Given that Infamous: Second Sοn is currently the most exciting game available for the PS4, I thought I should play through the other two games in the series as preparation. I will be getting a PS4 for my birthday this year! As a fan of the Sly Cooper games, I already trusted Sucker Punch to deliver a solid gaming experience, and the first Infamous is exactly that: solid, with some really exciting moments added in to keep me going.
Infamous is a game well worth playing. When it starts, you are Cole MacGrath, a lowly bike messenger in Empire City who is sent to deliver a package—a package that turns out to be a bomb that destroys five city blocks. Not only do you survive, but you find that you are imbued with electrical powers that become more powerful by the day. Not only are the powers fun to play with, but the game lets you choose what to do with them: Will you become a superhero, or a supervillain? The choices you make will affect your karma, and by extension your character's abilities and appearance.
The overall story of the game is good no matter what path you choose. Most of the major plot points play out via Cole's phone. Throughout the game you have conversations with Cole's girlfriend, Trish, his best friend, Zeke, and a government agent named Moya whose intentions are not entirely clear. Zeke and Trish have their own concerns and internal conflicts, so Cole's conversations with them make his story extremely compelling. To flesh out Cole's world, there are satellite "dead drops" around town that provide endlessly interesting background information. I also found myself enjoying Cole's comments to himself when discovering exciting new powers—he enjoyed testing out his new abilities just as much as I did.
Sucker Punch clearly put a lot of thought into the powers that you develop in Infamous, and they are a hell of a lot of fun. While at the beginning of the game you can only shoot bolts of electricity from your hands, you can eventually hover in the air, grind along rails and electrical wires, conjure up an electric shield, and throw electric grenades into clusters of enemies. What's not to love?
The game falls short, however, in its repetitive mission structure. While Infamous is billed as a "sandbox" game because you roam freely throughout its urban setting, there aren't any people to really interact with. There are only collectibles to hunt for and main or side missions to complete. There were certain types of side mission that reappeared throughout the game, and I found myself groaning whenever I encountered one. My most intense hatred is reserved for "Satellite Uplinks," during which you rush from point to point under very strict time limits. Infamous has pretty good controls, but Cole has very floaty jumps and will stick to anything when he climbs. Extremely precise platforming was not easy for me.
Game fatigue was also a constant affliction in the late stages of Infamous. Towards the end of my playthrough, I found myself only able to complete 1-2 missions per session because I was losing focus and feeling ready for something new. How many more tar trucks or toxic hot air balloons do I really need to destroy before I am allowed to move on to the next thing?
Cole's karmic choices also left something to be desired, for me at least. Although the hero-or-villain mechanic is generally awesome, I was left disappointed that there was no space to be an antihero. The game actively encourages you to max out your karma, whether in the good direction or the evil one. There is no way to remain comfortably in the middle. Cole is not good person who occasionally does bad things, nor is he a monster with just a bit of love in his heart. Also, I won't give spoilers for the few people who haven't yet played the game, but some of the choices I had to make did not seem as black-and-white (or, in this case, red-and-blue) as the game suggests.
Overall, Infamous is a great game and I do not regret the time I spent playing it. Infamous 2 is in my to-play list and I plan to tackle it soon. Infamous can get a little bit old once you've played a good part of the way through. But the story is great, and Cole's powers are a blast to play with. Definitely give it a shot.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Playstation Trophies: Kicking the Habit
I am a perfectionist and a born competitor. I like to win, and I win a lot. And I won't lie—I get a thrill when I hear that little *ding* and see a trophy pop up when I'm playing my PS3 or my Vita.
But I need to kick this habit now, before it sucks all of the fun out of my gaming life. Here's why:
1) One thing that is true about winning, in your professional life or in your personal one, is that it takes work. Trophies are no different. Even easy platinums require you to put in the time and effort to read the trophy list and develop a strategy for completing it. And some trophies are nothing but a giant pain in the ass. Death mode on Sound Shapes drove me so crazy that I had to take a gaming break for a couple of days. And at some point, a game just isn't fun anymore—I will never plat even the relatively easy Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time because there is no way I am going sit and play those awful arcade games until I get a high score. I'm finally playing Infamous right now, and you have got to be kidding me if you think I'm going to work on the stunt list or worry about whether I have killed enough enemies while standing on a moving vehicle. I have ruined many of my life's pleasures by getting too competitive, and hell if I'm going to ruin games for myself, too.
2) Planning your game around trophies screws up the way you play. Not only do you end up seeing spoilers because you don't want to miss a missable trophy, but you are sometimes forced to choose activities and play styles you might otherwise ignore. In Dishonored, for example, you have to play the game at least twice to get all of the trophies, and in one playthrough you won't even get to use any of the sweet supernatural upgrades. There is great fun in a challenge, but a trophy list can feel less like a challenge and more like a prescription. I want to feel free to play the way I want to play, without confronting the silent judgment of a trophy unobtained.
