Infamous Second Son

Ever since the first Infamous game came out in 2009, I’ve been anticipating each installment by Sucker Punch. I remember liking the original game as well as Infamous 2, so I naturally wanted to play the PS4 installment, Infamous Second Son. However, it wouldn’t be until after my birthday that I’d be able to get it (I ordered it online so I could play the Limited Edition), and even then college eventually got in the way of my play time, so I couldn’t finish my standard two playthroughs until my finals ended. After having finally done so in time for Trophy Unlocked's fourth anniversary, I would say that Infamous Second Son is definitely worth playing, though it’s not without a couple of hang-ups.

Delsin Rowe is a graffiti artist living on the Akomish reservation. After his brother Reggie, a police officer, catches him spray-painting again, Delsin runs away, but Reggie stops him and scolds him for having to be arrested again. The resulting argument is interrupted when a military convoy carrying three Conduit prisoners crashes on the reservation. Delsin ends up touching one of the prisoners, a man named Hank, and gains abilities related to smoke. Seeking answers, he chases Hank and manages to corner him, only for Brooke Augustine, the director of the Department of Unified Protection (D.U.P.), to show up and trap Hank in concrete. Augustine quickly finds out about Delsin’s powers and puts him in a coma. A week later, Delsin wakes up and finds that Augustine used her powers to injure everyone on the reservation with her concrete powers. In an effort to save them, Delsin heads with Reggie to Seattle to confront Augustine and gain her concrete abilities so that he may heal everyone in the Akomish tribe.

The story has solid writing, with enough character development to let the player figure out Reggie and Delsin’s personalities. Other important characters, Hank, Fetch and Eugene, are less three-dimensional, but they have their own character arcs that show development on their end, as well as back story via comic book-style cutscenes, and feel more involved in the story. The Karma system returns from the first two games and still influences power modifiers and story paths. However, no matter what Karma route you pick, the story will play out in nearly the same way except for the very ending or what the minor characters say and believe. Since I played the game twice, I also noticed that though the numerous side activities around Seattle can lengthen the game immensely, the actual story feels a little short. I’m not really certain as to how long it takes, but I felt like it could have been lengthened a little or had some more character development worked in.

Seattle is very well rendered. Though I haven’t been to the city in real life, I would say that Sucker Punch did an amazing job with recreating iconic landmarks like the Space Needle. They also did a good job capturing the feel of Seattle, which was the goal anyway since this is more of a fictionalized version of the city, though this feeling is based on what I’ve seen from Strip Search and countless episodes of Frasier. The character models look very realistic without dipping into the uncanny valley and Delsin’s powers all look very cool during use, with various effects applied so as to make them believable to the setting. I also liked the lighting effects during the different times of day, as it added a layer of realism to the world and shows how well the PS4 is able to render day and night, although certain conditions can make specific side missions requiring good sight a little more difficult to complete, though I’m more willing to blame the angles I put the camera at. Also, I didn’t really come across any glitches, except for a specific one where Delsin can slide down a specific building’s support and clip all the way through the ground.

The game's graphics are top notch.

Gameplay in this installment is definitely improved from the previous ones. Delsin’s conduit ability is that he can steal powers from other conduits, so there’s an easier explanation for how he can have, at the end of the game, four different powers at his disposal (I won’t go beyond Smoke to avoid spoilers). Each of these powers has their own strengths and weaknesses, as well as different methods of mobility, so any player can figure out a power which suits their play style. Karma can also determine the sort of additional upgrades you can gain with collected Blast Shards, so it’s worth it to play through the game twice to see what Delsin is truly capable of, though I did notice that Good Karma abilities tend to take the more nonlethal or healing approach as opposed to Evil Karma focusing on death and destruction. The only thing I was unsure of was the fact that powers are switched by absorbing it from the environment as opposed to using the d-pad (think Devil May Cry 4 style switching), although the fact that the strongest abilities are mapped to the Down button may justify it for some.

Like in previous Infamous games, Karma is altered depending on either story choices or actions in the environment. These actions can include side tasks such as drug busts or clearing an area of Akura gang members, though these are designed to be done quickly and you can, of course, always just kill random civilians for quick Evil Karma. Karma isn’t so easily swayed though, since the Good and Evil sides each have five levels as Delsin reaches either Hero or Infamous rank. The biggest addition is the ability to free different districts of Seattle from D.U.P. control by completing actual side missions, such as destroying mobile command centers, killing secret agents or finding the location of a hidden file. Completing a certain mission from each district that unlocks whenever the D.U.P. control of that district reaches 30% or lower will also unlock Fast Travel locations for easy travel across the rather large city. What I found most interesting was that Seattle is divided into an upper and lower half separated by a bridge, which can also sort of separate the difficulty level of the game, since the lower half can definitely get more intense than the upper half.

