Thoughts on Infamous 1
I played Infamous 1 for the first time. I love it, but...
The game aged.
Wow, a PS3 game from 2009 aged? No way! But the thing is the game aged more than I thought it would. Especially considering how much praise and love the game still gets. But before I continue with my thoughts I need to give some context of my relationship with the Infamous series.
Some context: Aka, my history with Infamous
Before the beginning of this year I never played any Infamous game, but I did watch the full playthrough of both karmas from all games in the franchise on Youtube. That I know of. 1, 2, Festival of Blood, Second Son, and First Light. (I know First Light doesn’t have karma paths, but still.)
I loved the story and the aesthetics of the games. The world and characters were very fun, and I even began to think of an OC that had sound powers but never became more than an idea and a lost sketch.
It wasn’t until I watched That Guy Aqua’s video on playing Infamous 1 on PC that I decided to do it myself. (He also made one for the second game. Both links open on a new tab.)
So I played Infamous 1 in an emulator with my fps varying from 60 to 30, averaging on 40 in the best cases, with an off-brand Xbox controller, and my CPU achieving 77º C (that’s around 170º F). And I had a fucking blast. For the most part.
I miss (and don’t miss) 2009 games
Infamous 1 being an older game has that feeling. You know, a “gamey” feeling. It warrants an entire essay on itself about video games as an artform, and there is a bit of my own bias, but something I miss from old games is this feeling of it trying to tell a story or express an experience in a very “gamey” form. There are still plenty of games that do that, especially indie and AA games, but I miss when games from bigger studios brought that feeling. I don’t mind the more “cinematic” experience a lot of AAA games want to bring, I think it’s great, but more variety would be nice, you know?
That said, what I don’t miss on old games it’s the unique jank that came with it. Now, 2009 we already made plenty of progress with controlling characters in a 3D environment and how far gameplay in general has come, but still, it is clear that 2009 was 17 years ago.
(Turns into dust and dies from old age)
It could be my off-brand controller, or the emulator struggling to run the game, or just me not being the greatest gamer ever, but something about the gameplay feels dated. The movement and the traversal in the city is great and super fun, so that can’t be it. Maybe it is aiming with the controller instead of a mouse, since I’m not used to it. Or maybe it's just the general age of the game that we outgrew some things.
Either way, despite almost having age to be considered an adult the game plays very nicely and it is very fun. For the most part.
An electrifying experience and some shocking realizations
I like puns. Anyway. This game is a power fantasy through and through. Cole feels very powerful and capable, even at the start of the game with abilities like his Lightning Bolt, his Shockwave, and Thunder Drop. With the advancement of the story Cole only grows in power, and the power fantasy grows with him. Even draining energy and riding on power lines feels powerful, with my controller vibrating so much, more than I've ever seen a game do, that if I left it on my table it would sound like an earthquake.
However, because Cole feels so powerful, the game has to balance that a little bit so you as the player have SOME challenge. And this is where I get some problems with the game. Not with the game giving me a challenge, not at all, but rather on HOW it makes enemies challenging.
First, how Cole operates in the game: He can shoot up to a certain distance, which is shorter than his vision (makes sense), enemies show up in the minimap (very useful), and Cole has an electrosense radar of sorts that shows collectibles, sources of electricity, enemies, and objectives. He can also attack at melee but it’s very underwhelming, unless you use the gigawatt blades (the 2nd game improved this a lot) but in a pinch it’s a good option to have. All very nice, cool, and useful.
But then, there are the enemies: Most use firearms, which can shoot at a greater distance and through fences while your attacks are blocked by those same fences. Which, honestly? Makes total sense! Of course the enemies would make faraday cages to protect against the Electric Man. The problem comes with their range being higher than the minimap and the electrosense can show, which leads to you getting shot without knowing from where and unable to use any of the tools the game gave you in order to locate the enemy which could very well be way above you since they love verticality as much as Cole.
This happens so often and the only thing you can do is take cover and hunt for these motherfuckers that will probably hide after shooting at you. Realistic? Sure. Fun for a game? Fuck no. Against fences you have ways to deal with those: Repositioning yourself, shock grenades, gigawatt hammer, thunderstorm, etc. But when they shoot at you being too far away to see or fight back? You either get out of there completely or play hide and seek. This could have been easily fixed by just making the enemies aggro only when they could be visible in the minimap.