3) An emphasis on trophies makes you ignore great games that happen to lack trophy support. I am already falling prey to this problem. When my activity on the PSN is largely reported based on trophies earned, it makes me more likely to prioritize games that allow me to earn trophies. This also means that I am missing out on some sweet games, like Oblivion or Valkyria Chronicles or even older PSN classics like Jeanne D'Arc. And we aren't even taking into account the wonders of the 3DS, which has no trophy support but does have killer games like Fire Emblem, Shin Megami Tensei IV, Super Mario 3D Land, and the list goes on.
4) Trophies determine your obsessions for you, rather than letting you develop them yourself. I am actually a collector by nature. I have spent hours grinding in Final Fantasy Tactics so that I can have at least one party member become a master of every single job class. In Ocarina of Time, I combed Hyrule for every heart piece and skulltula. I am thinking about getting the 3DS version so I can do it again. So I've got it in me to play the hell out of a game purely because I want to. But knowing there is a trophy list is almost like having an invader come into my gaming experience and decide for me when my game is truly done and how I should finish it.
I know that trophies are making games less fun for me, and I know that they negatively affect the way I play. But it's hard to quit. I do love watching my level go up on the PSN, and I love silently creeping up on higher-level friends and then passing them by. Even more than that, I love "objective" markers of how successful I am at things. My PSN level is modest right now, but I've only had my PS3 since November. I could always do more... But I could also just enjoy the ride and stress about other stuff instead.
Will I ever get up the nerve to turn off trophy notifications? Or am I a hopeless addict? There may not be a happy medium, here.
But I need to kick this habit now, before it sucks all of the fun out of my gaming life. Here's why:
1) One thing that is true about winning, in your professional life or in your personal one, is that it takes work. Trophies are no different. Even easy platinums require you to put in the time and effort to read the trophy list and develop a strategy for completing it. And some trophies are nothing but a giant pain in the ass. Death mode on Sound Shapes drove me so crazy that I had to take a gaming break for a couple of days. And at some point, a game just isn't fun anymore—I will never plat even the relatively easy Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time because there is no way I am going sit and play those awful arcade games until I get a high score. I'm finally playing Infamous right now, and you have got to be kidding me if you think I'm going to work on the stunt list or worry about whether I have killed enough enemies while standing on a moving vehicle. I have ruined many of my life's pleasures by getting too competitive, and hell if I'm going to ruin games for myself, too.
2) Planning your game around trophies screws up the way you play. Not only do you end up seeing spoilers because you don't want to miss a missable trophy, but you are sometimes forced to choose activities and play styles you might otherwise ignore. In Dishonored, for example, you have to play the game at least twice to get all of the trophies, and in one playthrough you won't even get to use any of the sweet supernatural upgrades. There is great fun in a challenge, but a trophy list can feel less like a challenge and more like a prescription. I want to feel free to play the way I want to play, without confronting the silent judgment of a trophy unobtained.
3) An emphasis on trophies makes you ignore great games that happen to lack trophy support. I am already falling prey to this problem. When my activity on the PSN is largely reported based on trophies earned, it makes me more likely to prioritize games that allow me to earn trophies. This also means that I am missing out on some sweet games, like Oblivion or Valkyria Chronicles or even older PSN classics like Jeanne D'Arc. And we aren't even taking into account the wonders of the 3DS, which has no trophy support but does have killer games like Fire Emblem, Shin Megami Tensei IV, Super Mario 3D Land, and the list goes on.
4) Trophies determine your obsessions for you, rather than letting you develop them yourself. I am actually a collector by nature. I have spent hours grinding in Final Fantasy Tactics so that I can have at least one party member become a master of every single job class. In Ocarina of Time, I combed Hyrule for every heart piece and skulltula. I am thinking about getting the 3DS version so I can do it again. So I've got it in me to play the hell out of a game purely because I want to. But knowing there is a trophy list is almost like having an invader come into my gaming experience and decide for me when my game is truly done and how I should finish it.
I know that trophies are making games less fun for me, and I know that they negatively affect the way I play. But it's hard to quit. I do love watching my level go up on the PSN, and I love silently creeping up on higher-level friends and then passing them by. Even more than that, I love "objective" markers of how successful I am at things. My PSN level is modest right now, but I've only had my PS3 since November. I could always do more... But I could also just enjoy the ride and stress about other stuff instead.
Will I ever get up the nerve to turn off trophy notifications? Or am I a hopeless addict? There may not be a happy medium, here.
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