If there’s one thing I really didn’t like however, it would be (optional) Paper Trail DLC. Paper Trail is essentially an ARG built into the game in which Deslin confronts a Conduit with paper-based abilities. During this extended encounter, players are encouraged to visit an external website to solve various clues left behind by the Conduit, though the clues are often cryptic and may necessitate consulting an online guide. Just to add to the frustration, these clues are often solved by doing something in the real world, such as printing out an origami dove and folding it until certain numbers are visible, which you then enter in as a password on an additional website. The worst part of this ordeal though is that when you finish all parts, some of which require the external website to activate, you don’t get any paper powers or anything. I’d only recommend a player do this if they either want more unlockable jackets or want to wear the mask that the paper Conduit wears.

I actually had to do this for a code within Paper Trail.

On the other hand, the Limited Edition’s Cole’s Legacy missions are actually quite interesting. The story arc is overall pretty short and consists mostly of locating audio reports, but it provides long-time fans with some insight as to what happened to Cole and Zeke after the events of Infamous 2. I would say that the Limited Edition is worth buying for this, plus you get to wear Cole’s jacket when it’s all over, which is a nice touch.

Before I end this review, I’d like to also talk about how the game uses the PS4’s controller. The DualShock 4 is used in the sort of way that a tech demo would, by taking advantage of as many of a system’s features as possible, but in this case the features are integrated in such a way that it doesn’t feel like a tech demo at all. The touch pad is used to great effect as both an immersive function a la finger scanning as well as the dedicated button for absorbing new power or Blast Shards and picking up audio logs. Additionally, the speaker is used for phone alerts and additional audio, plus when combined with the built-in Move functionality it makes the act of spray painting even more immersive; as an additional touch, the Move light on the controller changes color to match the color of paint.

Overall, Infamous Second Son is a game worth playing. The story, though not the best, is pretty solid, the gameplay is better than before and Seattle is rendered extremely well. Karma is a bit binary here, but I actually liked the simplicity and I felt that in some ways my choices still mattered. Paper Trail can be rewarding for some, but in my case I found it too tedious to be worth the trouble. The game also manages to take advantage of several of the PS4’s features without at all feeling like a tech demo and the music is written and integrated very well. If you’re a fan of the Infamous franchise then this is a definite buy, but I’d also recommend this game to those looking for a great addition, or start, to their PS4 library.

Infamous: Festival of Blood - Worth Sinking Your Teeth Into

As it is the month of October, it seems only fitting that a company would release a Halloween-based title around this time. For Sucker Punch, it is Infamous: Festival of Blood. At first, I remained cautiously optimistic about the concept of Cole interacting with vampires in New Marais, let alone the fact that he would have vampire powers anyway. Once it was released, I decided to download it and found myself enjoying it a lot more than I thought.

In this story, Cole McGrath explores the catacombs underneath the city of New Marais, only to be captured by vampires. As he is a Conduit, his blood is more than enough to awaken Bloody Mary, who sucks enough of it from his neck to regain her strength and youthful appearance. In exchange, Cole becomes a vampire and must defeat Bloody Mary by sunrise if he wishes to become normal again. This is all I really can say, as I don't want to give away too much of the already thin plot. Despite this I found it rather intriguing once they brought up the issue of Cole's morality as a vampire affecting his morality as a human.

Speaking of morality, the Karma meter is absent from this game, replaced instead with a circular Blood meter that fuels his vampire-based abilities. Refilling the meter is done through not only the classic method of sucking blood from a human, but also through staking vampires and breaking canopic jars, which also increase the meter's maximum size. One ability grants Cole a vampire sense that allows him to locate hidden vampires and jars, along with glyphs that reveal more of the history of Bloody Mary. The only other ability to speak of is the power of flight, which is actually really fun to use and feels like a natural step up from Cole's electrical flight powers.

Speaking of Cole's electricity, he can still use them alongside his vampire abilities since the HUD still contains the electrical nodes. Unlike the other Infamous games however, you cannot manually upgrade these abilities. Instead they get upgraded automatically by completing certain objectives, which is thankfully an easy task in itself.

As for the enemies, the vampires thankfully have a lot of variety to them. Since they can teleport around like Cole and they all have a different strategy to them, the fights become just as intense as any regular group of enemies from Infamous 2. The only disappointment may be in the last one, since it boils down to fending off enemies until Zeke does something. Even after that though, the ending is still satisfying.

For a game that costs only $10 ($8 if you're a PlayStation + member) and takes about half that in hours to beat, it's a pretty good one. It's short and sweet and introduces some fairly interesting concepts that I would like to Sucker Punch expand on in the future. I would also like to see more self-contained "What If?" scenarios in the future and see if they can use some of these ideas in a potential Infamous 3. In fact, owning Infamous 2 is not required to play this since it doesn't read your save game. I would recommend this title to anyone who likes the Infamous series or anyone who wants to see Cole do something exciting and new.

