inFamous Comments by Tom Bramwell

Ooh, let us classify the asshats into groups shall we?

1) The asshats who treat Metacritic, which is the subjective interpretation from ONE person of the scores of a subset of game reviews, as if it was fucking Word of God.

2) The asshats who clearly think the review scale goes from 7-10 not 1-10. 7 is GOOD.

3) Asshats who fail @ math since they do not know that as long as there is a spread, some scores will be lower than the average by definition.

4) Asshats who fail @ reading the EG scoring policy but choose to offer their own interpretation of scoring and thus what it really should have been.

To cull the number of asshats, EG shoud drop numeric scores and instead do a summary listing pros and cons. It is the only solution; unless EG likes the page hits generated by the asshats incessant ramblings...

"Ooh, let us classify the asshats into groups shall we?"

You omitted at least two asshats categories:
5) Asshats who fail @ understanding that playing a game and then trying to give it an objective score is impossible (or even worse, understand that it is impossible but still do it because it earns them money)
6) Asshats who fail @ understanding that all opinions are irrelevant with the exception of your own

Which is why I totally agree with you that scores should be dropped ;)

My experience with the demo was the first time i played it i turned it off after the train mission and as I felt it was rubbish. Then I played beyond the train mission and really started to enjoy myself. especially when you went to the dark side. So far I've had many hours out of this demo - which is good. If ill buy the game i'm still in two minds about that. As im finding the instant nature of cole wanting to grab on to every surface quite annoying still!

@ NotSoSlim

I was just pointing out to patchbox360 that it's not the best looking game on a console (overall), and as a sandbox game it's probably just below GTA and miles behind Far Cry 2. But obviously there's more to games than just graphics.

Review scores = site hits, in many different ways.

There's no reason to drop scoring on EG from a marketing perspective. EG has to get more than just dyed-in-the-wool EG readers on the site in order to support it, and people are attracted in because they hear that x game has scored y. The vast majority would be less inclined to read the site if it just had words, because people are lazy and stupid, as this comments thread obviously demonstrates (most people who have posted their complaints won't have read any of the body text). Yes, people care that much about numbers that relate to words they haven't read.

I also fundamentally disagree that a scoring system is a bad footer to critical reviews. Yes, sites like metacritic are largely useless because every review site uses a different scoring system, and most sites won't even have a formal or consistent system, and because the vast majority of reviews referenced on metacritic are pap. But this doesn't mean that scores aren't a useful guage of reviewer opinion, or that they're meaningless in and of themselves. EG and other quality sources have built up such a wealth of scores that a 7 equates to a certain feeling about a game, whilst an 8 something completely different.

JHuxley: Can I ask if you've completed it yet?

Jup, completed. And we did two different runs on eg.de - i've played the nice guy, my co-reviewer did Mr. Asshole-style. But in the end we both had the same opinion about the missions/sidemissions. If they just put in a bit more variety in the missions, it would have helped a lot.

@M_of_the_sys: Ummm..i can't really compare these 2 games when it comes to missions. I haven't played that much of GTA (i prefer superhero games, sorry), but from what i know GTA 4 had lots and lots and lots of missions. inFamous has its share of missions but there aren't enough of them to oversee that they only range from a handfull of missiontypes.

edit: sorry, engrish overall :(

"Empire City is vast and vastly detailed, but there isn't all that much to distinguish particular areas."
Didn't seem too detailed when I played the demo or vast, the draw distance wasn't that great at all.
Wouldn't pay full price for it, like most I'll probably wait for the price to go down and then pick it up.

I didn't have too much issue with the draw distance on the demo, and thought it looked pretty good, a good way better than the only other current gen sandbox game I've got, GTA4. The detail was good. The incidental detail was good. The AI of the enemies was good, and the AI of the public was good too - not once did I catch one running at a lamppost, or stuck in scenery. The camera didn't do anything stupid (not so much of an issue these days, but it still does come up). Where it did shine as far as I'm concerned was the intuitiveness of the controls - whatever I tried to do worked, and worked how I expected it to. No idea about the repetitiveness of the missions; there aren't that many on the demo, but the demo was more than good enough for me to want to buy it.

@ Brutos

Fair enough!!

After reading this review i played the demo, then i re-read the review.

Have to say i really enjoyed the demo, and was enough to make me want to pre-order this immediately. I would encourage anyone "on the fence" to try the demo.

The feeling of power you get when playing the game is immense fun, and thats what you play games for right?

..ok and achievement thingys, it has those too.

Had fun playing the demo over the weekend and thought it felt a lot like Crackdown (which is a good thing). I'm really looking forward to this on Friday.

Played the demo finally. It's OK. Nothing stunning but one to get when cheaper maybe.

Does it have co-op? co-op made Crackdown far more fun and i reckon would do the same for this if it does.

"It has the best hdr lightning ever for a sandbox game you have ever seen, and if u dont know, real time lightning consumes a lot of requirements, so it is obvious that it must a liitle bit worse on other areas. "

Maybe they should have just made it look nice instead?

OK visually but worse than Crackdown (another sandbox) three years later is not something to crow about as the guy did originally in the thread (which was why people responded).

OK visually but worse than Crackdown (another sandbox) three years later is not something to crow about as the guy did originally in the thread (which was why people responded).

Really?

I loved Crackdown and thought it looked ok but inFamous looks better IMO. Crackdown got away with a lot by having a different art style.

"Really?

I loved Crackdown and thought it looked ok but inFamous looks better IMO. Crackdown got away with a lot by having a different art style. "

Yeah fair point. Might just be an artistic preference but there's notmuch in them considering the time between released.

I'd put Crackdown top on some , like Draw distance and Infamous in others like lighting.

