Games 6/2/09: inFamous, Boom Blox Bash Party, Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures E1: Fright of the Bumblebees
inFamous
For: Playstation 3
From: Sucker Punch Productions/Sony
ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, drug reference, language, mild suggestive themes, violence)
Yes, this looks like new territory for Sucker Punch Productions, which previously dabbled in the considerably cuddlier worlds of cartoon raccoons and unicycling robots.
But while “inFamous” takes place in a considerably darker arena — a recently-terrorized Empire City, starring you as Cole, a messenger who inadvertently delivers the bomb that kills thousands but gives him electromagnetic superpowers — the philosophy behind the game’s design has the same old fingerprints all over it. Every facet of “inFamous” — the powers, what you can do with them, the city and the playground it lays at your feet — is designed with an overt willingness to treat players first and challenge them second. And at this, it succeeds rather magnificently.
Following a few mandatory missions that set the table, “inFamous” settles in as a traditional open-world game. Main and side missions are marked around the city, and while you’re free to explore Empire City’s Neon District at your leisure, you’ll want to hit those mission points to push the story forward and unlock the rest of the map.
Naturally, it’s those aforementioned powers that make “inFamous” more than just another open-world affair. By default, Cole can toss bolts of electricity with his hands, send cars and people flying with a shockwave, climb just about anything in Empire City and take a dive off of the tallest building in the skyline without incurring so much as a scratch. Completing missions and taking down enemies nets you experience points, which go toward upgrading and purchasing new powers, including new forms of electrical firepower and the ability to glide through the air and grind power lines like a skateboarder rides a rail.
The powers are as fun to mix and match as they should be, and every facet of the game’s design, from the architecture to the nature of the missions, caters to that sense of adventure. Everything controls perfectly, and Cole has a weird but reasonable means of gravitating onto objects in such a way that makes it easy to fluidly bounce from piece to piece. “inFamous” occasionally misreads your acrobatic intentions, but it works perfectly 95 percent of the time. The third-person shooting and hand-to-hand combat controls are similarly on point, and a generous checkpoint system provides backup for the few times the game lets you down.
As a surprisingly rich superhero story that’s based on no preexisting fiction, “inFamous” also lets you dictate whether those powers are used for good or evil. The karma system that sorts it out is pretty binary, but your moral compass determines which additional powers (good or evil) you can access and upgrade. Sucker Punch clearly wants players to experience “inFamous” twice, and given how fun the core game is and how diverse the separate moral paths are, a second trip comes wholeheartedly recommended.
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Boom Blox Bash Party
For: Nintendo Wii
From: EA
ESRB Rating: Everyone (cartoon violence)
The visual tornado that erupts within “Boom Blox Bash Party’s” haphazard box cover art probably isn’t intended as ironic commentary. But that’s precisely what it is anyway, because if there’s one thing “Party” has going for it that last year’s original “Boom Blox” did not, it’s a streamlined user interface that keeps the series’ onslaught of awesome ideas and features on point.
At its core, “Party” adheres to the same “Blox” principles as its predecessor. The goals sometimes vary slightly, as do the available methods of completing these goals. But the overwhelming general gist has you tossing a projectile at a structure of blocks in hopes of devastating the structure as quickly or in as few moves as possible.
Why the game worked last time — and works again this time — is simple: It embraces the joy of harmless but wanton destruction, and it does so proficiently and cleverly. “Blox’s” Wii remote controls pretty well nailed the sensation of lobbing a ball at a wall of destructible blocks, and “Party” tinkers the scheme to make it slightly more forgiving without sacrificing that sensation. “Party’s” 400-plus levels hit the same sweet spot between challenging to all and accessible to all, and the new environments (space, the deep sea), block styles and methods of destruction (a slingshot, a cannon) inject the game’s excellent devotion to real-world physics with some fantastical new equations and possibilities.
As the name implies, “Party” has designs as a multiplayer as well as a solo experience. It handles that admirably — which is no surprise, because the original “Blox” also tackled it rather well. Four-player competitive and co-op local multiplayer return, but the addition of two-on-two team play, which works exactly as one would expect it to work, is most welcome. Also welcome this time around: Most of the levels are open to play in multiplayer right out of the box. No unlocking necessary.
Where “Party” really surpasses its predecessor is in the level-sharing mode. “Blox” already allowed players to create their own levels and share them with friends, but the swapping process was clumsily hampered by the game’s dependency on the Wii’s equally clumsy WiiConnect24 technology.
This time around, “Party” handles all the business in-game via a central sharing plaza that allows you to download anybody’s submitted levels instead of simply those sent to you by friends. The game allows you to sort levels and filter them based on game style, making it easy to download an armful of new levels whenever the existing batch isn’t doing it for you.
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Wallace & Gromit’s Grand Adventures, Episode 1: Fright of the Bumblebees
Reviewed for: Xbox 360 Live Arcade
Previously released on: PC
From: Telltale Games
ESRB Rating: Everyone (comic mischief, mild cartoon violence)
Price: $10
Telltale’s inspired mission to reinvigorate the point-and-click adventure genre has been far north of successful thus far, but is “Fright of the Bumblebees” trying to do too much by playing to a system that lacks any proper point-and-click device? Arguably, yes. “Bumblebees” uses the Xbox 360 controller’s left stick to move either Wallace or Gromit around, while the right stick (or RB button) handles the task of sifting through objects in the environment with which you can interact, take or use. It works, and suffices, but the scheme definitely lacks the more natural finesse of a mouse and keyboard-style setup. Fortunately, that’s the worst that can be said about the game, and a little practice with the controls is all that’s needed for “Bumblebees” to live up to its promise. The wit and visual style of Wallace and Gromit’s animated adventures make a nearly spotless translation despite all that a change of medium entails, and the same attention to smart puzzle design that made Telltale’s “Sam & Max” revival such a pleasant surprise is on display here. “Bumblebees’” puzzles are neither stupidly easy nor unreasonably arcane, and the cause-and-effect riddles prove a perfect fit for all those wacky contraptions Wallace has invented over the years.