inFAMOUS Demo Hands-On: A Shockingly Good Time

Sony and Sucker Punch’s inFAMOUS has had to deal with a lot of comparisons during its development, be it to Crackdown or Prototype.  Thanks to the demo, released Wednesday night to preorder holders, that’s all going to change.  In this modern generation of gaming, a good demo can make or break a game; to put things into perspective, it was the demo of Dead Rising that initially sold me on my 360.  Will inFAMOUS follow in its footsteps?  Well, let’s find out, shall we?

For those unfamiliar with the title, inFAMOUS, announced all the way back in 2007, is a third person open world action game for the PlayStation 3 from Sony Computer Entertainment America and Sucker Punch, developers of the Sly Cooper series.  In inFAMOUS, you play as Cole McGrath, a lowly bike courier who, through a strange twist of fate, is bestowed with the power to control electricity via a massive explosion that decimates 6 blocks of his hometown, Empire City.

The demo starts off with a bang – literally.  Upon finishing the initial load, you’re treated to a panoramic view of Empire City during a peaceful afternoon; moments later, though, a violent explosion rips through the streets, engulfing several blocks in a wave of destruction.  After a short, but extremely well-done comic book-style prologue, you’re immediately thrust into the action in the middle of your first mission.  Your job is simple; the Reapers, a gang of thugs, have hijacked a subway train full of hostages, and you’ve got to free them.  This mission isn’t particularly difficult, but it serves as a good tutorial for the game’s climbing and combat systems.  Once you’ve finished this mission, the city opens up to you; in the demo, you’re given access to the entirety of one of the game’s three islands, known as the Neon District.  From this point on, you are allowed to either progress on through the demo’s 3 remaining missions or simply explore the city at your own leisure.

Before we go any further, let’s talk exploration.  Cole is equal parts electrokinetic superhero and death-defying urban explorer; these two facets of his character encompass all of his abilities in a nicely integrated shell.  Like Crackdown and Assassin’s Creed, exploration in inFAMOUS is handled mostly on foot, allowing the player to climb literally anything they see; if there’s enough room for Cole to stand on it or hang from it, he can and will grab it if you jump to it.  The climbing mechanic is largely a one-button system, with no ‘grab’ button to worry about.  Scaling buildings is great fun, and the degree of effort that has gone into making sure every building in Empire City can be climbed is truly quite astounding.  Adding further depth to the exploration system is the addition of two exploration-based superpowers; the first one, known as Static Thrusters, allows Cole to propel himself through the air by discharging waves of static behind him.  These Thrusters allow your leaps and jumps to have a higher degree of horizontal coverage than they might otherwise have; it’s not flight, per se, and the degree at which your hover decays over time insinuates that this power is not fully upgraded in the demo, but using the Thrusters to leap from building to building is great fun.  The other exploration-based superpower in the demo is Cole’s ability to use electrical currents through running metal objects to grind on things like power lines and, more amusingly, subway tracks.  Provided you don’t grind directly into the front of a train, you can build up considerable speed grinding on the subway tracks, allowing you to make a full circuit of the island in considerably less time than it would take to run from one end to the other.  A keen eye will also notice strange blue shards sticking out of objects across the landscape; these Blast Shards act as collectibles that increase Cole’s maximum power reserves, and they also offer a great incentive to explore every nook and cranny of the city.

On the combat side of things, the game is no less impressive; the demo starts you with roughly half of Cole’s full power set unlocked, with several powers already upgraded to their fullest extent.  The combat controls play out similar to a third person shooter, allowing you to freely aim your electrical engine of death at anything – or anyone – in your way.  Your arsenal of powers in the demo is considerable, allowing you access to direct lightning bursts, as well as long-ranged electrical grenades, a directed shockwave attack, electrified melee combos, as well as the ability to cloak your body in electricity when falling from a high building, resulting in a massive shockwave that disables (or kills) anyone in the vicinity when you land.  Disabling Reapers is quite entertaining on its own, but the real versatility of the combat system is its freeform nature; improvisation is certainly possible, and in fact, I encourage it.  At one point, a Reaper was taking pot shots at me with a sniper rifle from a nearby rooftop; in retaliation, I blasted a puddle that he happened to be standing in, paralyzing him.  I then flew across the gap between the two buildings, punched him into the air, then nailed him with a shockwave that sent him spiralling to his death several blocks away.  One thing is to be noted, however; the combat can be difficult.  Even on the demo’s default difficulty level of Easy, I found myself dying every so often to the more powerful Reapers; an event that occurred with much less frequency during my second playthrough, as I started to use the game’s cover system more effectively and learned better ways to use Cole’s powers.

The missions in the demo are pretty simple; one involves hunting down and killing a large group of Reapers on the rooftops, another one requires you to defend a government food drop from invading enemies, while the final mission acts as tutorial for a special power that I won’t mention here in this preview by forcing you to disable a Reaper-controlled armored truck.  These missions tie into the Karma System found in inFAMOUS; similar to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, every action you make contributes to Cole’s Karma score.  For example, if you disable enemies non-lethally and stop to help or heal the city’s citizens, your Karma scale will tip towards Good; on the other hand, if you make frequent use of Cole’s devastating Vampire Drain power or show no restraint while fighting on the streets, causing large amounts of collateral damage, your Karma scale will move towards the Evil side.  This Karma system isn’t just for show; Cole’s powers work entirely differently depending on his alignment.  For example, scoring a headshot (or “headshock”, as the game refers to them) with the default lightning blast while Good will grant you a small degree of healing and recharge one of your energy cells.  Doing the same while Evil, however, causes the enemy to violently detonate with a wide burst of electrical energy, damaging and possibly killing anyone nearby.  This results in a vastly different style of combat for the two different Coles; Evil Cole’s powers allow him to devastate enemies far more quickly, but he drains his energy reserves much quicker due to his lack of restraint, while Good Cole’s powers are more surgical and direct; he can sustain combat for a longer period of time without bottoming out, but his powers aren’t nearly as flashy.

Truth be told, while the missions were certainly interesting, the vast majority of my two playthroughs of the demo (each one clocking in at at least an hour) were spent exploring Empire City, hunting for Blast Shards, and skating about through the city’s power grid, helping citizens and killing Reapers.  At one point in the demo, I came across a group of pedestrians who approached me, warning me of a mugging taking place nearby.  After a quick look around, I found that a group of Reapers had cornered a young woman on the roof of a nearby donut shop.  Figuring that stopping such an event from transpiring would earn me major brownie points, I leapt up on top of the building, readied a bolt of lightning…and proceeded to accidentally fry her along with her would-be muggers.  Whoops.  The degree of freedom granted by Cole’s mobility is like nothing else on the PlayStation 3, and draws extremely favorable comparisons to the XBOX 360′s Crackdown; if you enjoyed Crackdown, you’ll likely enjoy inFAMOUS just as much, if not more.

The demo is currently available on the PlayStation Network for anyone who preorders the game from Best Buy or GameCrazy; everyone else will have to wait until May 21st, the week before the game releases, to try it out.  Needless to say, it’s worth the wait.  Check back here by the end of the month for our exclusive review of the full version of inFAMOUS.