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Sauce
Sauce
Comic book heroes have starred in plenty of videogames where they tromped around cities, sometimes saving the population, but almost always wreaking all kinds of inadvertent havoc. Valuable as those established superhero licenses can be, developers have recently jumped out of more mainstream series to create their own take on what a hero can be; Sony's upcoming PS3 exclusive inFAMOUS falls into this category. Its hero, Cole, finds himself suddenly infused with the power to harness electricity in all sorts of ways. After looking at ample screens and videos of arc lightning action, Sony let me play three work-in-progress levels and try out Cole's powers for myself.
A short intro, utilizing the graphic novel illustration style inFAMOUS uses to tell its story, setup the world I'd be entering. Emerald City, contrary to the name, is not a very pretty place anymore. A violent blast destroyed much of the downtown area, followed by a plague, after which the government sealed the whole city off under quarantine. In that state, society fell apart pretty quickly leaving an anarchic world ruled by gangs with the rest of the population starving and hiding out in fear for their lives. The whole atmosphere definitely channels the movie Escape from New York.
I eased into Cole's world with an early mission where he's still coming to terms with his newfound power. Developer Sucker Punch plans to use Cole's increasing familiarity with what he can do as the vehicle for introducing new powers and abilities over the course of the game. One thing you won't see, though, are guns. Electrical power attacks are your primary weapon, but Sucker Punch provides an explanation as to why Cole can't use firearms: the one time he tries to pick up a gun his electrical charge causes all the bullets to cook off at once in an explosion.
After a quick couple of tutorial-like tasks to get down the basics of blasting lightning and reenergizing dead circuits, I hit the streets. An airdrop of food provided my first encounter with a gang called the Reapers to see who would claim the precious cargo. From the moment combat began it was clear that fighting relies primarily on ranged electrical powers. Sure, you can get in close with kicks and punches, but they're not very rewarding compared to frying guys with lightning, nor nearly as effective.
You have a two-tiered system of powers to play with. To keep you from ever becoming completely powerless, your basic lightning blast comes with an unlimited supply of energy. While not strong enough to kill in one shot, you can rattle off an almost constant barrage of bolts making it plenty useful for taking down individual enemies. It works so well that it's easy to fall into a rut of just running around spamming lightning at everything. Your other powers, along with being stronger, open up your options quite a bit and present a number of build-your-own-combo opportunities. One of the basic ones that works well for dealing with groups is the EMP blast. It sends out a shock wave throwing everything in its path up in the air. Then the flailing, helpless enemies are easy to pick off with lightning.
These other powers require you to be charged up, which you can do by sucking power out of pretty much anything electrical you find -- streetlights, phone booths, car batteries, whatever. Recharging also recovers some health, so as the battles heat up, you're forced to stay active since you're always looking for the next place to grab a boost. It also opens up some potentially interesting situations down the road where you might have to operate in an area of the city where the power has failed or there aren't many available charging spots.
Defeating the Reapers exposes one of the moral dilemmas that runs beneath the action surface of the game. With the food secure, you get the option to either share it with the citizenry, or to run off the commoners and horde it all for you and your girlfriend. Depending on which way you go, you receive either good or bad karma. The developers hesitated to say much more about the karma system, but it definitely plays into how the population of Emerald City responds to you over the course of the game. But I learned that the condition of the city reflects your choices: Clean up efforts get underway if you restore order, but deterioration prevails if you only serve your personal interests. This selfish vs. selfless decision could make a nice evolution over the typical black-and-white good vs. evil setup. The shades of gray give you a lot more interactivity with the story, while also relieving you from the game straining situation of playing as a morally bereft character, but still earning the same happy ending.
The side missions and dealing with what Sucker Punch calls the "crime ecology of the city" will also shape Cole's in-game morality. While the side missions seem pretty standard, the crime ecology presents another interesting way to tie back into the consequences of how you play your character. Street crime may increase or decrease in response to whether you bother trying to stop it, and how much order has been restored to the city as a whole.
The other two levels I played -- one in which I stopped some Reapers from polluting the water source, and another that involved powering a commuter train so it could get to a safe station -- offered a little more insight the game's story. Though it wasn't fully explained, I learned that Cole was at the epicenter of the blast that set everything off. He also communicates with a mysterious FBI agent named Moya who appears to be working through him to fight some sort of conspiracy underlying the events. And, cryptically, he hears some sort of mysterious voice in his head that claims to love him more than his girlfriend ever has. While these amount to little more than a tease at this point, everything inFAMOUS does to create depth and substance beyond just running around the city as a powered-up character goes a long way toward differentiating it from the competition
we're in for an intense year of gaming.