You are Cole, just your average every day bike messenger sent to deliver another package into the heart of the city.  Of course as all anti heroes of our age start out things are not always quite as they would seem.  The package explodes destroying a good portion of the city and killing thousands, except you.  You start the game from the epicentre of this tragedy and slowly hobble your way through the crippled ruins of the city using your amazing Parkour (free roam street running) or Ninja skills as I like to put it. Soon you notice that not only is your character a bike messenger ninja but that he also has the ability to absorb any electrical current he comes into contact with and utilise it to kick some serious ass.

Now I won’t talk too much about the story as I don’t want to give away any of the details regarding some of the amazing twists and characters that jump in and get involved but I will say this, choose your course of action wisely as the game and ending will change depending on your actions. It is this aspect that puts Infamous ahead of the other anti hero, rags to riches games out there. It is the pivotal way in which the game changes depending on your alignment that keeps u salivating for that next upgrade, and ultimately leading to one decision Burn the city down or save what is left.

GAMEPLAY:

The game mechanics are amazing, I have played nearly every single game on XBOX 360 and Playstation 3.  Infamous just feels sleek and refined, the navigation is simple yet far from basic.At first I was a bit curious how you would navigate Cole around such a large map without giving him superman speed or flight but once you level him up a few times by returning power to certain sections of the city you get access to some wickedly inventive means of travel.  Some of these techniques will include skating along train tracks or even gliding from rooftops to latch onto pipes and bricks on the side of walls.

The combat gets quite hectic, just I found myself retreating from enemies quite a bit in order to find a new energy source to drain. (Though I do play games on the harder difficulties, I’m sure it won’t be so bad on Easy for all you other players out there) The character leveling is done well in that you can choose 2 alignment trees for the different skills you wish to endeavour into and level up. Good being the energy leeching and helping out small pedestrians sort of skills with not too much damage focus, whereas the Evil alignment is basically max amount of damage mixed with attacks such as the scatter energy grenade which has a tendency to latch onto passersby and flip cars into oblivion at later levels.  I found this more appealing as I rampaged through the streets causing anarchy wherever I may roam... but I digress.  All in all the gameplay is good, with the mission structure not getting too repetitive and always adding in a few extra surprises and enemy types that will keep you guessing.

GRAPHICS:

The graphics in Infamous I must say is clean crisp and generally great.  It has the real Playstation feel to it with shadows not being pixelated and very highly defined textures on the game both on my HDMI television and my old shitty TV that I use when other people use the Bravia for counterproductive sheeple vision. (But that’s another story) The lighting effects are really the one aspect that makes this game shine out to me, that and the attention to detail, I mean seriously.  When you’re in a dark underground tunnel with a character that can flip cars with energy tornadoes the darkness gets lit up in 7 different kinds of awesome.

VERDICT:

All in all if you own a Playstation 3 and you haven’t gone down to your local game store an purchased Infamous you deserve a slap in the face with a giant week old fish.  I recommend this game to anyone from heavy duty gamers; who will find the story-line refreshing and the ending gobsmacking; to the casual gamer just in it for a few kicks.  Get this game!