I liked the original inFamous. While, at its basics, it was a standard cover-based TPS, it was very easy to not play it as such (you barely ever needed cover). It felt like a nice action game, and the story was generally pretty nice, with some replay value added through the whole good/evil system that granted different powers.

I was pretty excited for inFamous 2… Did it live up? Read on!

Developer: Sucker Punch
Publisher: SCEA
Date of Release: June 7th 2011
Platforms: PS3

Genre: Third-person shooter/action
Rated T for Teen

What’s bad about the game

Yeah, I’ll start with the negatives here… since I could almost write only these and be done with the review…

It’s inFamous 1
Almost literally. There’s not much that was changed from the first one. A few things were tweaked and added (I’ll talk about those later), but the base game and the game flow is no different. You have your big map, some sidequest scattered around it and a main quest, and you do those to unlock the next set of sidequests and the next main quest, and you continue that until you finish the game. The actual gameplay feels very much the same as well. Essentially nothing control-wise was changed, and the combat is literally unchanged. I won’t go too much into it, but let’s just say that playing this feels no different from playing the first. Changing the game’s setting doesn’t make it a better game, it just makes it the same game in a browner town.

What’s good about the game

Modifications
While the game is essentially inFamous 1.3, it does have a few modifications that make it slightly different from the original.
One of the changes is that Cole gets allies this time around. Certain missions through the game will see you being helped by asian agent Kuo (representing “good” karma) or the “savage” black girl Nyx (representing “evil” karma). There’s missions where both will help you out, and others where only one of them will help you out. Most of the time you have to choose, affecting your karma (and giving. You have certain moves you can do with them for different effects, making teaming up with them pretty fun.

A nice addition is the ability to change your powers as you see fit. If you want to change your standard lightning shot to another version you have unlocked (here you unlock new versions of your powers, rather than just getting powered-up versions), just hold Left on the D-pad and press R1 to your desired choice, as long as you have said move leveled up. This works for every button that has a power assigned to it, so you can easily change your setup for any situation.

The melee system in this game is exactly like in the first game, but Cole now has a weapon called the Amp. It’s sorely underused and serves only as a melee weapon (when it’s clear that, when it’s first introduced, it should enable Cole to focus his powers better and such… but that never actually happens gameplay-wise). The Amp gives a little bit of extra range to your melee attacks, and consecutive hits increase a power meter that gives you various finishers you can use. This does increase the depth of melee battle, since you can kill one enemy with normal melee attacks and then go kill the next one with a finisher.

Another addition is that, later in the game, you get a new set of powers… sort of. You get that about a third of the way through the game. They’re really just extra choices you can make for the different standard moves: new grenades, new powers with R2 (Ice Launch is particularly useful) and a few others. There are a few new powers as well, like the kinetic pulse which enables you to carry objects by levitating them (and launching them if you want) which is almost entirely useless, and new elements that can be added to attacks. It adds a bit of variety from the first game.

Mobility was modified slightly here. Cole still gravitates towards anything he can hang on to which can get annoying, but I find that climbing buildings is a bit faster. Also, some buildings have a “launch pole” attached to them, which will get you close to the top a lot faster than if you’d jump normally. Some time into the game you’ll get modified Static Thrusters, which enable you more control on your hover power, extra height when you start it up, and a LOT more distance. And if you get the ice launch power, it’s really useful to move around faster. So while moving around hasn’t changed from the first at its core, a few tweaks and additions do make it a bit smoother and simpler. Less time spent climbing is a plus in my book.

Slightly better level design in one part
Not really much new here, since 2/3 of New Marais just looks like a browner Empire City, but Flood Town actually broke the monotony of the rest of the game. Due to that part of the city being covered in water, the platforming you have to do here is very different from how you move around the rest of the city (since Cole is weak to water), it’s actually quite interesting. Nothing to add here, the rest is not very different.

Gameplay
Yeah, it’s inFamous 1 with not a lot of change, but it’s still fun to play. Fighting enemies is fun, climbing things is a bit tedious but finding the right places to climb to better fight enemies is fun, some of the objectives are really fun (like overcharge missions where you have to touch the ground as little as possible from point A to point B), and there’s quite a bit to do, like finding Blast Shards to power up or stopping crimes and stopping various things going on in the city like entertainers and protests (both of which gives you evil karma). The overall gameplay here is very fun, there’s really not too much to complain about.

Story *spoilers for inFamous 1*
The story continues from the original inFamous. Cole escapes from Empire City while fighting “The Beast” a powerful being that Kessler basically trained Cole to fight against. Knocking the Beast out for a bit and escaping to New Marais to expand his power levels, Cole encounters the Militia, a group hell-bent on finding people with super powers and killing them… or are they? The villain here (other than the Beast) is actually fairly interesting at parts… and incredibly annoying during other parts… but he makes for a good villain especially if you check out the dead drops.

Basically, the story progression is very simple: find a certain McGuffin, get new powers, get to the next McGuffin. The story itself is fully linear, though minor elements can change due to to your karma, and whether you want to go for the “good” or “evil” sides of the story, but the ending remains the same on either the evil or good side, no matter which choices you make through the rest. Like in the first game, you can find Dead Drops, which are carried by birds, which gives you extra background story info, about events from both the first game and this one. Overall very nice story-wise.

Overall

inFamous 2 is just more of the same, sadly. I was hoping this would really go crazy with the ideas set in the original, but all it really does is reuse the exact same gameplay and adds a few minor things to it, not enough to really feel much different from the first one. Not to say this is a bad game, of course, just an underwhelming one, especially if you just got done going through the first one (it HAS just been given away by Sony for free after all, so I’m guessing a lot of people have played through the first one recently). It’s still a great game with great gameplay and the story is nice too. Just… if you’ve played inFamous 1 recently, wait a bit for inFamous 2, since you may feel a bit burned out from playing the same thing again (especially since you probably played through inFamous 1 twice).

Overall though, inFamous 2 is just as solid as the first inFamous. The few modifications I mentioned DO make it a better game, but not by much. I just feel more effort should have been put in making the sequel more than just a re-hash.

Pros and Cons

Pros
- Still fun
- The few modifications make it a little bit better than the first
- Good story

Cons
- It’s almost exactly the same game as inFamous 1 beyond the change in setting

jobocan Console, Games, ps3, Review