inFAMOUS Review
... I'm not sure what to say about Infamous. We heard a lot of great things about this game and so that's why we opted to try it. The premise is relatively simple: guy gets electric superpowers and is trapped on an island city. He does things to gain territory of the city and clear it of enemies, moves through conspiratorial plot, gets more powers, and fights bosses. He has a girlfriend and a best friend, and they have their own little plot devices.
Where the game gets interesting is the karma system; various things you do in the game garner you either good or bad karma, meaning you can work your way up to a Hero or down to Infamous. Various side missions you're assigned garner you either good or bad karma, while others just focus on taking territory.
The missions have a decent amount of variety, from ambushes to freerunning in the sewers to escort missions to Ratchet-and-Clank-esque grindrail missions to hidden package missions. Your powers expand over the course of the game, including shock grenades, lightning rockets, and our personal favorite, a MASSIVE thunderbolt from on high.
Ultimately, though, even with the veneer of having electiric powers, it's a shooter. You hold L1 and then mash R1 for all your worth while twitching the right analogue stick - something that, no matter how you dress is up, we utterly FAIL at. We can't tell you how many times we would do certain missions over, and over, and OVER again because neither of us can aim for beans and enemies are swarming and - aim left aim left! No the other left! - I'M TRYING! Argh, Start over again?? And so on. Sometimes the game just wasn't fun.
There were pieces I really, really liked - calling lightning from the sky (though that was at the very end of the game). I liked the idea of choosing between being good or bad - we both got extreme satisfaction running around the streets and healing people, and some of the free running building were interesting - thought I do admit, Assassin's Creed spoiled us with freerunning given it's all contextualized in THAT game. The evil side missions - once later in the game, got downright interesting because a boss you fought earlier is sending you psychic instructions to wreck havoc - but the missions themselves were blah and often frustrating. The good missions were even worse in the sense that all you were doing was escorting prisoners from point A to point B.
It doesn't change the fact that the game was, at time, just plain NOT FUN when we were doing certain missions over and over - like the damn bus escort mission to the hospital that took you through the entire damn city. We didn't like that there were only two female characters - one the girlfriend that dies partway through the game, and one the boss who's naked from the nipples down - seriously? Is it THAT necessary to make women determined to not be gamers? And people wonder why they don't...
The game itself visaully felt... cold. I'm not sure how to explain it. That majority of the game was played at night when it's dark, or when there's been an explosion and everything's full of smoke and grit; the day shots are at high noon and everythingw as washed out, and all the buildings were just grey, grey, grey. Even the neon lights didn't do much. There was only one sequence done at sunset - a time when everything is supposed to be warm and colorful, but it lasted for all of twenty minutes.
... We had difficulty getting into the game and there was a great deal of heated debate on whether or not to get inFamous 2. The reviews were all rave, the previews of it we saw looked much, MUCH nicer than the original and people kept saying that it was great. But that doesn't change the fact that it was a shooter and we did downright horrible in parts of the original inFamous. But the story had just enough twist to make curiosity. So, after much talking, and discussion, we decided to get inFamous 2 and that would be the kill of the series if it was still so aggrivatingly difficult.
Assassin's Creed, the original, though very fun, was repetative in structure and mind-numbingly ridiculous and Assassin's Creed II had many changes compared to the original. Since inFamous didn't impress us much, we can only hope inFamous 2 will do better, or else we'll be dropping the series.
Where the game gets interesting is the karma system; various things you do in the game garner you either good or bad karma, meaning you can work your way up to a Hero or down to Infamous. Various side missions you're assigned garner you either good or bad karma, while others just focus on taking territory.
The missions have a decent amount of variety, from ambushes to freerunning in the sewers to escort missions to Ratchet-and-Clank-esque grindrail missions to hidden package missions. Your powers expand over the course of the game, including shock grenades, lightning rockets, and our personal favorite, a MASSIVE thunderbolt from on high.
Ultimately, though, even with the veneer of having electiric powers, it's a shooter. You hold L1 and then mash R1 for all your worth while twitching the right analogue stick - something that, no matter how you dress is up, we utterly FAIL at. We can't tell you how many times we would do certain missions over, and over, and OVER again because neither of us can aim for beans and enemies are swarming and - aim left aim left! No the other left! - I'M TRYING! Argh, Start over again?? And so on. Sometimes the game just wasn't fun.
There were pieces I really, really liked - calling lightning from the sky (though that was at the very end of the game). I liked the idea of choosing between being good or bad - we both got extreme satisfaction running around the streets and healing people, and some of the free running building were interesting - thought I do admit, Assassin's Creed spoiled us with freerunning given it's all contextualized in THAT game. The evil side missions - once later in the game, got downright interesting because a boss you fought earlier is sending you psychic instructions to wreck havoc - but the missions themselves were blah and often frustrating. The good missions were even worse in the sense that all you were doing was escorting prisoners from point A to point B.
It doesn't change the fact that the game was, at time, just plain NOT FUN when we were doing certain missions over and over - like the damn bus escort mission to the hospital that took you through the entire damn city. We didn't like that there were only two female characters - one the girlfriend that dies partway through the game, and one the boss who's naked from the nipples down - seriously? Is it THAT necessary to make women determined to not be gamers? And people wonder why they don't...
The game itself visaully felt... cold. I'm not sure how to explain it. That majority of the game was played at night when it's dark, or when there's been an explosion and everything's full of smoke and grit; the day shots are at high noon and everythingw as washed out, and all the buildings were just grey, grey, grey. Even the neon lights didn't do much. There was only one sequence done at sunset - a time when everything is supposed to be warm and colorful, but it lasted for all of twenty minutes.
... We had difficulty getting into the game and there was a great deal of heated debate on whether or not to get inFamous 2. The reviews were all rave, the previews of it we saw looked much, MUCH nicer than the original and people kept saying that it was great. But that doesn't change the fact that it was a shooter and we did downright horrible in parts of the original inFamous. But the story had just enough twist to make curiosity. So, after much talking, and discussion, we decided to get inFamous 2 and that would be the kill of the series if it was still so aggrivatingly difficult.
Assassin's Creed, the original, though very fun, was repetative in structure and mind-numbingly ridiculous and Assassin's Creed II had many changes compared to the original. Since inFamous didn't impress us much, we can only hope inFamous 2 will do better, or else we'll be dropping the series.