Infamous 2 - An Ambitious Sequel With A Little Less Edge

In 2009, Sucker Punch gave PlayStation 3 owners a great reason to purchase the system with Infamous, a fun open world sandbox game with a fun comic book-inspired edge. Building on the success of their IP, they released a sequel, Infamous 2 (written as inFAMOUS 2) with the promise of expanding on what made the original great, while at the same time adding something new. After having played through the game twice, I am able to say that while Sucker Punch did an excellent job with the sequel, there was a loss of focus somewhere along the way.

The story picks up shortly after the first game, where Cole has gone from a common bike courier to an electrically-charged superhuman Conduit. He has learned to deal with his destiny of taking down a mysterious entity known as "The Beast" and believes that Kessler has prepared him enough. However, it turns out that The Beast has arrived much sooner than expected. In fact, the player must fight The Beast right off the bat in a similar fashion to the Colossus of Rhodes in God of War II. However, no matter what Cole does, he can't defeat The Beast, only temporarily destroy it. While he recovers from near death, he travels with his friend Zeke and NSA agent Lucy Kuo to the city of New Marais to find a man named Dr. Wolfe, who is believed to be able to amplify Cole's powers, as well as having something he can use to defeat The Beast.

While the sequel does continue the story very well and was easy to follow, it was also a bit easy to lose track of everything with the number of sub-plots introduced beyond Cole fighting The Beast. The game ties them up pretty well though, which makes up for this a bit. There's also many a plot twist to be had, most of which are completely unexpected on the first run-through. I thought the voice acting was much improved over the original, particularly Cole's new voice which I felt suited the character much better. I should also mention that the game seems to have a somewhat lighter tone as evident by the brighter color palette and larger abundance of humor both verbally and visually.

New Marais is essentially a fictional version of New Orleans, complete with street performers, neon-lit structures, and above-ground graves. While the buildings may be noticeably shorter, the city makes up for this by introducing swampland, which makes getting around certain areas a bit more difficult. However, Cole can easily get around this by jumping and hovering, or even walking across strategically placed wires and broken railroad track. The city is very beautifully detailed and seems to have much less pop-up than before, if at all. Since the setting is much more varied this time around, it's much impressive to look at and much more interesting to explore.

In fact, exploration is one of the main distractions from the story, as there are collectables to find and side missions to complete. Blast Shards and Dead Drops make a return, yet the former is much easier to find this time around and it felt like the game was essentially giving them away. Not only were they easy to find, but other small events can occur in New Marais to award you even more Blast Shards or XP, also awarding you good or evil karma. These events, which range from silencing street performers and protesters to defusing bombs and thwarting crimes, may seem random at first, but on my second playthrough I noticed them to actually be carefully scripted in where they would appear. Despite the distraction the events can impose, they were still very fun to do and gave me more of a reason to play further.

The karma system in this game was revamped from before in just about all of the right ways. Following different paths still leads to different endings and changes what Cole looks like in both the game world and well-animated cutscenes, as well as lock some of the powers available to you, which means you'll need to play it twice to see it all. However, following one path or the other is much more rewarding this time around, as the moral choices are no longer black and white, actually acting more like different ways to solve the same problem. But no matter what you decide to pick, the powers Cole can wield, now including fire and ice, are a blast to use. The sheer depth introduced by the powers is handled well with a menu that can be brought up at any point to instantly swap in a different version of the power, allowing Cole to change his strategies on the fly. Additionally, melee combat feels smoother and better to utilize thanks to a weapon called the Amp, which focuses Cole's power into single strikes that build up a meter for ending combos in increasingly stylish ways.

In addition to the 60 Side Missions in the game, Sucker Punch added a mission editor that can be accessed anywhere in the world for those connected to PSN. There are plenty of tools the player can use to create absolutely any goal they desire, which are relatively easy to use. Much like LittleBigPlanet, players can publish these levels to populate the game world, which can be filtered to access precisely the mission you want to play. Sucker Punch even allows players starting out to work from different templates if the idea of working with a blank canvas is too much at first. I enjoyed the missions placed in the game by Sucker Punch and some of the User-made levels, and any user with enough imagination will be able to create fantastical levels that anyone can enjoy.

As a side note, DC published a six-issue comic book series for Infamous meant to bridge the gap between Infamous and Infamous 2. On its own, the comic is a good read, but it actually works best as a way of explaining some events that happen off-screen, such as what happened to Moya in the intervening period.

Also, Infamous 2 rewards players who own the original by scanning the trophies one has collected and giving bonuses at the start depending on what was earned. In addition, these seem to affect the Dead Drops within the game, which alter what is said on specific ones depending on Cole's karmic state. This was a nice touch and helped make the overall story feel more immersive.

