I\’m going to start out this review by stating that I\’ve never been into the Infamous series. When I played the original I found it to be too repetitive and I just couldn\’t get into the story and didn\’t care about Cole. I wasn\’t able to relate to him and I saw the potential the series had but just wasn\’t into it during the PS3 era. However that changed with Desmond and the PS4 title Infamous Second Son.
What\’s great about this game is I didn\’t have to play the first titles to understand this story. Sure, there were things that went back to Cole\’s story but I wasn\’t completely lost in this game because I didn\’t play the previous ones. The first thing you\’ll notice is everything from the street lights to the sunsets are gorgeous. For a first PS4 title Sucker Punch has made a killer engine and I can\’t imagine what a few more years of experience developing for what is now current gen systems will bring. The audio is great and the voice acting isn\’t dry and all these things make the characters seem believable. The city is alive and well populated. I found myself caring about the new characters and couldn\’t bring myself to be Infamous. I was the hero and it felt awesome. The combat is tight and fun and I didn\’t have any issues with the camera that plague some action games.
Not everything about Second Son is great however. The side missions of shooting down drones to collect energy shares and finding and neutralizing the undercover DUL agent were repetitive and boring after a while. Although damn it I got every drone but didn\’t bother to find every undercover agent. You can also find audio love scattered throughout the city. I didn\’t have any real difficulty with the final boss although the boss midway through the game that grants you the video ability I found oddly more difficult. The inclusion of the photos mode has been a very cool and fresh addition. Basically the photos more strips away the HUD and allows you freedom over the camera placement and depth of field to help take some really incredible screenshots. It\’s awesome to see a developer embrace the share feature in such a social way.
While this game may not be the most diverse in terms of gameplay or do much to set itself apart from other titles as far as mission\’s and game mechanics it was definitely a fun game. There is a system that helps you unlock and level up your powers like in the other games and you eventually feel really badass, and just when I started to get bored of some of the missions I was thrown a new power for my arsenal of cool abilities that helped keep things fresh until the end. While it may not be perfect it belongs in your (admittedly sparse for now) PS4 library.
