In inFAMOUS you take on the role of Cole, a hapless bike messenger turned reluctant hero. While on an assignment, Cole unknowingly delivers a package that contains a bomb. The bomb goes off, devastating the city imbuing Cole with super powers that include super jumps from high places, scaling walls a la Spiderman and the piece de resistance, electricity. It is these electrical powers which become the basis of many of Cole's missions in the game and provide him with protection from the bad guys known as Reapers. The Reapers travel in gangs and seem to have a penchant for shooting innocent bystanders from rooftops. They also happen to be tainting the water supply with a mysterious black tar substance that is poisoning the city's residents. Through a series of missions, Cole must work to get the electricity back to the city and get rid of the Reapers for good.

A huge part of the game's mechanic relies on the tried and true "good vs. evil" character. Throughout the game, Cole is confronted with "Karma Moments," places when he must make a decision on whether to help the city or help himself. Once the decision is made, it is recorded in your karma meter which keeps track of all your good and evil deeds. Certain missions and powers are made available to you depending on which way you play your character and you get karma points according to how you handle certain situations. For instance, you get a certain amount of good points for taking an taking an enemy down. From there you have a few choices to make. Kill the guy and take a neutral point, restrain him and get good points or suck the life out of him and get evil points.

Calling them "good and evil points" is perhaps a bit to vague. What you are actually receiving are experience points. These experience points come in three flavors, good, evil and neutral. You automatically receive the experience points based on your actions, and the color of the points effects your karma meter. Collected experience points can then be spent to upgrade your various powers. While it is true that there is not a whole lot of grey area when it comes to making these good vs. bad decisions, in the context of the game, I found it not to be so much of an issue for me personally.

Cole's super powers mainly surround his ability to control electricity, and as you progress through the game, these powers can be amped up and used to great advantage. Lightning Bolts can be used to take down enemies, destroy blockades and and start up domed electrical devices while Shockwave will send your enemies flying backwards. This one become particularly handy when fighting atop one of the city's very tall buildings. You can also make spectacular jumps off of these buildings and landing on the ground while performing Thunder Drop will cause devastation all around your landing spot. Shock Grenades also come in quite handy when dealing with enemies far away. Toss one of these into a crowd of Reapers and watch them run for the hills before getting blown to smithereens. Other powers can only be acquired when your Karma reaches certain good or bad points.

There are other minor powers as well including a Healing Touch (for healing civilians), Arc Restraint (for restraining Reapers) or Bio Leech (for sucking the life out of people, good or bad). However, your powers are not limitless. Cole has a certain amount of "battery cells" that will eventually run out of power and need to be recharged. Fortunately, the city is chock full of places an electrically charged super hero can power up. Lamp posts, electrical boxes, industrial fans and even cars can be used for their energy. You can use the handy dandy Radar Pulse power to find these recharge stations on your map. It will also reveal the locations of the Blue Shards, a collectable item which, when enough are gathered, will extend your powers with additional energy cells.

inFAMOUS is a classic sandbox game that shares a lot in common with other games of its genre including Crackdown, GTA, Assassin's Creed among others. There are plenty of missions to be had and you can choose to play them in any order you like. Follow the main story mission or branch off on your own and get a bunch of side missions under your belt before continuing. I highly suggest the latter route so you can beef up your powers before taking on some of the more difficult story missions. The city is fleshed out with tons of buildings to climb, citizens to save (or not) and Reapers to kill. It's up to you how you choose to play the game and each has their various consequences.

It's not a perfect game by any means. I ran into a few graphic glitches here and there with jittery dead enemies, citizens walking repeatedly into corners, etc. It also seemed like the roaming citizens all had a lot of the same things to say. Depending on your character's karmic level, they will react to you differently, but the variety in dialog was a little lacking. The character models for the citizens also seemed a little bland and jerky in their movements, but there are so many and all moving around at once, I suppose it couldn't be helped. Still, these are minor quibbles that in no way affected my enjoyment of the game

inFAMOUS is a terrific title in many ways and fits perfectly into the "Summer Blockbuster" category. Lots of explosions, screaming, running, electrical shocks and justice being handed out right and left. It's good popcorn fun that doesn't ask too much from its audience but gives plenty of thrills and spills in return. Solid gameplay, generally nice graphics and an open world with plenty to explore make this one of the more exciting titles currently on offer on the PS3.

9 out of 10