It's When You're MORE Than Famous
Why hello there, five new inFAMOUS missions, nice to see you. What's that, you want us to tell others about you? Kay.
Published: April 29, 2009
It's known fact that TotalPlayStation and inFAMOUS are bestest best friends. We've covered the game with ridiculous previews and giggled with glee at every announcement -- like the one that the game will ship, for those who buy it early, with the multiplayer beta of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Now, there's only the waiting game, which may well be over for us here in the office by the time you read this. In the mean time, we can go over a few new missions we tried out.
The first two were simple little side missions, exhibiting what happens when you choose to go good or bad (in this case blowing up a police station or herding four of the red-cloaked Reapers to jail with the judicious use of lightning zaps). In both cases, once the mission was completed, the area we undertook it in was cleared of baddies who, the game promised, wouldn't return (at least not once we'd gotten 100% of the missions fulfilled). Interestingly, it also locked off a mission for the other moral side, further confirming that we'll have to make the choice to be good or evil early and then stick to it.
The other missions were a bit more involved. One had us battling a hulking, super-sized version of the Conduit enemies that we ran into during the prison mission in the GDC build we previewed, but before we could actually fight it, we had to cross the twisted, crumbling mass that used to be a bridge connecting two of the game's three islands. The garbage bagger enemies we'd come across before were out in force, trying to snipe us as we threaded our way over, around and across the tresses that made up the bridge's metallic supports. Though we were familiar with most of the powers up to that point (tapping down on the d-pad to snipe back was used prominently), it wasn't until we squared off against the boss that we made ample use of the shield ability to block incoming chaingun fire. We also used the three bits of cover to hide too, but they didn't work nearly as well as creating a wall of energy to dampen the incoming fire. From there, it was a matter of dodging (or blasting back with the shockwave power) rocks of garbage thrown at us and just plugging away at the beast whenever possible. The four lights that surrounded our little patch of relative safety refilled our electrical mojo when it started to run low, and after a few very hectic minutes (and more than a few deaths), we blew him to kingdom come.
The second run-in with that villain, though, required far more traversal and showed how far the game's detection of platforming had come. We had to climb a massive trash spire that we couldn't quite get up in the GDC demo, scooting around the outside until we got to a platform where we could let our sci-fi buddy Zeke up by powering a trio of elevators. Once we were at the top, a few waves of enemies and a Conduit to take down left us pondering the appearance of a mysterious villain (maybe?) and what appeared to be Zeke getting caught in a massive feedback explosion. Uh oh.
The final mission was similar to the bus/tank takedown we did in the GDC demo where we had to scoot around the rooftops, but this time it was to disable or destroy a set of sludge pumps infecting the water supply in the city and poisoning the folks still struggling to live in Empire City despite the destruction around them. By disabling them, we'd make a bad choice (since they were still hurting the water supply) and by blasting 'em with a shockwave we'd injure ourselves but ultimately nip the contagion in the bud. Interestingly, each tower chipped away at or slightly boosted our morality gauge toward good or evil, so we didn't have to always play it one way or the other.
The newest build of the game (which had gone gold that week and looked to be polished as hell), sported a fairly solid framerate and really just teased us with what was to come. Given that the game will hit in just about a month and we'll hopefully be zipping through Cole's full adventure as you read this, we should have sated our lust for exploring and spamming the crap out of Empire City, its blast shards and injured citizens and will have a full review in the coming weeks. Check back soon!
The first two were simple little side missions, exhibiting what happens when you choose to go good or bad (in this case blowing up a police station or herding four of the red-cloaked Reapers to jail with the judicious use of lightning zaps). In both cases, once the mission was completed, the area we undertook it in was cleared of baddies who, the game promised, wouldn't return (at least not once we'd gotten 100% of the missions fulfilled). Interestingly, it also locked off a mission for the other moral side, further confirming that we'll have to make the choice to be good or evil early and then stick to it.
The other missions were a bit more involved. One had us battling a hulking, super-sized version of the Conduit enemies that we ran into during the prison mission in the GDC build we previewed, but before we could actually fight it, we had to cross the twisted, crumbling mass that used to be a bridge connecting two of the game's three islands. The garbage bagger enemies we'd come across before were out in force, trying to snipe us as we threaded our way over, around and across the tresses that made up the bridge's metallic supports. Though we were familiar with most of the powers up to that point (tapping down on the d-pad to snipe back was used prominently), it wasn't until we squared off against the boss that we made ample use of the shield ability to block incoming chaingun fire. We also used the three bits of cover to hide too, but they didn't work nearly as well as creating a wall of energy to dampen the incoming fire. From there, it was a matter of dodging (or blasting back with the shockwave power) rocks of garbage thrown at us and just plugging away at the beast whenever possible. The four lights that surrounded our little patch of relative safety refilled our electrical mojo when it started to run low, and after a few very hectic minutes (and more than a few deaths), we blew him to kingdom come.
The second run-in with that villain, though, required far more traversal and showed how far the game's detection of platforming had come. We had to climb a massive trash spire that we couldn't quite get up in the GDC demo, scooting around the outside until we got to a platform where we could let our sci-fi buddy Zeke up by powering a trio of elevators. Once we were at the top, a few waves of enemies and a Conduit to take down left us pondering the appearance of a mysterious villain (maybe?) and what appeared to be Zeke getting caught in a massive feedback explosion. Uh oh.
The final mission was similar to the bus/tank takedown we did in the GDC demo where we had to scoot around the rooftops, but this time it was to disable or destroy a set of sludge pumps infecting the water supply in the city and poisoning the folks still struggling to live in Empire City despite the destruction around them. By disabling them, we'd make a bad choice (since they were still hurting the water supply) and by blasting 'em with a shockwave we'd injure ourselves but ultimately nip the contagion in the bud. Interestingly, each tower chipped away at or slightly boosted our morality gauge toward good or evil, so we didn't have to always play it one way or the other.
The newest build of the game (which had gone gold that week and looked to be polished as hell), sported a fairly solid framerate and really just teased us with what was to come. Given that the game will hit in just about a month and we'll hopefully be zipping through Cole's full adventure as you read this, we should have sated our lust for exploring and spamming the crap out of Empire City, its blast shards and injured citizens and will have a full review in the coming weeks. Check back soon!
