The Official InFamous Thread.

[insomniac17]

NES said:

Kantor said:

That might be the worst review I have ever read. I'll make a note of that in the OP.

But it would have been the best review you have ever read if the game would have gotten a 10 right?

No, it's just a poorly written review, really. While I can respect that he doesn't like the game, he really could have at least talked more about the good aspects of the game. Heck, he could have talked more about everything. The review is way too short to really cover all aspects of the game, and he leaves a lot out. Elaboration is good, but there isn't much here. I can accept a low score, and I'm sure Kantor can too but I think we'd both like to see that the low score has a good review to back it up.

NES said:

inFamous (PS3)

Review by David Jenkins - "With great power comes great responsibility" might be generally sound advice for a superhero, but in a game all you really want is the freedom to abuse that power in as entertaining a way as possible. Although they've gotten better lately, superhero games have a poor record as they struggle to balance incredible powers with a satisfying challenge. It's a balance this game still misses.

Curiously, and it does seem to be a genuine coincidence, this has a near identical premise to Prototype. You play an ordinary Joe who is suddenly given superpowers by a mysterious virus (the Ray Sphere is what gives you the powers; not a virus), as you battle an unsympathetic government (actually, you're battling gangs. The government in the game is just run by a bunch of jerks who don't care about you... nitpicking, sorry) and an internal battle between doing good and only looking out for yourself. So far, this is a decent review. He started off in an interesting way, and grabbed my interest by saying that the game doesn't quite come up to scratch. Unfortunately, he seems to have not been paying much attention to the story, since he's gotten a few details wrong. The story's told in fits though and only comes together right at the end. He doesn't explain. All he says is that the story is random up until the end. Elaboration would be great. What about the story makes it seem like it's "told in fits"?

The superpower in question here is electricity. We're not comic book experts, but we think the closest analogy is Spider-Man baddy Electro. This is good, it makes the review more interesting. As such you absorb electricity to power your abilities (and fall any distance). Also good. However, this never really works quite how you'd imagine with all of the individual powers behaving exactly like pistols, sniper rifles, grenades and rocket launchers despite how they look. This is actually a valid complaint. InFamous could have used more unique powers. They do look cool, though. The only time your electricity powers work in an Emperor Palpatine manner, with a continuous discharge of energy, is if you unlock an extra evil power. Wait, didn't he basically just say that copying is bad? This isn't Star Wars. Oh well, this part right here is probably one of the few good parts of this review because he actually explains things a bit.

Your karma is judged on a sliding scale, with one unique power for each extreme and a few special upgrades. You can unlock almost everything after barely completing half of the game and yet none of them feels particularly unique or imaginative. He basically repeated himself here. We know he thinks the powers are boring. What about the karma system? And did he play the game on easy? He should have tried something a bit harder, since the game gives you less XP for higher difficulties, making it more difficult to unlock all the powers early on. Heck, after I beat the game on hard, I still didn't have every upgrade for every power.

Set in an especially bland looking open world city, the game is heavily reminiscent of Crackdown - in that the main pleasure is simply clambering up buildings and jumping off them. Your platforming abilities are never as extreme as Crackdown though and the controls far less reliable - sticking you to surfaces when you don't want to and managing the reverse when you do. Just one in a litany of basic flaws. Funny, since more often than not, the controls actually help. Again though, he's explained at least a bit.

Since the electricity powers make such little real difference to the gameplay, and since that gameplay is better implemented in other similar games, this proves disappointingly mundane. Add in some unimaginative, linear missions (wait, how are they linear? I mean, the sewer missions are, but there's a lot of different missions that have you doing all sorts of things) and bewilderingly bad boss battles (he never explains why they're bad. I've played them all three times, and I found each one to be very enjoyable) and it's almost a disaster. Some better missions in the final third of the game save it, but there's little that's super about this title. He didn't explain about the "better missions." Why not?

IN SHORT: Disappointing superhero sim, whose meagre set of powers prove to be far less exotic than you'd hope.

PROS: Jumping around an open world is always fun and the final hours finally start to hit the right notes.

CONS: Unimaginative powers, unreliable controls and bland design. Unremarkable graphics and repetitive enemies.

SCORE: 6/10 Out: Now (UK)

I've reformatted it so that it uses actual paragraphs, and added in some of my comments. A lot of them seem positive... The problem with his review is that it's just flat out short. He starts to explain things a bit, but then changes abruptly. In order for me to believe his opinion, he needs to explain a lot more since there are a lot of reviews out there that think this game is brilliant, and those reviews happen to explain a lot more.

Another problem I have with this review, is that there are some wrong facts about the game, and judging from his comments, he either didn't spend much time with the game or just wasn't paying much attention.