I’m not going to lie, inFamous is indeed a great game that a lot, if not, many PS3 owners should get a chance to play. But as good as it is, there are a lot of things that are missing that could have easily made something like inFamous a lot more interesting. At the same time, there are some things that are in the game that just make it nothing but frustrating.

inFamous was announced back in 2007 and was just recently released. With many games, an early announcement with a late release date says a lot of things. One thing it tells us is the team working behind said game will try their hardest to put as many ideas as they can into their game. Another tells us that the team will be unable to put what they want into the game, so they have to cut corners and think about what would be best to put into the game.

In short, the longer the gap between a game’s first announcement and a game’s release date, the more likely it is for a game to not live to audience’s expectations. I will admit, inFamous was fun and did several things right. At the same time, it did a few things wrong and felt like it missed a few essential items to make the game that more better. Such as? Let’s take a look at five things that personally irk me.

Unless you want to see some story spoilers here, don’t continue beyond this point.



1) Dull City: U.S.A.

I love the amount of detail that went into the creation of Empire City. Every little thing from the windows and crevasses on the building that you can climb on to the objects placed on various rooftops where you can charge Cole up. The city changes as you change, depending on your choices in the story, because you can make it a utopia or a hellhole. Beyond that, there’s not much else the city has to offer.

This may be because of the quarantine that occurs when you start playing, but still, there are no tanks or helicopters that are sent in to the city to kill you. It probably wouldn’t make sense if you decide to play through the game as a good guy, but even as a good guy, the voice of the people that appears on TV every now and then will still hate your guts. What is up with that guy anyway?

Empire City is almost like Liberty City from GTA4, if you took away the FBI forces, the tanks, and almost everything else that didn’t make GTA4 boring. While I’m talking about comparisons, I could say something about how it could be like the city from Spider-Man 2. But Spider-Man 2 was larger and had more to offer, plus the web-slinging was satisfying to do. Floaty static hands in a near empty city just don’t do it for me.



2) The Shield: Useful And Not Available Until The Last Portion Of The Game

Title pretty much says it all. The shield is easily one of the best abilities in the game since it makes it that much harder for you to die, as well as makes those stupid machine gunners on the trucks not kill you in less than five seconds. If it wasn’t the second to last ability you get in the game, or it wasn’t made available during the last quarter of the game, it wouldn’t be so bad. But it was made like that, so it is bad.

But getting the shield early on would have made the game that more easy, especially when you see what upgrades come with it. Making it bigger to make protecting myself less of a hassle and people shooting at it refills my energy? Not bad at all. But would it be cheap? More than likely. But hey, I’m being surrounded by twenty or so enemies where every single shot hits me, so if they can be cheap, why can’t I?

Speaking of the enemies…



3) Hobos Putting Licensed Hitmen To Shame

I can suspend enough disbelief for the whole “electrical powers” thing, and I’m okay with that. But really, people living on the streets, who probably just learned about using a gun prior to the explosion, are capable of making every shot hit me from three buildings away? That’s a bit of a stretch to me. With a machine gun no less, and I’m no gun expert here, but I’m pretty sure that’s nearly impossible to do.

Also, no matter where I go on the roof of a building, the first shot will always hit me. So they have heat vision as well. Wonderful.

Maybe you could argue that the explosion that happens in the intro had different effects on people. Cole getting electrical powers, and hobos having super pinpoint accuracy and heat vision. I guess they don’t exactly say what the sphere does or how it works, so that’s all I really have to work with. But seriously, they’re hobos, supernatural explosion or not, that’s no excuse for having super aiming.



4) Taking A Weak Story, And Making It More Confusing/Depressing

Something blows up, the area around you is decimated, you have superpowers, go from there. The story is definitely not the first thing I look at when I want to play as a person with superpowers, but it does play a large role. I was interested more in the characters, mostly Zeke, because many things he says is either worth a chuckle or a groan. He’s a character I can’t really hate…until the last third of the game.

At which point Zeke changes gears, and goes from a lovable goof to an embodiment of depression. He takes the Ray Sphere, hoping to gain powers from it and he goes with Kessler in hopes of knowing how to make it work. Zeke attempts to call you to make up for his betrayal, and you respond by telling him that meeting him again will result in some not very pretty ways. Harsh stuff.

I played through the game twice, both times as different sides, and I don’t know if the developers ever specified whether either ending was the real ending or not, but the good ending certainly isn’t, well, good. In the good ending, Cole’s actions don’t feel justified in my eyes, and although you save the city from other bad forces, you are all alone because you can’t see Zeke the same way ever again, and Trish is gone. You saved the city, but for the price of never going back to your old life ever again.

The evil ending, surprisingly, makes more sense. You have all this power, no one can stop you, the city is ruled under you, and more importantly, your actions in the story feel justified. You may be alone, but you have something to your name, the city itself. Neither is more rewarding than the other, but I dig the evil one a lot more, depressing as it is.



5) One Big City Or Two Towns And A Half?

Empire City is big, enough to have three islands having a bunch of buildings. But after I hopped around the Neon District getting every blast shard and dead drops, and seeing everything there, I decided to continue on with the story and move onto the Warren District. Plenty of things were new there but when I started getting into the upper half of that district, I saw the exact same graveyard I saw near one of the corners of the Neon District.

At which point, I began noticing some copy and pasting of various buildings from earlier sections of the game, as I went on to move through the story. Playing through the Historic District made me feel like I was playing through most of the Warren District all over again. Noticing that in a sandbox game breaks the immersion for me, but I love Sucker Punch so I’m willing to forgive them for this.

End Of The Line

There are more things that annoy me in this game, like how the enemies don’t show their faces at all so they’re pretty much cannon fodder. I could have easily talked a lot about the blast shards, but since they aren’t mandatory and you can find them with the ease of an L3 click (both unlike the new Prince of Persia game). But I didn’t because they were small things as didn’t break the game as much as I thought the five above did.

Sucker Punch had a lot on their hands, especially when it comes to making one giant sandbox, which is by no means easy. However, you have to consider the choices of what they could and couldn’t put into this game, with time constraints and disk space amount. There is no way they can make the perfect game, but you know they tried their best into making it as great as they could. I loved it, even with the flaws it had, but I hope this gives the developer to fix them in the sequel or a possible new I.P.

Sucker Punch, don’t let me down.