Here's the third of three games I was playing at once that emphasized morality as gameplay- Catherine I went full-on evil; Mass Effect 3 was kinda neutral/however I felt at the moment, and finally to equal things out (as well as counter Stan's 'evil' play) I played through Infamous as a good guy- becoming 'famous' rather than 'infamous'. Infamous is a third-person action game that at times shoots for a comic book feel, but seems a lot more like Grand Theft Auto with superheroes. The results may vary for you- I prefered the over-the-top comic book aesthetic of say, MadWorld to Infamous' gritty Neon City. Protagonist Cole McGrath, a down on his luck delivery man just delivered a package containing some relic that blows up a section of the city yet for some reason gives him superpowers- at first, the ability to shoot electricity and survive big falls. The FBI attempts to use Cole as their inside man to gain access to the object- the 'ray sphere', and get it back, promising to help him escape from the now-quarantined city. Of course some gangs have taken over the streets and turned the city into a war-zone, so it's up to Cole whether along the way he wants to help the few innocent citizens that remain, or use them for his own benefit. Infamous is a game that should be played on one extreme or the other- the best powers are unlocked only by those who live completely evil or good; the neutral bystander gets little in rewards. A few times I accidentally picked the evil option (my fault!) but every time I did it would backfire in some way, which leads me to believe the game is trying to push you on the 'good' path for the most part- Stan, can you confirm this? Either way, as the game progresses and Cole gets more powerful, the fun increases as well- I was mostly bored as the game began but eventually when you're surfing on power lines and shooting exploding bursts of electricity, Infamous starts to pull you in. The game probably hits its highs on a few missions where Cole stands on electrically charged platforms (be they stationary, on top of a bus, or hanging from a helicopter) so he can just let loose a constant barrage of special powers against droves of enemies- the moments of mass carnage work greatly to Infamous' advantage. I haven't heard anything about Infamous 2 importing your character from the first game, so I'm worried that that one will also be a slow starter. Still though, I can't hate on the game too much- the story was kinda boring and you start off just too weak to have fun, but it all comes together well. We'll find out if Infamous 2 is better... sometime next year probably.
I completely agree with your take on the game becoming more and more fun the more you played it. Just fucking whizzing around on power lines and blasting the living shit out of all sorts of helicopters? That was great.
ReplyDeleteAs far as picking the "wrong" option by mistake - it happened to me too once or twice. For instance, one of the "good or evil?" decisions occurs when someone launches a barrel full of poison/explosives at you. You can either blast the barrel from afar to save yourself or let the barrel hit you so as not to screw over innocent bystanders. I tried my best to act like a selfish prick, but couldn't hit the barrel in the split second the game gave me to do so, and was rewarded with a "hey, how noble of you!" and some positive karma. I'm sure the inverse was true for you at times, and that the "good" choice was just way too hard to make relative to the evil one.
One particularly noteworthy event that happened late in the game was when your love interest (I forget her name) is kidnapped and dangled from the edge of a building. Meanwhile, across town, the kidnapper has also left eight doctors dangling from a building. You're asked to make the decision between being a hero and saving the girl (and unlike in Spider-Man, you can't just choose both) with the obvious "evil" choice being to save your girlfriend. But when I did that - SPOILER ALERT - it turned out the kidnapper had tricked me, and my girlfriend was actually one of the eight "doctors" across town. She fell to their death with them, and the woman I save was some nobody. This got me really curious - had I done the "right thing" would the girl have lived? My assumption is that she dies either way, and that if you do the right thing, your girlfriend falls to her death as expected. Can you confirm this? Too much of the rest of the game's plot dealt with her death for me to believe she's left alive if you play the game the "right" way.
Other than that, I don't really remember the game pushing me toward the righteous path. My in-game girlfriend certainly expressed her disappointment in me over and over again, and I'd be curious to know if yours was all warm and wonderful toward you or not.
Oddly enough, that was one of the ones I accidentally did wrong! I meant to save the scientists and let my girlfriend drop, but I was under a time limit and wasn't really positive which building had the scientists and which had the girlfriend, so I just climbed the nearest one, which had the fake girlfriend. Mine died too, so who knows if she makes it with the selfish choice or not. That was one of the few I got wrong though, and like I said it seemed to say "well if you're going to be an asshole, then nothing's going to work out for you!" Also, yeah the girlfriend (she's a recent ex at the start of the game) seemed to be warming up to heroic Cole the whole time until I, you know, accidentally killed her.
ReplyDeleteI just started Infamous 2, and I was given the option to "continue Infamous 1 game." I chose to do so, and started with an extra 1000 XP and Level 1 bad karma. I guess this just leaves me more work to do in my character's redemption quest. Good! Going from city-destroying asshole to public hero shouldn't be an easy task! Having said that, I chose to play the game on "easy" difficulty.
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