So I'll happily say I've been nothing but intrigued about inFamous for the PS3. Any game that involves a derivative comic-book background with free-roaming superhero driven gameplay that stems from the creative collective at Sucker Punch (Rocket: Robot on Wheels, Sly Cooper series) has got to be worth your intrigue (or at the very least a raised eyebrow of contemplation).

So when Dan and I sat around a very primary-school set up of tables and chairs in a meeting room at the Makuhari Messe for this year's Tokyo Game Show, television blaring the inFamous pause screen at us, I can tell you we were both pretty keen to see just what these guys were going to show us.

Initially things kick off with a bit of a cliched comic-book style intro. There's no fancy CG here; it's all hand-drawn stills stylishly cut together with voiced-over narrative from the game's main character, Cole. He explains the events that lead to his hospitalisation first, then discovery of electrically charged super powers second. And all - typically of this kind of story - without really batting an eye-lid.

"Please pay no attention to the voices at the moment, they're just place-holders until we drop the real thing in," pleads Ken Schramm, Communications Manager at Sucker Punch while running us through the game. He very readily points out that what we're seeing today is an absolute work in progress, but that what we're also seeing is an idea of just where they're taking the title.

Now it's all well and good for publishers and developers to say stuff like that, but at a certain point in development (specifically any point where you feel your title can be shown to the press) you're pretty confident what's being demonstrated is more than indicative of the final goal.

It might not be the best aural or visual representation, but your gamplay foundations have to have hit the ground running for you to be in any position to boast, and/or show off (though we're aware these are also driven for feedback, which is what we're about to offer).

The reality is inFamous, in its current state, just isn't blowing our skirt up. The concept is sound, and the game looks like it's going to be a lot of fun, but when you look at what the PS3 is capable of producing both on a visual level and a level of scope, what we're seeing here just looks and feels short-sighted.

What Ken and co showed off for us was sound; Cole can enter the fictional world of Empire City, scale anything, interact with its denizens and generally just cause a ruckus or go about being a goody-too-shoes (as is the work choice of the average day-to-day just-born superhero). He [Cole] isn't the only one who copped a stack of powers though (c'mon, they need to balance it out somewhere, right?). A slew of Empire City's more cunning baddies (well, actually they were just junkies before, but apparently they've been given the ultimate hit making them powerful enough to cause you concern) are also powered to the nines, but even worse is they're actually using once lost smarts to band together and muscle the town for their own selfish purposes.

But as our Sucker Punch overlords explained “everyone hates making a Superman game because ultimately he's too powerful, he can fly and where's the fun in making something where he just escapes Kryptonite all the time?" It's a good point though; especially in the videogame medium – create a character too powerful and where's the fun in doing anything?

To this end, Sucker Punch have injected a host of bad-guys replete with destructible set-pieces for you to destroy (though only these pieces are destructible thresholds, the rest of the game is going to remain marginally unchanged) - and destroy ye shall.

Cole's powers are all electricity-based. He can electrocute conductible surfaces (water included), turn on machines, overload machines (so they blow up, see), magnetise EMP-like grenades and, of course, electrocute enemies. The guys didn't go into any real detail as to why they chose electricity, and don't go expecting Earth to be his very own kryptonite (I asked and they looked puzzled – maybe they've never played an RPG before).

Actually that's likely not true as even though they were reluctant to give up specifics, you will grow as a hero and that will mean learning new abilities and making moral choices that will drastically alter your path in Empire City. Speaking of Empire City, given this is something of a sandbox title, we're told you'll have three different parts of the world to explore and based on the aforementioned moral choices you make, the city (and its three main parts), will change in reflection to this.

The short mission we were actually privy to saw Cole coming across the body of someone in an alley. Upon touching it he triggers a post-cognition ability where he can see images of events that have recently transpired (it was also suggested that pre-cognition would likely manifest itself once you became more powerful and in control). This is a seminal mission delivery system, allowing you to head out into the game-world and find bodies for side-quests to perform.

In this case, the junkies-turned-uber-badguys, have attacked a couple. Clearly, as the most electrifying man in Empire City you should go and investigate, which then leads our Sucker Punch emissaries to show off all the aformentioned powers and abilities through levelling the junkies' stronghold.

Overall what was shown was clearly something worth taking the time to get to know, but at this stage it wasn't looking like the most visually mind-blowing game. Animations for Cole scaling buildings seem lacklustre (at least after the efforts of games such as Assassin's Creed or the new Prince of Persia), and the city itself just lacked something 'next-gen' (though we still haven't seen all of it yet).

Moreover, without an ultimate narrative unveiling (coming soon, apparently), it was hard to see the point in the game. Don't get me wrong, we all want a "jungle gym" of a city to play in with super-powers, but if there's no overall point then it's kind of lost (at least for presentation purposes - we haven't lost faith yet, we just want to see more).

However, this is just a main concern based on the fact we haven't truly seen what's going to be the driving force, and if Sucker Punch can deliver on a dynamic story that shifts gameplay elements based on moral choices within the purportedly massive and alive open game-world, we might just have something special, here's hoping they deliver in the "compelling" department.

At the moment though, fun as the game looked it really was only borrowing from various other titles (GTA, Crackdown, Assassin's Creed) without offering too much of its own flair. But with another seven months left in development and plenty more to be revealed, it's most definitely far too early to call it one way or another with inFamous.