Promising Playstation 4 debut
Sucker Punch makes their Playstation 4 debut with a new entry in the Infamous series. This is the third game in the series but the beginning of a new tale as we no longer plays as Cole MacGrath from the previous games. We are instead introduced to our new protagonist, or antagonist depending on your choices in the game, Delsin Rowe. Delsin is a rebellious young man that doesn’t want to follow the rules of the system. Unfortunately for Delsin his own brother, Reggie Rowe, is a sheriff and therefore they have a bit of strained relationship and it doesn’t help their relationship when the two of them discover that Delsin is in fact a conduit. Conduits are people with special powers and they are generally feared and frowned upon from the rest of society. That means that conduits are kept imprisoned to protect society from their powers. But as luck would happen a transport of conduit prisoners crashes and four conduits escape into the wild. Delsin comes in contact with one of the escaped prisoners and absorbs his powers. Delsin have the ability to absorb other conduits powers and he will now use these powers to fight the head of the special anti-conduit force called D.U.P.
Infamous: Second Son plays pretty much like the previous Infamous games; it’s a third person action adventure game where you spend most of your time in combat shooting people with your super powers and absorbing energy from the environment when you’re running low on your special super juice. But even though you basically play as a superhero, or supervillain, you are remarkably fragile. You quickly learn not to rush head first into combat or you will very likely get killed in a couple of seconds. Progressing through the game you will constantly get new abilities or the option to upgrade your acquired powers. That being said I’ll have to mention that I found the different powers too similar. Neon controls pretty much exactly like smoke and vice versa. So your enjoyment of the game hinges on how much you like the feel of the combat cause that’s pretty much the only thing you are going to do through most of the game. I enjoyed the combat and the challenge of it once I got used to it and knew when to retreat and when to attack.
The game might be marketed as an open world game but there really isn’t that much to do outside the main story other than the same three to four different side objectives over and over again. But that didn’t really bother me that much since I have always been the type of player that focuses on the main story and doesn’t really care too much about doing every single thing in a game. Luckily the story and gameplay was enough to carry me through the game. Also the game isn’t super long so you can probably finish the story and do all the side objectives in 12-14 hours and that’s actually a good thing if you ask me. The game doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. As long as you only play through it once.
I really enjoyed my first playthrough of the game as a hero but playing through the game a second time really doesn’t do the game any favors. The game is pretty bare bones and that’s okay for one playthrough but it gets a little monotonous a second time through simply because the story specific choices you make as a villain doesn’t have enough of an impact to justify ride number two. The effects of your choices really only affects a couple of the cutscenes and do also give you some special powers but these alterations are so miniscule that they aren’t worth mentioning. My problem with the evil playthrough is also that Delsin Rowe becomes a super one-dimensional jerk whose evil actions never feel fully justified. I kind of cared for Delsin’s wellbeing when I played as a good guy, even though he can be a little annoying at times, but he simply became impossible to care for when playing as evil Delsin. The evil ending, which I won’t spoil here, just left a bad taste in my mouth and I hoped that Delsin would die a horrible death since he treated everyone else as shit. Just being evil for the sake of being evil doesn’t make a character compelling. Since the extend of the choice system is super shallow I really hope Sucker Punch will completely cut it from further installments.
I’m a positive guy and I just mentioned a lot of negative stuff about a game I actually liked. So here’s my advice: Play the game as good Delsin. The story fits better together and Delsin and Reggie’s relationship play out in a much more meaningful way. The gameplay also holds up the first time through, even though it is a little bare bones. If I were to rate the good and the bad playthrough of the game I would rate them like this:
Hero playthrough: 4/5
Villain playthrough: 3/5
Since I’m in a good mood and Giant Bomb doesn’t allow half stars I’m going to give the game 4 out of 5 stars. But if you are only going to play it once, which I strongly recommend, play the good storyline.
