InFamous Review

This thing causes a few problems when you first encounter it

When the missions work, though, they really are quite spectacular. One side mission we encountered after working through a good chunk of the story saw Cole stepping in to sort out a street war between rival enemy factions, the Reapers and Dustmen. For the first time in the game Cole felt like a real super hero, blowing up gas station pumps and sending cars flying into enemies while the two factions went at each other with their own superhuman abilities. Moments like this are what inFamous should have been all about, but for far too much of the campaign you're doing mundane tasks.

Missions tend to involve you taking out a group of enemies, escorting someone or something to a certain location, or destroying something. In games like GTA 4 this mild tedium was joined by a cast of superb characters and a truly engaging storyline, but here you've really only got Cole, his friend Zeke, ex-girlfriend Trish, FBI agent Moya and voice of survival Dallas, who appears on TV broadcasts across the city. The storyline is interesting enough to keep you playing, in no small part due to the superb comic-book cutscenes, but GTA 4 with super powers this is not.

A lack of things to do certainly isn't a complaint that can be levelled at inFamous, with a lengthy campaign (which is worth playing through as good and evil) being padded out with plenty of side missions. These come in various guises, with those from standard NPCs earning you XP and permanently ridding the zone of the enemies, while missions handed out from the police have the added benefit of counting towards a total that eventually unlocks some new abilities. Running through the city and getting pelted by enemies soon loses its appeal, so you're definitely going to want to complete a good handful of these missions in order to make your time in the game world less frustrating.

Beyond the missions there are loads of things to collect too, with a definite Crackdown orb vibe to proceedings. Early on traversing the rooftops isn't a great deal of fun, but once you can rail and cable grind, and glide the game world is infinitely more rewarding to mess about in. If messing about is really your thing you might want to consider going evil, too, as being good means you can't unleash hell on innocents without consequences. We were drawn to the good side on our first run through, but evil offers more instant gratification.

Drain these guys if you're evil

For a PS3 exclusive inFamous doesn't dazzle as much as we expected it to, but it's still a fine looking game, especially when the action really kicks off. Cole isn't the most charismatic character we've ever seen, but he's likable enough, and the devastated city has been created with an obvious amount of love and attention. Pop-up, detail pop-in, aliasing and frame rate problems hurt the visuals to a degree, but these issues aren't exclusive to inFamous, having blighted even the best open world games. Our biggest disappointment is that Sucker Punch wasn't able to, or didn't choose to, replicate the comic book cutscenes with the in-game visuals - a gritty cel-shaded style would have fitted perfectly. The audio work is superb though, with a brilliant soundtrack and great surrounds.

inFamous might not be the triple-A exclusive we wanted it to be, but it's still a fine game and well worth adding to your PS3 collection. Had the first half of the game matched the far more entertaining later sections (where the super powers really come into their own) and the story been a bit more engaging throughout we'd be looking at one of the best open-world action games of all time. As we said, being a super hero isn't as easy as it sounds, but if Sucker Punch gets another chance it may well be able to create one of the very best.