Infamous - Playing God

Everyone has thought of it, dreamed it even. Asked themselves that one question:

"What would I do if I had superpowers?"

Would you use your powers for good? Or for evil? Take care of everyone around, showing them that there is still hope for humanity? Or would you be selfish, take what you want, using your powers against anyone who stood in your way?

inFamous allows you to do just that. You take control of Cole McGrath, a bike messenger, who wakes up in the middle of a massive crater, ground zero of an explosion with a voice in his ear. Making it out to safety, you  find out that Empire City, Cole's city, is locked down because of the explosion; no one goes in or out. As the city starts to fall prey to gangs and violence, Cole wakes up from his coma, electricity sparking from his hand. Soon, the city discovers just what Cole has planned for them.

As the player progresses through the story, they're forced to make karmic choices, good or evil. While there are many things you can do between these choices that determine your side, these major ones have the most influence. Share the dropped food with everyone or scare them away and take it all for you and your friends?  Destroy an object, making sure no one will ever use it again, or use it, gaining more power than ever? These choices toss the karma meter into the blue (good) or red (evil). Depending on how far you sway to one side or the other effects how people react to you, be it they run up and cheer you on, or yell, cursing at you, tossing rocks in your direction.

Depending on which side you play, you'll see the greatest changes in not only Cole, but Zeke, his best friend, and Trishe, his girlfriend. Though being his best bud, Zeke tries his best to defend your actions while you're evil, and encourages you when you're good. Trish, on the other hand, has no qualms about letting you know how she feels, no matter if your halo is on straight or you've got horns peaking out of your forehead. (Note: You don't get either of those.)

To continue on the path of good, you'll be rewarded with ability enhancements that restore health and energy, siding with disabling your enemies by binding them with electricity to the ground, though the good side is not without its own destructive tricks for the enemies that need that extra fire power to be taken down for good. Evil feeds into the primal lust for devastation, transforming simple lightning grenades into a scatter shots of smaller ones, and turning your enemies into your own weapons: Killing an enemy with a headshot from your bolt causes that victim to explodes, fully charges of your powers, which can lead to other targets around them to become charges themselves and explode.

Side missions allow you to stock up on experience and be rewarded with blast shards, items that expand your energy bar, but also help persuade Cole to one side or the other. For each good side mission, there is an evil counterpart. Do you protect the rioters that are declaring their freedom from the gangs, or do you take them down because they're rioting against you? Do you get into the middle of a fire fight between the gangs and the police, helping the police out, or sit back and deal with whoever is left? Upon completing one mission, its opposite will be locked out. With certain upgrade requiring five, ten, and fifteen completed missions of one kind or the other, so bouncing between good and evil missions locks you out of the final upgrade for said abilities.

The controls are for the most part smooth, though you find that Cole will grab ledges that you didn't know exist, and completely ignore edges that are right in front of his nose. Luckily, these faults are few and far between, and are easily forgiven when the player becomes more familiar with the controls and learn how to recover from falls and tricks for getting around in case you did miss that ledge. The camera rarely becomes a problem unless you've got your back against a wall, then you're left looking at the back of Cole's head, or worse but extremely rare, inside. There are very, VERY, few bugs in the game, ranging from simple clipping problems with dead enemies to falling through the world. It is quite entertaining to watch Cole fall for about thirty seconds before "dying" and winding up at the local clinic.

Most don't notice but during the game, as you're attempting to restore power to the city, certain parts will be flooded with enemies. This is a little trick the game pulls on you to stop you from exploring too much, too fast. Without new and powerful abilities, making it past these massive roadblocks force you back on track and corral you back into the area that you're meant to be in. Due trust me when I say that  twenty or so Reapers come around a flat bed semi with a mini gun attached to it will make you back track, the whole time cursing and looking for the next power source to heal up from.

One awesome trait that really makes inFamous feel unique is that some of the major cutscenes are done in the style of a gritty, dark comic book. This adds to the whole "You are a superhero, this is your story" feel of the game. While regular rendered  cutscenes could have been used, I don't feel that it would have produced the same effect, the same feel, upon the player and they way the reacted to the game.

Though the story ends almost the same way no matter which side you pick, the "Aftermath" section of the game is first narrated by Cole before you're allowed to run around. Depending on your karmic influence, you truly see the final outcome of your character, be he a savior of the people or a ruthless dictator, each leaves a mark on the land.

The end of the game leaves a lot to be wondered about, and with sneak peaks of InFamous 2 already out, the gaming community can hope that they tie the two together well, hopefully including your ending karmic alignment from the first game.

Rundown:

Good: Awesome voice acting, comic book cutscenes, twists and drama, amazing variety of powers

Bad: Cole's obsession with not grabbing ledges

And the "You Get to Live" award goes to: Random girl shirt guy. During a fight with a group of Dustmen, a random guy dodged six bolts of lightning, each one of them having instantly killed him if they had hit. After the Dustmen were dead, I saw the guy run away. "No, you earn your right to live today."