inFamous is closing in on release, and the first reviews are trickling in. IGN has long review for Sony's next big blockbuster game.

Final score=9.2

When you pick up the controller, you'll be dropped into the shoes of Cole. He used to be your everyday bike messenger, but that all ended when he was delivering a package and the thing went off in his hands. The ensuing blast leveled a gigantic portion of the city and left Cole in a coma. When he wakes up, everything is screwed -- there's a plague that's making people sick, the government's quarantined Empire City, gangs have seized control of the three islands that make up the metropolis, and -- most importantly to our tale -- Cole finds that he's been blessed/cursed with electricity-based superpowers. Now that you're in control of a guy who can shoot lightning bolts from his hands, fall from the highest buildings without taking any damage, and throw cars into the air with his trusty shockwave, what are you going to do?

See, Infamous is an open-world game. Once you've gone through the basic tutorial -- typical third-person controls with L1 bringing up your reticule for aiming your R1 lightning bolt and face button specials -- Empire City is yours to do what you want with. You can go out on story missions, take on the random bad guys camped out on rooftops, tackle some side missions, or just run and jump from rooftop to rooftop. Now, as you get going, you'll need to get Empire City up and running again. At the most basic level, this means Cole needs to head into the city's sewers and manually reestablish the connections between transformers (see: he grabs the working electrical box, grabs the one that isn't working, and lets the juice flow through him to get the city back online). When you do this, you'll gain a new superpower so that by the end of the game you'll have access to 16 abilities such as calling down a massive lightning storm that obliterates enemies as well as an electrical shield you can use to block incoming attacks.

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