Infamous
SCEE
Sucker Punch Studios
Playstation 3
UK Release: TBC 2009
US Release: TBC 2009
Screenshot Gallery


The following article is an abridged version taken from the latest issue of Edge. A more thorough report on the game can be found in Edge issue 199, which is on sale now in the UK and is already in the hands of UK and North American subscribers.


Day 14 of the quarantine. High above the streets, a fat man and a thin man lounge on a rooftop sofa, surrounded by fragments of a shattered civilisation. Dusty fairy lights are strung along some old chain-link fencing, a mouldy rug is spread across the tiles and, over by a ledge, an ancient fridge covered in peeling decals hums and stutters. The men wear filthy clothes and tired expressions, but shoot the breeze without a care in the world.

And why should they care? This is a city that’s already lost: an indisputable fact written in tilted skyscrapers, buckled steel girders and splintered advertising hoardings, and in the crowds furtively scavenging through the rubble and wrecked concrete below, while battered cars pile up at street corners and the overhead power lines spew showers of useless sparks.

Empire City, then, has been trashed, yet Infamous’s world is at least colourful in its dereliction, every intersection bustling with some kind of threat or intrigue, while each shattered building façade calls out to be scaled.

“This is one continuous streaming world,” says Brian Fleming, the co-founder of developer Sucker Punch, and producer of Infamous, “and we’ve tried to bring a natural aesthetic variety to it. It’s got residential areas and neon areas and parks, and they should all fit together to create a coherent single city. The details should make sense.”