pillar to some buildings), an extra upgrade to the static thrusters and a new power called the lightning leash, the second game actually addresses this to an extent. By the end of the game you certainly feel capable of getting around smoothly, but at the start it is hitting a lot of X to gradually make your way up buildings again.

[Murdoc]

This was one of my main issues as well. Especially when compared to Prototype, a contemporary of the original game, Infamous seemed very slow and clumsy in the traversal department.

Yeah I played for 20 minutes with my free copy wanting an open world to run around and fuck with, but it seemed so clumsy and not fun I didn't play further.

I've been curious about Prototype to fill the void and glad to hear it does the traversal stuff better.

[elmuerte]

running around climbing stuff in Prototype is much better; but then again, you don't really climb buildings, you sort of run on the walls

[Sully907]

The traversal in the second game is vastly improved. It feels a lot easier to move around the city, and the combat is still way better then prototype ever was.

[syntheticgerbil]

Man, I just finished the good playthrough of Infamous 2 and even though I felt the first was mediocre in every way, I very much enjoyed the second, It just felt well paced with constant smooth fun along with a very defined progression of powers and abilities.

The powers were the best part of the first game and they were just made even better here. Climbing felt better and fluidly jumping around the city felt just right. The minibosses roaming the streets was a nice touch along with just the improvement and inclusion of a variety of bosses in general, which the first game severly lacked. Each one you are introduced to feels very tough and stressful but later you start finding you are earning powers that easily take those guys out, only to find the next boss that makes routine appearances is an even tougher asshole. Once you get good at disposing of those dudes (although never very simple at that point), they start pitting you against multiples of all sorts of bad dudes at a time. The game just felt like it ramped up the difficulty in all the right spots and never became boring, tedious, or routine.

I think part of this nice pacing is the game just feels a lot shorter than the first Infamous, but not in a bad way. It's like Sucker Punch decided to cut out all the fat and tedium that comes along with open world games. I'm pretty sure the map I was traveling around was smaller, but it wasn't a bunch of copied and pasted locations, and instead a lot of thought appears to have bee put in most areas. There weren't enough samey side missions to annoy me this time, and generally kept me engaged as well as enough unique ones that expanded the story this time around. The mission where Zeke sets up Cole with a dating commercial was brilliant.

I think the shorter game also kept the storyline going at an engaging pace where events actually happened. Infamous 1 was just a meandering story full of introductions and an abrupt ending with a useless twist. It was like the first act of a story stretched out way too long. In Infamous 2, all of the story from the first serve as an essential prologue, but completely builds off of it on it's own. The moral choices, from what I could tell from the good playthrough, were very well thought out this time. There wasn't any part where it was "Kill this dude or not" outside of the typical little mini missions on the street. All major storyline choices seemed to hit somewhat of a grey area, but it could be because they were both to achieve the same end, while the first game did not have an end that you knew you had to work towards.

Plus Cole is actually likeable this time, since they switched his voice actor from that uncharacteristically gravelly voiced dick head to someone who actually sounds like he may have been a bike courier.

That all said, I'm sure I'll hate this game just a little bit after playing the evil playthrough next since I dislike acting like a douche in games.

[melmer]

We might see a next gen infamous 3 on the 20th, we don't know what suckerpunch has been working on since this came out.

I played through about half of infamous when I got it free after the PSN hack. Not sure why I stopped, I think it just became a little repetitive. I should play infamous 2 one day especially considering its shorter, I've just googles the length at 12hours. Perfect!

[syntheticgerbil]

Sounds about right. If you get all the blast shards it takes longer. I collected almost all of them but I did not bother looking hard for the remaining two or three I was missing. Someone made a custom mission you can play in the online mode that just teleports you to every blast shard at once, very convenient. I'm just going to do that for my second playthrough since I don't see how doing that again is fun or worth my time.

As far as Infamous 3... er... MAJOR SPOILER HERE

Part of your final choice of the good playthrough is killing yourself and a few thousands to save millions. Very awesome choice but Cole seemed pretty dead to me.

[melmer]

I haven't read your spoiler but I'm guessing...

he dead XP

[syntheticgerbil]

WAIT NOT CLARIFYING

[melmer]

Yes don't no yes, I kinda half read your spoiler anyway THEY'RE SO GOD DAMN TANTALISING