NEWSLETTER

		SHEPPARD’S VIDEO-GAME PIE By Stephen Lea Sheppard Photo by Dan Siney

INFAMOUS Platform: PlayStation 3 Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

VS.

PROTOTYPE Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC Publisher: Activision

Infamous and Prototype are an interesting pair. Released near-simultaneously, both are sandbox games set in wrecked cities (like Spider-Man: Web of Shadows before them) with superpowered protagonists who fight mutants and monsters created by the same process that gave them their superpowers.

In Infamous, you play as Cole McGrath, a bike courier and parkour practitioner who’s granted electric superpowers in the explosion that devastates the (fictional) Empire City. In Prototype, you play Alex Mercer, an amnesiac who wakes up in the morgue with body-horror powers granted by the viral epidemic that’s wiping out New York.

Of course, it’s the differences that interest me. Infamous is a PS3 platform exclusive, heavily hyped as all blockbuster PS3 games are. Prototype, appearing on both major platforms plus the PC, has gotten less attention. Of the two, Infamous is the prettier and more graphically polished. Infamous has a simpler story, told in a more straightforward manner, and it branches—you can play Good Cole and get precise blue-lightning powers, or Evil Cole and get chaotic red lightning. I also found Infamous the blander of the two, with the more repetitive gameplay and a much less intelligently executed story. Prototype feels rawer in terms of its gameplay (it had some clumsy boss fights), but Alex Mercer has a wider variety of interesting powers.

In Infamous, Cole’s main power is the lightning bolt, a simple ranged attack. He’s got limited energy (replenished by sucking it out of electric devices, enemies, or bystanders), but his basic lightning attack doesn’t cost him any. A lot of his secondary superpowers are upgraded lightning bolts that do slightly more stuff, like home in. As a result of this, for all that Cole feels nimble out of combat, most of Infamous’s gameplay is spent with one finger on the L1 button to bring up aiming mode, and the other tapping R1 to zap dudes. While this is happening you will strafe from side to side to dodge enemy fire, and sometimes you’ll hit a different button to shoot a slightly different lightning bolt.

Prototype’s Alex’s main powers are all melee and movement. You can slash people with claws or punch them with enhanced strength. You can slice them with a big axlike blade arm or an extending bladed whipfist. You have your choice between armor, which makes dodging difficult, or a shield, which breaks after absorbing too much damage. Though normal-size for a human, Alex is dense—he absorbs biomass by eating people and he can easily pick up and throw cars. When he drops from a skyscraper, the shock wave and the crater he leaves when he lands are both epic. He’s also fast, absurdly so, and he excels at hit-and-run tactics. For stealth, Alex can assume the form of the last person he ate, and he absorbs their memories as well—much of the story is told through brief cut scenes that play whenever he consumes someone who knows something about his past.

The two games’ approaches to morality bear mentioning. Video games that focus on ethical choice are, well, infamous for offering a choice between sensible good behavior and laughably, stupidly evil behavior. Infamous does exactly that: “Do I protect this police station? Do I accept that old lady’s payment to kill a guy she hates?” Moreover, Infamous will punish you for playing evil—not only is it harder when Cole has to go without the support of the city’s surviving police, but you’ll get fewer experience points, because healing injured civilians grants XP but sucking the bioelectricity out of them doesn’t. On the other hand, Alex Mercer in Prototype is no longer even remotely human, and the game does not care whether you only eat soldiers and mutants or whether you eat civilians as well. Alex and Cole have something in common: A lot of their most fun special moves do hideous damage to everyone around them, enemy and civilian alike. In Infamous, I had to be careful never to use those moves, while in Prototype I used them all the time.

I did like Infamous. As a superhero sandbox game with impressive polish, it’s of high quality. It deserves its blockbuster status. But for me, Prototype came out ahead—the story is more interesting, the city is more expansive, and while it’s not the hottest-looking game out in the last six months, it sure packs a lot of dudes on-screen at once while keeping its frame rate up. It’s not as polished as Infamous, but I found it more fun.

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Comments

	Stephen Lea Sheppard, on Aug 25, 2009 wrote: I don’t normally provide gameplay tips, but the architect’s office gave me so much trouble I actually had to give up and start the game again, saving all my XP for the photon dart upgrades. It was the exact point in the game when I realized the designers had put the awesome parts of their game together wrong, and the game wasn’t going to be as awesome as it could have been.
Anonymous, on Aug 25, 2009 wrote: If you cut a zombie in half and the bloody top half lands on you can he still get you?
Anonymous, on Aug 25, 2009 wrote: ’In Infamous, you play as Cole McGrath, a bike courier and parkour practitioner’ Why would I want to play a video game where I am the worst person if all time? Parkour and bike couriers, Jesus, is that video gaming has come to??? You had us at plumbers guys
	foxface, on Aug 20, 2009 wrote: good work on giving the tips, ill keep it in mind
Anonymous, on Aug 20, 2009 wrote: If I could ever have one special power I think throwing lightning bolts would be awesome. Give that fucker Zeus a run for his money.
	A Taipan, on Aug 19, 2009 wrote: Ha @ thedon. I lol’d hard.
Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2009 wrote: So many special powers. How about a game where you have normal strength and you beat people up like how it happens on the streets everyday?
Anonymous, on Aug 18, 2009 wrote: i want to play all of these games.
	thedon, on Aug 18, 2009 wrote: what happens when your cross streams in the video game? does it blow up?
	enstigator, on Aug 13, 2009 wrote: it wouldn’t take much to be better than ghostbusters 2. it had its moments but overall it was a huge disappointment after the first. the marshmallow man is such a better ghost than a painting.
Anonymous, on Aug 13, 2009 wrote: sandbox games?