But², this is basically the only complaint I have with the combat. Yes, if you stay too much out in the open enemies will eat you alive, but Cole isn’t meant to be bullet proof, just to heal fast and attack faster. He is more or less a glass cannon, a very well done and very fun to play electric glass cannon.
Other than a few frustrating moments (the bus mission until I saw getting down every 5 seconds makes the mission trivial) the game is easy (for me). Which both the general easiness helped me go through the more frustrating parts and made me realize I didn’t need to cheat (on rare occasions I cheat in single player games in specific sections; crucify me if you want, who cares). I could justify my problem with frustration in video games, and in life, etc, but none of that matters, what matters is that I realized cheating shouldn’t be a crutch, it should be only when Silksong eats my ass for the 100th time and I no longer have any patience for it. I joke, I joke. It’s only when I feel like it. Which is way less often than I thought.
Good vs Bad
I know I haven’t talked much about the story, but I don’t feel like there is much to talk about. The characters are interesting but nothing is super in depth. There is enough to engage you, but nothing will make you reflect deeply on human nature and the nature of power (unless this is one of your first stories about superheroes (no diss)). The story is good and fun, but simple. Simple is good. Simple here is well done. But still simple.
Where Infamous shines is on the morality system. Video games generally treat morality very simplistically (with exceptions, of course), and Infamous isn’t different in that regard. However, what I find interesting is that Infamous doesn’t completely change the story, instead there are a lot of common threads that your choice of good and evil recontextualizes those common scenes, and changes only some key parts of the story.
For instance, [STORY SPOILERS AHEAD] when Kessler killed Trish, you can infer that good Cole is going after him for revenge, yes, but also for a sense of justice to stop the evil doer. With evil Cole, however, it feels like it’s just revenge, anger, wrath. Nothing in the story explicitly says this, but it is implied through dialog, tone, and context.
There are some small moments throughout the game where characters change a bit on how they talk due to your choices, and the ending naturally reflects your choices a lot. But the most notorious thing about the karma choices is how the city reacts to them.
Citizens will stop and take pictures of good Cole, the streets will be cleaner (still with debris but cleaner), people will applaud Cole, ask for his help, even throw rocks at the enemies. The ending will have the city slightly more blue, way cleaner, and life apparently going back to normal. Albeit slowly.
With evil karma, citizens will boo at Cole, call him a freak, even throw rocks AT HIM. The streets will be more cluttered, the general mood of the city will be worse, posters of Cole as a hero will have graffiti on it. The ending the sky will have turned red, the city is in shambles, and everything looks evil.
Some parts make a bit more sense in one karma over the other. E.g. Trish being mad at Cole in evil karma makes more sense, as she giving him a second chance makes more sense in good karma. But generally everything that both karma have in common work quite well, as do the divergences.
Even with the simplistic Good vs Evil moral choices the game managed to make evil Cole feel like he thinks he is the hero of his story (until the end when he went full super villain), and made good Cole feel like a proper hero rising up to the occasion. Whatever karm you pick to play, it works very well for an origin story, whenever that is a villain or hero.
Conclusion (maybe for now idk)
This old ass game that has some weird janky clunkiness was a super fun superhero experience. Having played a little of the 2nd game I can say here is where the foundations of the games were laid out, and it is a very solid foundation.
I’m actually not really pumped to play the 2nd game yet. Usually when I like a game a lot I end up really rushing it in the end to the point I kind of burn myself out for a bit. It happened with Batman Arkham Knight, Subnautica, Hollow Knight, Silksong, and now Infamous. So I will give some time before actually playing both karmas of the sequel. But until then, know that if you can play Infamous 1, go do it. It’s not perfect, and it may get you used to some things, but it’s a great experience and relatively short compared to every other mainstream game nowadays that takes 5 billion years to get out of the initial area.
No diss on long games either, I like long things. But it’s nice to have a mix of lengths, you know?
Anyway, thank you for reading and
See you in Infamous 2
