The RyTime! Geekcast

A few months ago the PlayStation Network went down from cyber terrorist attacks. They stole our information and created a media nightmare for Sony. It was amazing to me to see how many people completely turned their backs on Sony almost immediately. This has never made any sense to me being that Sony was a victim themselves. Sure, there is the speculation that they weren’t the best protected from attacks like this, but the matter of the fact is somebody broke into Sony illegally and stole its customers information. It’s almost like being mad at your neighbor who got robbed because the robbers took something that belonged to you.

I have always been a big fan of Sony and a huge advocate for the products and services they provide on every front. My PlayStation 3 has been better than good to me over the years and still remains my favorite tech item I own. I bought my PlayStation 3 when they first came out and have never had any problems with it and have certainly never had to take it in for repairs or replace it. For this I am grateful to Sony and will always remain a loyal customer. They provide products that last and I knew when these attacks happened, they would make it right again.

After over a month of the PlayStation Network being down, it was fixed, beefed up, and ready to go back online again. Gamers all over the world celebrated that they would soon be able to get back to their addiction and the nightmare of having to leave their house would be over. Sony then announced it would be providing it’s customers with a few perks for coming back to PlayStation, one of those perks being 2 free games out of a list of 6 games. Of those 6 games, Infamous was one of those games.

I think it’s fair to say I had heard of a game called Infamous, but being a casual gamer myself, I didn’t give any thought to owning this game prior to the offer by PlayStation. Once I heard Infamous was one of the free games being offered, I began to ask around about it. Of the people I talked to who played it, I couldn’t find a single person who had anything bad to say about it. Once I started playing Infamous, I understood why…

Infamous drops you straight into a universe similar to one a comic book would take place. It is an open world video game, so you can run and play all you want in the universe the developers of inFamous have created for you and there’s a perk- you have super powers. The character you play is named Cole MacGrath and he is caught in the epicenter of an explosion that rocks a city called Empire City. When Cole awakes, he realizes he now has electricity-based powers. These powers are awesome. It reminded me of being a jacked up Sith Lord from Star Wars minus the lightsaber. You can use the electricity to power objects, take down enemies through shooting orbs of lightning at them and many many more skills you learn throughout the game.

My two favorite abilities of Cole, the character you play, is lightning storm, which destroys groups of enemies coming at you all at once through lightning hitting down all around you, and also the ability to jump from any building, no matter the height and land safely on the ground. This game has incredible graphics and when you jump off a building the camera shows Cole at such a perfect angle that you, yourself, feel like you’re falling to the ground as well. It’s incredible.

Cole gets around town by doing what most of us know as parcour. It’s very similar to me as getting around the city like Spider-Man would, minus the swinging on a web. Cole can quickly climb a building and jump from place to place with ease on the controller. The controls on this game are very user-friendly and easy to use. That is one of the biggest things that makes this game a lot of fun to play. There are very few glitches.
The story of this game is amazing, following Cole though a story of personal tragedy, friendship, and dealing with making choices and the consequences those decisions and actions bring.you can choose to make Cole a hero or infamous (evil) through your actions and reactions to the people about the city. This type of gameplay is very similar to Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic in that way. It is a lot of fun and I chose to play this game through as a hero, which caused me to have  to make a little more effort in the game, but it was cool to see the people’s reactions to me around the city when I saved somebody or prevented a tragedy. They begin to hang posters of you and cheer for you when you’re around them and it really makes the player feel like some sort of super hero.

Overall, I would HIGHLY suggest you play this game. It’s been a long time since a video game has captured my imagination and been so much fun for me. I would put this in my top 5 for sure. This game is only available on PS3 a of this post, and inFAMOUS 2 just came out on PS3 a month or so ago, and I will for sure be picking this game up. PlayStation game me a game for free and it resulted in me buying a game in the future when before I wouldn’t have bought either of these games and therefore had no idea what I was missing.

Thanks everyone for listening to the Podcast and I’d love to hear feedback from any of you who have played this game or have a recommendation for another good game.

~Ryan Bennett