inFamous

Sucker Punch's action-adventure thunderbolt finally lights up our PS3s, but is it worth plugging in?

	Version PS3	Developer Sucker Punch	Publisher SCE	Genre Action

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You begin the game with just the first two of these powers, unlocking the rest by travelling into the sewers at story-determined intervals to reactivate substations disconnected from the grid by your antagonists. Just hit triangle and Cole will channel the current from the live wire through his very body. These underground escapades also serve, rather neatly, as tutorials, letting you try out each power against a scripted set of enemies and obstacles. Besides his mad hoodie-zapping skillz, Cole will eventually learn to rail-grind on electric cables and train tracks, glide on plumes of sparks by holding R1 mid-jump, and revive, restrain or vampirically drain the bodies of wounded citizens and enemies, among other feats.

Flicking the lights back on is also key because you need man-made electricity to stay superheroic. All combat powers beyond the inexhaustible lightning bolt suck nodes off your battery bar in top left; to refill those nodes, you'll have to quaff raw electrons direct from any nearby lamp-posts, phone booths and the like by holding L2. Doing so also restores your sluggish, Gears-esque recharging health a hell of a lot quicker.

This dependency makes venturing into blacked-out areas a dangerous move, and gives combat beyond them a pleasantly unique degree of complexity. Will you live on the edge, snatching mouthfuls of juice from meagre sources to keep yourself going in the fray? Or hedge your bets, retreating before a mob to some rooftop generator where you can be assured of a steady supply? Couple this with the fact that many of those power sources - e.g. cars - are explodable, and thus hazardous things to be loitering near under fire, and you're looking at a game that will definitely oblige you to use your noggin.

And that's without taking the Karma system into consideration. Empire City has a sizeable population of innocent bystanders, and how you treat these bystanders affects how you develop as a superhero. Cole can upgrade his abilities on the start menu with experience points achieved by frying scumbags, completing missions and so forth, but exactly which abilities he gets to upgrade hinges on the status of the six-part Karma gauge.

If you try to minimise collateral damage by reining in Cole's area effect moves, restrain rather than execute floored baddies and take time to heal injured average Joes, you'll be nudged towards upgrades which favour a considered approach e.g. restoring your health when you land a "headshock". Throw shock grenades around willy-nilly, on the other hand, and less discriminating powers will be yours.

It's here that Sucker Punch's jaunt into the realm of morality is at its most successful. As the odds rack up, keeping a tight handle on your powers for conscience's sake becomes a real challenge. While they're all derived from basic archetypes, the gunmen, riot-shielded heavies, shotgunners, kamikaze and bazooka troops who make up the bulk of the game's three region-specific factions are adept at using the city as cover, darting backwards and forwards from the lip of a roof to snipe, and hunkering down behind civilian traffic.

It becomes increasingly tempting to stray from the Light when pressed, draining the odd passer-by (go on, just one) of their vital energies, or blasting away the crowd shielding a stubborn goon. Not that you can expect things to go swimmingly if you're nasty. Electrocute one too many grannies and the mass will hurl rocks in your direction whenever and wherever they see you.

Every so often the inner conflict comes to a head in the form of a "Karma moment", in which Cole must choose between righteous or perfidious actions to advance the plot - starting a bloody riot to gain access to an area or tackling the guards on his lonesome, sharing an aerial food-drop out to the population or chasing them off, and other such bipolar dilemmas. His appearance also alters in line with the Karma gauge in a manner redolent of Fable 2. If you're a boy scout, your skin will be a scrubbed pink and your lightning forget-me-not blue, while persistent evil-doers resemble Sith Lords hooked on crystal meth. The city and its populace too brightens if you play nice, and descends further into squalor if you don't. As your reputation grows, people start to put up posters reflecting your exploits, and in a cute twist, you're allowed to choose the design yourself.

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