InFamous / Prototype

Plowed through the end of InFamous last week; that game is a blast. A little simplistic, though, to be sure, and more than a bit repetitive - for all the initial comparisons I'd made to Crackdown, it really feels more like Assassin's Creed than anything else - but very well made; the story was more than a bit convoluted but it was told well enough, and while the big twist didn't exactly drop my jaw the way that, say, KOTOR did, it certainly makes the inevitable sequel seem a lot more wide open in terms of what Sucker Punch can do. I'll happily give it an A-.

And speaking of games featuring regular dudes who suddenly gain superpowers and can run all over the place in big open cities, I played the first 15 minutes of Prototype last night and that was more than enough. I didn't necessarily have high hopes for it, but I certainly went into it with an open mind; the opening cutscenes are certainly really well done. But once the game started, it all fell apart. The controls are unintuitive, the camera floats around all over the place, and the game actually starts with you in the middle of a fight without (a) telling you what you're fighting and (b) telling you what you can actually do. It does gradually give you hints as to how to do things, but then - in classic, ridiculous fashion - the opening battle suddenly stops, and then you're taken to a point 18 days in the past, when all the powers you just learned don't actually exist yet. So stupid.

At some point I'm going to try out the 2nd Boom Blox game, which is sitting in an unopened Gamefly enevelope next to my TV.