Sucker Punch has created an ambitious sequel to Infamous, making a satisfying game that unfortunately loses a bit of focus. Despite this, they make it absolutely worth the player's while for playing through the game twice to see every power in action or the changes in the story. Existing Infamous fans will definitely enjoy this game as well, as it improves in a lot of the right ways. If you're looking to play this game but haven't played the original, I would suggest playing the original first due to the overarching story between the games. The game isn't perfect, but it gets the job done in keeping the player interested throughout and increasing its replay value significantly.

Infamous - A Strong Start For Sucker Punch's Newest IP

After the launch of the PlayStation 3, Sucker Punch, Naughty Dog, and Insomniac began developing more mature titles. 2009 saw the release of Infamous (written as inFAMOUS) from Sucker Punch. It contrasted from their popular Sly Cooper series of games in that it was an open world game and went more for a comic book motif. This new IP proved to be popular, spawning a sequel scheduled for release tomorrow. That said, Infamous is a fun game, no matter how many times it has been played.

The story is centered on a courier named Cole MacGrath, who gets caught in a mysterious explosion within Empire City. He manages to survive the blast, collapsing from various electrocutions. With time, he recovers, discovering that he has now obtained the ability to control electricity. He gets used to his powers, and at first uses them to solve common problems. However, within two weeks, he becomes a part of a grand scheme involving the quarantined Empire City as well as a device known as the Ray Sphere, which gave him his powers. As the story goes on, everyone Cole knows gets involved one way or another, changing his life forever.

The story's execution sounds purposefully comic book-like, which means that it has done its job well. The game's relatively small cast of characters is fleshed out pretty well, with some unexpected twists in the first playthrough of the game. Alliances are formed and broken, friendships are tested, and Cole must learn to cope with the sudden changes occurring around him. It is actually possible to become emotionally invested in the characters, making the bigger twists that much more surprising and dramatic. For a comic book brand of story, it pulls it off with a large degree of success. In a way, it feels like an interactive comic book, which is a nice change of pace.

The three islands of Empire City can be traversed in a few different ways, all of them integrated perfectly into the game. When not running on the ground, Cole can grind on power lines connecting buildings together or ride the train tracks. If you really need big distance quickly, it is also possible to glide in the air using electricity. Getting through the city to complete the various missions also shows off a small parkour element in the game which handles near flawlessly. However, climbing up the sides of buildings can sometimes be a pain. Since Cole gravitates to the nearest climbable object, he can occasionally be away from the object you really want to continue jumping off of, which can make collecting some objects annoying, but this doesn't happen too often and doesn't really bog down the experience in any significant way.

The main way that Cole gains new powers is by restoring power to parts of the city through underground sub-stations, which also serve as a training ground for each newly acquired skill. All of them function very well, and come in handy shortly after they are introduced, giving the player an incentive to mix things up and rotate through their abilities on the fly for some impressive feats of gaming. Upgrading powers requires XP, which be earned easily by completing missions and defeating enemies. However, some of these upgrades are restricted based on the current state of Cole's Karma meter.

In keeping with a theme of exploring the line between good and evil, Infamous has a Karma system in place, which increases or decreases depending on Cole's actions. While the game does prevent one from taking the side of neutral Karma, some of the choices Cole makes in the game's Karma moments feel more black and white, with no real gray area in between. It is still easy to get over this, as both good and evil sides play differently from each other, with good powers focused on protection and evil powers focused more on destruction. Completing Karma-specific missions also prevents you from completing another side, so you're either going for a positive or negative overall outcome.

Empire City is very large, but with good incentives for exploring the beautifully detailed world. If enough Blast Shards are collected, Cole gains more energy to work with to use his powers, which is always good to have, and Dead Drops can be collected from satellite dishes to offer more insight on the events leading up to the blast at the very beginning of the game. While exploring, there are also some instances of pop-up graphics. While this is actually expected with newer open world games, there are actually some hilarious moments where injured pedestrians seem to disappear off the face of the earth, although it happens rarely. There is also the occasional glitch where the enemies will continue their falling animation and get stuck between two surfaces, or times when enemies are down, but in a frozen falling animation. However, most of these glitches are easily remedied and don't prove to be much of a hindrance.

The performances of the characters are also done well, but the voice acting is just ok. The lines are delivered well, but Cole's voice sounds a bit gravely for a superhero. But like most games, I just rolled with the voices even if they were average. Even with that, the characters are still fleshed out well, which makes up for it a bit.

Sucker Punch has introduced a great new IP exclusively for PlayStation, and it was a blast. It's worth it to play the game twice to see how the different powers work, as well as to see the subtle changes in the cutscenes and how each campaign ends. If you are a PlayStation 3 owner, I would highly recommend a full purchase. It will be interesting to see how the sequel will continue the narrative, as well as carry the character of Cole MacGrath to the point where he can accomplish the enormous task before him.