inFAMOUS

inFAMOUS is a versatile and alluring PS3 game where you are the protagonist Cole, who has been granted with electrical super powers by the Ray Sphere. The backstory involves a large city gone to ruins because of a huge blast, and it's now ruled by ruthless gangs of terror.

Cole is equipped with enhancable abilites that give him tactical advantages towards his foes, destructive powers and best of all ways of mobilizing around quickly. Sliding on train rails or hovering around is hip.

As a sandbox game, inFAMOUS is well designed by the surroundings, and especially plays fastpaced as a third person shooter. I was most of all enjoying the climb physics it provides, as Cole has swift and adaptable reflexes to grab anything that can hold his body up.
 
You can play main missions, as well as side missions. Getting missions is quick, precise and convenient. Because of the game's overall speed, you probably will do a lot of the side missions as well.

The current story is about Cole being awakened with his new super powers, and he decides to test around his karma, battling the deadly gangs in the process as well as dangerous villains. Luckily he has a supportive team of friends to assist him with information and sometimes backup.

A morality system plays occassionally, as you as the player will have to decide to do either good or evil actions. Whatever the outcome will give you more access to either the good side of Cole's powers, or the evil side of him. Of course, story consequences play here as well.

I didn't notice much of the soundtrack, because I was too busy navigating around and shooting up stuff. Deflecting incoming missiles or dropping from high locations and activating a powerful thunder drop are more ways of enjoying the game.

There is also an art style based on comics to accompany the 3D graphics. And the more experience points you collect, the quicker you are able to upgrade your available abilities further. And there is a lot of stuff to do.

Sucker Punch created a different sandbox game where you are not driving around cars, but instead sliding on train rails to travel even faster than your average driving game. And that's only one part of the slick action provided by Cole's fun powers.

Rating: 8.4

inFAMOUS 2

In the sequel I went the evil path instead of the good. There isn't much change between them apart from the available missions, powerups and dialogues. New powerups to get such as grabbing up objects and tossing them and being able to slinger up buildings add up to Cole's superpowers. The graphics were done better and the new story worked, but comic scenes were lessened.

There is also user related content available, as gamers are able to make their own missions and rate others. This makes the replay value obviously longer, but both games are about the same for me. The only reason inFAMOUS 2 gets a slightly higher score is because of more content being available, the new city and the new gameplay elements.

Rating: 8.5