Wh.I.P (InFamous)

What I'm Playing: 65th edition

InFamous
(Sucker Punch / PlayStation 3)

When I started playing InFamous I ran into hurdles that kept me from really enjoying the game. One issue that frustrated me is that very basic elements of the game are not explained well, leading to misunderstanding.
There is a HUD on the screen showing bolts of electricity, which relates to the character because he uses electricity as a weapon. This HUD meter turns out not to represent the character's health, or general electrical charge the character has to attack with, but the special electrical attacks he can use. It seems simple enough, and probably was explained, yet somehow I missed this introduction and couldn't figure out the purpose of this important meter for several hours.

It is also strange that such a prominent HUD meter exists yet the character's health is not displayed on this HUD. Instead, there is an overlay effect on the screen indicating how wounded the character is, similar to the Call of Duty games. The common reason for having a hidden health indicator is to minimize the HUD thus making the game more "immersive," yet the electricity and karma meters cover a large part of the screen. It seems to be sensible to either represent all important game information on the HUD, or to make it all dynamically hidden. In particular, I think InFamous could use a visible health indicator is so that the player can understand the extent of damage they are taking and how quickly it recovers. Currently, it is hard to know how long recovery takes and whether absorbing electricity speeds up this process. I still don't know if sucking up electricity actually heals me, and I've played for a while.

In addition to not knowing the character's exact health, the character can be killed fairly quickly. I ran into a some situations early on where I was outnumbered and outgunned, generally leading to a fast death. Even after buying all the damage resistance upgrades I still find that the character can die within a few seconds in certain situations. Finally with other upgraded abilities I have a better chance at fighting back, but the opponents still seem to be unfairly challenging. Constantly are the cases where enemies will snipe you from a distant building top where you can barely fight back. In a game that is basically a shooter, it seems troubling that the enemies can spot you much more easily than you can see them.

Add on top of all of this that the control scheme is not incredibly intuitive and you get a game that is hard to get into early on. What works against the controls is that they have to work for both a platformer and shooter. Their solution is to make most all attacks only accessible when you are holding down the "aim" button, but this can be confusing as buttons have totally different functions in each mode. A good lesson can be learned from Assassin's Creed which maintains similar functionality of the buttons across multiple contexts.

Having said all that, InFamous is still enjoyable because there are solid mechanics that hold the game together. There are a number of things that inhibit enjoyment of the game at the beginning, but hopefully these problems can be remedied in a potential sequel.