A 7 out of 10! Really!?!? I made an acccount just to bash this site. Go on wikipedia.org type in Infamous (the game) scroll down and look at the reviews. You'll see nothing but 9s and As except for this crap sites review. Also if you think this game looks bad you clearly havn't played it.

More bloody PS3 exclusive hate from Eurogamer then...ah well who cares I'm going to get this anyway.

So is it better than Darkfall? :P

It's 4 times better than Darkfall! 2/10 + 2/10 + 2/10 + 2/10 = 8/10!

Those who use reviews as the standard... Eurogamer Portugal gave the game 9/10 (another of the sites gave it 7 along with the UK site).. looking at the reviews across the board, the game has received more 9-10's than any other score, more 8's than lower, and very few 7 (shown below).

21 - 9 or above
18 - 8
5 - 7
1 - 6

So to me it seems some people will probably find it not bad, while alot of people will find it very enjoyable.

I try not to take reviews as the be all and end all, it also depends on what the game means to me.. I dont care if a game gets a 9 or 10, if its a Japanese manga game for example..I am unlikely to play it. I played the infamous demo and it seems like a well made game, story seems good and so does the voice acting. So now the demo has passed the Makeamazing test its time to get on and risk buying it :D

Game Central gave it 6/10, \o/

Translation of kinghunter64's post:

Hey, why did you post your opinion of this game! Look at the metacritic scores, everyone else gave it the same high score so why the hell aren't you just posting a 9/10 like everyone else regardless of score policies being different on different sites?!!?!?

I am a fanboy and the game has been out in my region for less than 2 days but I am definitely in a better position to pass judgement on the entire game than you are!

@Twin_snakes, yes one site did give it 6 out of 10, but considering the large number of higher scores I think you can pretty much ignore that :D

"the game has been out in my region for less than 2 days but I am definitely in a better position to pass judgement on the entire game than you are!"

Of course he is. He is the master of the only opinion that's relevant to him: his own.

The highly reliable gamecentral gave it a six and the fanboy backlash has been hillarious on its mail section. The demo did not impress me unfortunately, but a good session of Noby Noby boy cheered me up again.

Well people do love to complain :D

But if out of 30+ sites its the only one to rate it that low, either they really dont like this type of game or they know something that everyone else doesnt :D. To me one bad score does not make a bad game. But then lots of bad scores doesnt mean a game isnt enjoyable... so it does come down to personal taste after all :D

Haven't read the Eurogamer review but bought the game yesterday and I'm really enjoying it. Those worried it may be repetitive like Assassins Creed need not worry - it is never like that. Graphically the game isn't that hot - animations are good, lighting in great, but textures and facially (bar the main character) are poor, but it does run at 60fps which it needs to.

Have to say I'd give the game at least 8 right now after 7 hours of playing and surprised if the game got lower than that as both the gameplay and story are pretty damn good and I haven't enjoyed playing a game as much as this for a few months. In saying that though I haven't completed it and would wait til then before I gave a final verdict.

Did GTA HD not only have like 2 mission types?
1. Drive annoying person here, do something annoying and drive back.
2. Drive annoying person here, shoot a lot of people and drive back.

Only played a few hours of inFamous so far and it's pretty enjoyable, controls feel very floaty or something I can't quite put my finger on. Graphics are what are expected of a game with a world this size in game. As for the comment about it being miles behind FarCry2 in terms of graphics; I thought FC2 looked horrendous.

Omg I love this game =D was a total impulse-buy aswel and it's just so awesome, just finished neon and taking a break before I go through the warren (?)

Gameplay wise it's quite typical but the feel you get off it is just great, platforming is brilliant too except it it can make it awkward when you obviously don't want to stick to the nearest ledge

AND it was only 45 euro =D score ;)

There will probably be no-one reading this after all this time, but what the hell, my 2p.

I've played through this twice now and I reckon the review is a little off, but only a little. On the EG scoring system, I'd probably hover between 8/10 - Very Good and 9/10 Excellent. Closer to 8/10 if I had to choose.

It's a nice mix of Crackdown and Tony Hawks with some heavy influences from Star Wars.

A shame that Cole sounds almost exactly like Snake from the MGS series - it'd have been better if his voice had its own distinct identity.

Loved the story, although I twigged a semblance of the ending quite early on. Have to agree with the Richard Leadbetter review that it starts off uncompelling before becoming something much much better.

Platforming aspects of the game are most welcome - been awhile since had this much fun hitting jumps. Controls are a bit weird to start with, and you get a little overwhelmed with the new powers you're expected to memorise. Was nailing everything on the second playthrough.

On the replayability front, I started my second game immediately after finishing the first - blasting through it at a rate of knots. Now that I'm done, I can't see myself going back to Empire City to grind out the remaining objectives for a platinum trophy. I mined the side-missions pretty heavily both times, and got around 30 hours out of the game in all. If you're OCD for collecting stuff, you might get more.

In conclusion on inFamous, great game with a short lifespan. As far as review scores go, don't think EG was that far off - a bit stingy maybe. Can easily understand the euphoria of the other reviews - when it's got you, it really has you. When you're done, you'll be looking for a good trade-in price.

@pap

There are still people reading...

Just finished the first play through on the good side - enjoyed it a lot and spent time completing the side missions and collecting dead drops etc. Now about a third of the way through the evil playthrough, much more fun because of the havoc you can create and the fact that the shards/drops become less important. What I have enjoyed in the Evil side missions, so much more fun than the good escort and protect missions.

Overall really pleased with it - will have sunk about 25-30 hours in total, hit about 60% of the trophies and will get a decent trade in price to go and buy Overlord 2. Can't grumble.