FINALLY, an "Open-World" Game That I Liked

Today I finished Infamous (or inFAMOUS according to the box), an open-world 3rd-person action adventure game where you play as Cole MacGrath, a bike messenger in Empire City who is delivering a mysterious package when it explodes, devestating the city and granting Cole electrical powers. A plague starts spreading so the government quarantines the city and gangs take over. Your job is to help restore order to the city and solve the mystery of what happened which introduces you to other super powered beings as well for you to fight- or you can just kick ass and be an evil dude too. The game operates on a karma system wherein you slowly progress to the goal of either Hero or Villian. I went with the more natural selection - hero.

This game is a PS3-exclusive title that came out in May of last year and received very good reviews so I'm way behind the curve on finally playing it. But it was always described as an "open-world" or "sandbox" type game and my experience with that genre so far has left me disappointed so I think it scared me away. Unlike the rest of the modern gaming world, I thought Grand Theft Auto IV was boring and I was fairly underwhelmed by Red Dead Redemption as well. But Fallguy40 was nice enough to let me borrow his copy of Infamous and I discovered that I liked it quite a bit after all. So maybe I just don't like the way Rockstar makes the so-called open world games. I dunno. Either way, if you own a PS3 and don't already have Infamous you should give it a shot. In my usual 1.0-10 scale I give it a 8.8.

I liked: The story, grinding on the power lines and rails to get around the huge city quickly, the various powers and the way you progressively obtained and learned new ones, the climbing mechanic, the way heights/falls looked which felt genuine enough to make my stomach feel a little nervous.

I disliked: Cole was a little too grabby onto things which sometimes made precision jumping and falling awkward, getting on a ladder was needlessly difficult and frustrating, quite a bit of pop-in on buildings etc as they appeared from the distance, goon fights were fairly repetitive, Trish.