Incidentally, several "good" acts require you stand aside and passively allow an event to occur. That's risky business. Conventional game design defines "choice" as something you do, not something you allow. In one of inFAMOUS's initial karmic tossups, you can either choose to shoot a bunch of starving civilians and ensure more food supplies for your friends (evil), or let those civilians take their share of the food (good). Its a subtle but powerful moment. How many players will balk at not acting and act less than scrupulously, if only to display their godlike powers?
Mostly, you'll spend time darting around Empire City fending off gangs of mutant superhumans who like to terrorize the traumatized populace with guns, rockets, and — much later — the sort of epic super-villainy you've come to expect from the genre. To grapple with opponents who'll eventually come at you from all heights and angles, you're able to climb anything in sight, darting with uncanny agility from zigzag piping to jutting ledges to the lips of window frames. While that sounds like , it's easier than the latter because Cole responds more quickly to your thumb's nudges and with less inertial commitment, so that he'll recover from errors quicker. That said, Sucker Punch models the gaps you'll have to clear to reach pipes or ledges with laudable realism. No "almost" catches at the height of a jump, where other games magnetically pull you into the last few inches with an invisible helping hand.
Where Assassin's Creed modeled wall-crawling with a kind of grasping, painstaking meticulousness, Cole is more like a coiled muscle, springing and scrambling as fast as you care to tap out moves. He can clamber up the side of a building from sidewalk to summit in seconds, and eventually gains the ability to "grind" on power lines and railcar tracks like Tony Hawk channeling Zeus. Since he can't drive or carry weaponry — his powers detonate the gas tanks in vehicles and the gunpowder in bullets — it's all part of Sucker Punch's deftly executed decision to let you experience the kinetic gratification of engaging in "superhero parkour" without hindering your ability to speed from one side of the map to another.
Eventually that flexibility causes some minor problems, particularly in areas like the second island (The Warren) where the buildings are riddled with odd handholds and intentionally misaligned protrusions that can cause Cole to get snarled in the architecture. In one instance, I needed to procure a package wedged in the corner of a fire escape landing, but whether I tapped the "leap" or "let go" buttons, Cole wouldn't stop grabbing onto the handrails and overhangs. It took me half a minute to get him "unstuck" and positioned correctly. The character thus seems well acclimated to open spaces and simple geometry, but stick him in cramped quarters and his grab-hold-of-anything tack is like Microsoft Office's — accommodating to the point of absurdity.
The bad guys — initially called Reapers, a bunch of tar-belching goons sporting ghostly masks cribbed from Wes Craven's who eventually morph into even deadlier things — can hit a bug on a wire from a thousand paces. They'll detect and rapid-fire snipe you from preposterous distances, something that's fortunately offset by the citywide surplus of electrical recharge nodes. Higher power abilities drain your "batteries," and when you're low on health, sticking your finger in an outlet can work wonders. Cars, power boxes, light poles, you name it — they offer a chance to juice-up, if you can spare the precious seconds it takes to click the thumb-stick and locate their crackling signatures. It's all part of a balancing act to keep you on your toes. And moving. And most of all, not bored.