Infamous (video Game) - Reception

Reception

In general, Infamous was critically acclaimed by reviews from game critics. Greg Miller of IGN considered the title to be "one of the best PlayStation 3 games to date". Core to the game's success, according to reviewers, were the basic mechanics of the game. Giant Bomb's Brad Shoemaker considered that Sucker Punch had "nailed the basic gameplay elements", tying all the various aspects of the game together. The mixture of Cole's powers with the Karma elements of the game were also praised. The powers and Karma system were seen to bring difficult choices to how the player approach battles. Both sides of the Karma system were considered to be fun to play. The mission structure was considered a strong asset of the game. According to X-Play's Matt Kiel, the missions forced the player to consider the full extent of Cole's powers through their difficulty but provided "generous" checkpoints to prevent too much frustration with the game. Reviewers cited the variation in side missions and how they related to the main story as positive aspects of the game.

The presentation of Empire City was also considered to be a significant factor of the success of the game. The climbing and grabbing aspect was considered well done and avoided a "frustration-fest" that other games with precision jumping generally bring about, according to Miller. However, some reviewers noted that Cole's climbing ability was too touchy, with the character grabbing onto ledges too greedily, making it difficult to fine-tune jumps. In combination with Cole's other powers, Miller cited the game as having the "most original city-traversal mechanics" for an open-world game. The behavior of the city's population and how that was affected by the player's choice in Karma was also seen as a positive, and as a constant reminder of the game's setting. The game's story, particularly in the second half of the game, was considered to be strong, enhanced by presentation of the cut-scenes. However, the quality of these scenes was seen to negatively highlight the poor animation used for in-game generated cut-scenes and the quality of the voice work; Miller considered Cole's voice to be too gravelly for the character.

The initial hours of the game, before the player started to acquire some of the more potent powers, were considered to be difficult and may be off-putting to some. Tom Bramwell of Eurogamer noted the remainder of the game continues to have some difficult sections, such as sections where the player must defend a moving target against a large number of foes, and considered these to be "repetitive and overlong". Bramwell further commented that the electrical powers in the game are simply electricity-based reimaginings of standard video game weapon archetypes, such as shotguns and sniper rifles, and, with this awareness, leaves the difficulty of the game up to the enemy placement during encounters. The game is also considered to be rough around the edges in technical execution, with the lack of anti-aliasing and occasional "pop-in" rendering, as well as drops in frame rates when there was a significant amount of action on the screen.

Infamous was released a few weeks before Radical Entertainment's Prototype, a game with many similar concepts including a character finding himself with super powers, a large open-world environment that can be traveled by climbing up buildings and gliding about the city, and several other comparisons. This led many game critics to compare and contrast the games. In his sarcastic Zero Punctuation review of Prototype, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw (who had initially praised Infamous as "huge, creative and fun,") compared the two games point for point, and determined that he could not tell which was the better game, and challenged the respective studios to "produce the best image of the rival game's main character wearing a women's bra" as a tiebreaker. To his surprise, both development teams rose to the challenge, producing said images, and forcing Croshaw to call it a near-tie, edging out in favor of Infamous, though still noted that, like their games, both images created independently were nearly equal in the assets that they included. This rivalry highlighted the advantages and disadvantages of exclusivity over a multiplatform release. Gaming analysts Jesse Divnich had this to say "Due to near identical game play and quality scores, the Infamous vs. Prototype case study presents interesting data to publishers when considering the sales bump a title could receive by choosing exclusivity over a multiplatform release."

Infamous was released at the end of May, and the game sold 175,900 copies in the United States on its opening week, recorded in May 2009 sales according to the NPD Group, and sold 192,700 copies in the United States over the month of June 2009, the 10th highest-selling game that month. As of December 4, 2009, the game has sold 1.2 million copies. IGN awarded Infamous Best Story, and Game of the Year and Best Acting at the 2009 Golden Game Awards. Infamous was also nominated for four other Golden Game Awards, including Best PlayStation 3 Game, Best Graphics, Best Independent Game, and Studio of the Year.

On September 4, 2010, Infamous was ranked fifth in "The Top 25 PlayStation 3 Games" of IGN, stating that "when Infamous was released on PlayStation 3 in the spring of 2009, it quickly became clear that this was unlike any sandbox game anyone had ever played."