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1UP: General question: What do you feel\'s required to make a superhero game work and succeed? As a follow-up, what do you guys think modern -- or future -- superhero games need to move the genre forward, and how will Infamous address those points? Nate Fox: I believe the most important thing to making a good superhero game is marrying the hero\'s powers into the game world. Sometimes that\'s really tough. For instance, if my hero has razor-sharp claws, yet the game won\'t let me cut down a wooden fence, then it sort of breaks the suspension of disbelief. Our hero, Cole, has powers that are designed from the ground up to work well in the context of a videogame. For instance, he can shoot lighting bolts out of his hands -- why? Because shooting in videogames works really freaking well. Same with being able to climb everywhere in the world and jump between buildings -- it\'s fun to do! This is our core strategy in crafting our superhero -- we\'re building the world around his powers and his powers around what\'s fun to do in the world. 1UP: Quick refresher: What\'s the basic structure of Infamous? Is it a series of missions set against an open-world backdrop, or do players go out into the world to find things to do? Does Cole have a safe house, like Sly did? NF: Infamous is an open-world game filled with stuff to discover as you poke around Empire City. People are getting mugged and attacked all around you -- whether you decide to do anything about it or not. We call this "the crime ecosystem." However, story missions are tailored to deliver a cinematic superhero experience. And yeah, Cole has a bit of a safe house, but not like Sly, nope, there\'s no place safe for Cole in Empire City. 1UP: You\'ve shown some Reapers (the main gang that Cole goes up against); some with traditional weapons and others with superpowers of their own. Tell us about what goes into the enemy design? How do you decide what superpowers the enemies have or deal with balancing enemies who just use guns against a player who can call down lightning from the sky? NF: Creating enemies for Cole has been one of the real joys in making Infamous. Since it\'s a realistic game, we started by creating bad guys with a full suite of conventional weapons (guns, grenades, etc). Once that groundwork was done, we moved up to enemies with superpowers, which as you might imagine is fantastically fun to design. Enemy powers let us create some new experiences in the third-person shooter genre. For instance, the Fire Reaper we\'ve demoed is designed to force dynamic rolls and pressures the player to seek higher ground in the heat of combat. ...1UP: Describe the coolest event you\'ve most recently seen -- a particular battle, a sequence in a mission, whatever -- you\'ve seen in Infamous. NF: As you might imagine, given that Infamous is an open-world game with a lot of systemic interactions, you\'ll see unexpected stuff all over the place. Just this afternoon while playing the game, I pissed off a bunch of people, and they banded together into a mob and tried to stone me to death. Ultimately it didn\'t end well for them, but I admired their courage. Did I mention you can play as a good or evil character?
December 19, 2008 - Infamous is awesome. Period. End of statement. I know a lot of times we at IGN get railed on for over-hyping games -- we tell you a game looks great during the preview period but then crap on it when review time comes -- but I\'m willing to put my reputation on the line right now and tell you I can\'t see that happening with this game. Infamous is a blast, and you\'re going to need to buy it come spring. As if playing videogames for a living wasn\'t enough of a reason, I consider myself pretty lucky after Monday. On that day, I became the first person outside of the hallowed halls of Sucker Punch -- the folks who brought you the Sly Cooper games and are currently burning the candle at both ends on Infamous -- to actually pick up a DualShock 3 and play their current project. In this open-world game, you\'re in the electrified shoes of Cole. He\'s your average, everyday bike messenger in Empire City until one day he\'s holding a box, it goes boom, and the world goes to hell......Terror. Death. Destruction. Murder. Rape. The collapse of the civilized world. This is where my hands-on session with Infamous began. A comic book story at heart -- Sucker Punch cites series such as DMZ, Batman No Man\'s Land, and others as inspiration -- the game introduced me to Cole and his cast of supporting characters through the game\'s graphic novel-inspired cutscenes......With that, my first real mission as Cole was in play. Time was of the essence, and being a super-powered messenger with a passion for urban exploration, I just leapt off the roof of the building and crashed to the ground. No matter the height, Cole can\'t be hurt by a fall. In fact, if you hold down square while falling, you\'ll pull off the Meteor Drop; this shockwave of juice spreads out from Cole\'s impact crater and deals damage to anyone in its wake. The higher you are when you start charging it, the bigger the blast. Once Cole was at street level, I really got the chance to see the bleak conditions these characters are living in. There\'s burned out cars, rubble, people wandering through the street, and dead bodies on the sidewalk. Everything was colorful and super-detailed, but it was also grimy and worn from the tattered remains of one of the bridges to the pile of rubble underneath a Conquistador Café sign. Eventually, Zeke, who took the stairs, joined me on the bustling sidewalk and we began jogging through back allies and deserted streets on our way to a parking lot where Zeke needed to pick up a gun he had just purchased. When we got to the firearm, it was time to use one of Cole\'s secondary abilities. Assigned to the D-pad, these powers will give our hero a mega-advantage in battle and getting through missions, but they\'re also going to drain Cole\'s internal battery a lot quicker. See, the gun was left for Zeke underneath a car so I had to arm Cole\'s telekenic blast, bring up the aiming reticule, tap R2, and send the four-wheels flying. With the cars toppled over and the gun in Zeke\'s hand (Cole can\'t touch firearms because the current in him causes the ammunition to go off), our budding superhero was out of juice and feeling weak. The solution to the problem was to walk over to a wall-bound transformer, hold down L2, and watch in wide-eyed wonder as Cole planted his feet, put his shoulders back, and sucked the power from the machine in an impressive display of arcing blue electricity. Keeping Cole charged is going to be a crucial part of this game. After grabbing the gun, Zeke and I made it to Archer Square where we found the food drop tangled in a colossal statue in the middle of the courtyard. Cole shimmied up the structure -- climbing\'s a breeze and has a ton of animations -- and cut the load down with a quick zap to a rusty bolt. Seconds after the food fell, the Reapers showed up and the battle was on. Seeing as how this was my first dose of Infamous combat, I kind of went overboard. Small lightning bursts were tossed, people got pushed around with Cole\'s TK blasts, and I even began experimenting with the secondary lightning strike that is a continuous blast similar to a stream from one of the Ghostbusters\' proton pack. However, none of these moves came cheap. Up in the left corner of the screen is a meter showing how much power Cole\'s packing, and I was draining it left and right. Sure, I could still punch the crap out of people and kick enemies when they were down, but being on E in the middle of a battle isn\'t anyway to live.
I downloaded it yesterday, but I can\'t see what all the fuss is about. I\'ve found dead nation to be more enjoyable than infamous personally.
