Infamous

A courier gets an array of shocking super powers in this PS3 exclusive. Zzap!

Let's be honest up front - we're not big PlayStation3 fans here at Atomic. No one at HQ owns one, there are very few PS3 games that appeal (Wipeout being the notable exception), and generally we'd rather spend time on our beloved PC or begrudgingly hunker down with an Xbox if we must spend time at a console.

inFamous, the latest PS3 exclusive title, is turning us around a bit though thanks to its excellent mix of solid plot, open world gameplay and really quite intriguing powers.

But first, the issues. Our console setup (or one of them, anyway) is based around a full HD Sony Bravia. Pretty much everything looks good on it - except for inFamous, which is as jaggy as all hell. In fact, as I type this, my cheeks are hurting from having to squint to pick up some of the detail! When you combine this with the large open city you get to run around in, which hasn't been designed with the same subtle eye to detail of other large games (like GTA's great use of colour and architecture to suggest an individual sense of place to each neighbourhood, for instance), it's very easy to feel kind of lost. Or at least out of place.

But then again, you'll very rarely be standing still, and as the game and your incipient powers progress, you'll be moving about very fast indeed.

The game starts off with you, the lone survivor of a cataclysmic blast. In fact, you're at ground zero, and it's quickly revealed that you were carrying the device that's devastated a good portion of the city! More importantly, it's also left you - and a good many other residents - changed.

The opening missions are all about learning your new powers, from the ability to jump off tall buildings without harm to being able to toss lightning at people you don't like - such as the homicidal gang types ruling the city since it went into lockdown following the explosion. These powers are unlocked reasonably regularly and there are some real doozies - sucking the life-force from fallen enemies is one, as is the ability to toss a sticky energy ball. Kind of like a plasma grenade from Halo, except you can conjure it pretty much out of nothing.

All of your powers, as you may have noticed, are electrical-based, and as you run out of juice you'll need to replenish it from nearby streetlights, cars or other powered items. The end result is that the good citizenry of the city are almost always running from you, either in abject terror of your ability to turn a gang of toughs and any innocent bystanders into twitching corpses or scared of the vast areas of the city you can leave dark.

inFamous also features a moral system, whereby you either slowly turn to evil or good - or perhaps fence-sit in between. It's a little like the KOTOR system, except while small things like healing the injured or draining wounded enemies to heal you might sway you to good evil in small steps, teh larger moral choices are almost two-state minigames: the game will stop, warn you of the moral choice, and then let you button-press your way to enlightenment or self-interest. It's a little hard on the immersion level, but the resulting rock-throwing or happy faces from the city population is a nice effect.

But the best part of the game is the free-running action. Assassin's Creed is (like Damnation) the natural comparison, but this is free-running done well. Where AC simply asked you to keep a button pressed to enter into a free movement mode, but still required a degree of precision, inFamous uses the jump button as a contextual control to leap, grab, shimmy and so on; each iteration of your movement requires a key press, leaving you feeling much more in control. The game's also very good at working out what you're aiming for, so tight precision isn't necessary - you'll reach out and grab for what you were aiming for nine times out of ten, and if not? Well, you can handle the fall.

From the comic-like cutscenes to the thought put into the powers and how they interact, inFamous has a surprising amount of depth. And it's fun. And has an interesting story. Can you ask more from a game? Not really.