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he last thing Carl expected was to become ground zero in an explosion that turns Empire City into a quarantine zone where people struggle and fight to

survive while the government doesn’t tell anyone what is going on. But if that was a surprise, then the superpowers he gained must have been completely overwhelming. On par with the fact that he survived the explosion. As every day passes Carl learns that his powers are becoming better and stronger. He can fling bolts of electricity, shocking targets or blowing away obstacles.

As an urban explorer, Cole is quite capable of clambering up buildings, so inFamous steps in and makes the whole game world a giant jungle gym in the tradition of Assassin’s Creed and Crackdown.

Carl was a bike courier. His job was to tear across the streets of Empire City and get the package to the client, come rain, snow and fog. An explosion is probably also not a deterrent, unless it happens to come from the package you were delivering. The explosion leveled six city blocks and left him the only survivor. Lapsing into a coma, he woke up two weeks later to find that gangs have taken

over. Two other characters fill the ensemble. Zeke is a fellow bike courier (though his portly figure suggests anything but that) and we can chalk him up as the comic relief buddy. Trish provides the romantic interest and her relationship with Cole starts off suitably thorny: she is his ex and holds him responsible for the death of her sister, who succumbed in the explosion. But she is still soft on the guy and a medic - connecting the dots here is not hard...

Cole’s aim is to get himself and his two sidekicks out of the city. Thus he makes a deal with the government to find out what the source of the explosion was. Naturally it won’t be that simple, but that just means more glorious time spent jumping across the roofs of Empire City’s vast landscapes.

Empire looks like the perfect playground. Apart from its raison d’etre as monkey bars for Cole, it creates a sandbox world that will be great to explore. There are three sections to the city, with the first unlocked when you start. InFamous definitely isn’t going for Grand Theft Auto scale dioramas, but exploring its compact world reveals a lot of

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back alleys and central locations. Developer Sucker Punch seems to have stuck to the ‘more is better’ mantra, but opted to stuff all that more into a smaller box than spoil your expectations with loads of useless packaging foam. But don’t get the impression that this game isn’t big: Empire City is elaborate and even features plenty of underground sections where Cole can repair power blackouts

by restarting generators. Since electricity is key to his powers blackouts are not good, because Cole draws energy from outlets, cars and street poles. Being a superhero drains his reserves, so inFamous cunningly masks a tactical element – keep an eye out for those power boxes, because when you run out of juice the gangs will run over you.

Developer Sucker Punch set out with a theme. They envisioned a comic book-style game, where an everyman suddenly gains remarkable powers. It plays off memes made popular lately with the show Heroes, hence the choices between altruism and Machiavellian ambitions. It also gives inFamous a more stylised feel. The

visuals might seem very life-like, but the city and its characters move and acts with a touch of parody, especially Zeke and his lumbering duck-like shuffle. As if to drive the point even more, the cut-scenes are often drawn as graphic novel panels, swooping and zooming over panels as if the camera is reading a comic book in a frenzy of excitement. Along with Cole’s somewhat over-the-top gruff voice (we didn’t think bike couriers could sound like eighties action movie characters), these comic clips set a tone that will put inFamous a step aside and above its peers.

Somewhere in its core resides the Karma system. It merely exists to provide forks in the road, at times making a choice between your own selfish interests and the greater good of the community. These choices will dictate which powers become available, in turn bought with experience points gained through combat and completing missions. Karma will also determine which side-missions open up and side missions will affect how the city works for Cole.The PS3 has been choking for a game like this and it has finally arrived. The time spent with the demo code convinced us: inFamous is a new must-have for the console.

infamous

46 june 2009