And now for something completely different

The black colossus of a video game platform, the PS3 has, at best, a handful of genuinely must-own titles that take full advantage of the hardware and deliver a surreal and fantastic experience that cannot be replicated by any medium. And now inFamous, the latest offering from Sucker Punch Productions, a studio renowned for their games about a pilfering and hyperactive raccoon and his gang of anthropomorphic woodland mammals friends, is here to mostly justify all the money you spent on that particularly heavy paperweight.

Players step into the electrified shoes of courier Cole McGrath, the gravelly-voiced protagonist who sounds like a drunk man doing a Batman impression, whose package (not his junk, the package he's delivering) explodes and ravages Empire City, a fictitious metropolis that resembles an especially gray slum after the MacGuffin goes off. So Cole is off to do some grunt work for some lady in the CIA, his annoying sidekick Zeke, his ungrateful girlfriend, and some mysterious dude who you never actually meet, but whom Cole follows blindly anyway. The main missions are all variations on "Go here and shove lightning bolts up everyone's asses," but the game never feels repetitive. An extremely diverse palate of powers ensures you'll never stick to just one method of electric murder, and the environments are nice, varied, and easy to navigate. Summoning a lightning storm to smite a group of hoodies like you're God and they're the peasants who have displeased you simply never gets old. Neither does grinding on power lines firing explosive lightning bolts at random passerby.

The sidequests take a leaf out of Saints Row's book. Successfully completing them eradicates enemies from the rooftops, but other than that, there's no tangible reward. By contrast, Saints Row rewarded territorial control and side missions with fat stacks of in-game money for you to purchase extravagant mods for your cars and rocket launchers and pretty dresses. There's no real benefit to completing side missions in inFamous, other than not being hassled by gunfire when you leap around the rooftops. But then again, you can heal yourself by sucking the electric soul of your enemies, so mere human weapons are more of a temporary annoyance rather than anything serious, like a kitty leaping on top of your head. You can also scour the city for pieces of bling, which at least extend your power bar, so that's a side activity worth exploring, if you're a scavenging little vulture who needs to attain 100% completion in your games because you're psychotic.

The big selling point behind inFamous is the touted moral choice system, wherein every choice you make influences your appearance, how the NPCs in the game world interact with you, and what powers you unlock. It's a mostly shallow and extraneous addition, whose only purpose is to force you to play the game twice to see all the content. Sucker Punch seems to be fully aware of the whole notion of "Nice Guys Finish Last and Biggest Jerk Wins," and have thus beefed up all the evil powers to be totally mind-bendingly awesome and capable of laying waste to and enslaving all of humanity, while the good powers are about as effective as a bunny's farts. Furthermore, any choices you make won't influence the course of the story in any way whatsoever. Once you realize that, the needlessness of it all becomes painfully obvious.

The story is also an atrocious spectacle to behold, with truly awful characters and writing. There's the requisite secret cabals of evil scientists, ineffectual MacGuffins, and characters so annoying and cliche, you'll want to electrocute yourself. Even after you've written it off as a soft-science nightmare, the game throws in ridiculous plot twists that involve time travel, cloning, and mind control to spice up the story, which is right up there with adding pepper to your own vomit to give it a bit of flavor. You'll find yourself firing lightning bolts at a giant robot made of trash controlled by a malevolent, psychic hobo, meandering sewers looking for a nyphomaniac who can control minds, and fighting hoodied gangs capable of teleportation. The whole story is bananas, and as necessary as the aforementioned Karma system.

inFamous is flawed, but not so much that it burns down your house and kills your children, like Dynasty Warriors: Gundam. Despite all the negative criticism, inFamous is quite a fun game. The combat mechanics are refined and diverse, and the platforming and exploring are oodles of fun. It's just unfortunate that the story is so horrendous and the Karma system so needlessly tacked on. Ultimately, if you can overlook those flaws, you'll enjoy what inFamous has to offer. Even if you can't look past them, then you're probably a fun-hating trainspotter, or Benjamin Croshaw.

PS. I haven't done this since the 7th grade. I think my prose has improved since then, right?