This post has not been edited by the GamesBeat staff. Opinions by GamesBeat community writers do not necessarily reflect those of the staff.
Last week, we asked you to post your thoughts on Infamous. Many of you recalled the greatness that was Crackdown, Spider-Man 2, and Grand Theft Auto — and it looks like you feel Infamous belongs in the same league…the league of extraordinary open-world games.
Yeah, sorry — that was a bit cheesy. But we would like to do two things with this story: highlight the most interesting excerpts from the articles that you’ve submitted and prove that the world will not end if we write it “Infamous” and not “inFAMOUS.”
Read on to see what the Bitmob community thought about the game, and don’t forget…in a completely independent event from this article, we’re coincidentally giving away two copies of Infamous in our live chat later today.
First, in his review of Prototype, Joe Handzik couldn’t help but mention Infamous while accidentally revealing a medical condition he ought to get some ointment for:
By the time I actually got my copy of Prototype this past Friday, I had already beaten Infamous, which is a very good game and scratched that Crackdown itch I had for a very long time. I had a great time with Infamous, especially with the tightness of the controls, third-person platforming, and the awesome superpowers that you get throughout the game (though I was a bit underwhelmed by the final superpower — I feel like they could have come up with something better).
AJ Hurst didn’t want to skip over the bad in his extended (over his college paper’s version) review:
…the story and characters of Infamous stink…the [story] can’t hope to match the more sophisticated tales of actual comic books.
Empire City is depressingly generic in its design… Plot developments occur way too rapidly and with little to no plausible explanation (how does being made of lightning also allow Cole to jump really high and climb buildings like a chimpanzee?), and Cole’s two best friends (Zeke and Trish) sound and act annoying enough to get on your bad side almost immediately. In fact, there are no likeable characters to be found anywhere in Infamous, including its main protagonist/antagonist.
The moral karma system…also feels mostly superfluous. For one thing, even if you decide to embrace pure evil, Cole still has to take on objectively selfless and good-willed tasks in order to move the story along, so you’ll never actually feel like you’re playing as a supervillain….
Big Daddy’s in for the shock of his life.
But by the end of AJ’s review, it was all love:
Even though the game isn’t really worth playing twice just to see the trivial differences between good Cole and evil Cole, a single playthrough lasts several hours — definitely in the double-digit marks — and not a single hour feels wasted. The main focus of Infamous is to make players feel awesome while controlling a superpowered electrical badass, and the result is as frantic and thrilling as you would expect.
Nicholas Michetti doesn’t agree with AJ about the characters in A Welcome Shock to Superhero Games:
Cole is far from the only interesting character in the world of Infamous, and Infamous is a better game for it.
And he was more tolerant of the good/bad stuff, too:
Cole never merely gets a “save the cat or walk away” type of mission. He’s charged with pressing matters, like whether to give starving people food or keep it all to himself…. Cole is always faced with matters of great importance, which gives Infamous a “making of a great superhero” feel to it.
As was Ron Douglas and his awesomely headlined piece How I Learned to Shut Up and Love Electricity:
Good powers tend to be more precise, provide you with bonuses to health, and help you restrain criminals — while evil powers prove to be more destructive, causing numerous explosions at every opportunity. For instance if Cole’s karma is good, a lightning bold headshot will restore health. However, when evil, a lightning bolt headshot will cause the opponent to explode! This encourages you to do at least a second playthrough just to experience the difference in Cole’s abilities.
Ron also appreciates the little game-design things, just like we do:
One of the greatest features is that if you die mid-mission, you do not have to start over again. Most missions have invisible checkpoints that you will start off at if you fail midway through.
And this feature that helps you find nearby collectibles just may be the greatest invention in all of mankind (well, to collectible junkies like me), as pointed out by Luke Flora:
Speaking of those blast shards, every open-world game that includes collectibles needs to rip off the “ping” feature. It’s still just hard enough that you do have to work to find them all, but it makes it an obtainable goal. Excluding Crackdown, I have never attempted to find those things in an open-world game, and Infamous is the only one where I collected everything.
Finally, Jonathan Ortiz has a message for the developers in Infamous Afterthoughts:
Job well done, Sucker Punch.
Next up: Your Prototype thoughts as well as some Infamous vs. Prototype talk.