inFAMOUS 2

Play once more as comic book super hero Cole McGrath (who gained his incredible powers after being caught at the centre of a massive explosion) in this totally absorbing sequel to inFAMOUS from 2009. Having been blamed for the destruction of Empire City, you have a lot to prove as you head out to New Marais to regroup so you can take on the terrifying mission to destroy the massive demonic creature called the Beast that now threatens the city's population. As before you possess the ability to hurl lightning bolts and can top up your energy by sucking power from generators but this time your electrical attack capabilities are enhanced with a system of advanced super powers. The game, as before, is set in an open world environment and game players are offered a huge amount of choice at every stage. Your powers may even be used for good or evil. Choices made at each stage affect the plot and even the outcome of the entire game so the game has the potential to be different each time it is played. Shocking!

• Andrew Highton November 21, 2012 PS3

  ****

  Cole McGrath may not be the most electrifying man in sports entertainment today, but he's definitely an electrically charged dude who makes a great poster boy for Sony. He and his controversial best friend Zeke have amped things up a bit in the sequel and this adventure is bigger and definitely better!
  
  The setting of the first game, Empire City, has been completely destroyed by a menacing force called "The Beast" which looks like a Titan from the God of War series. As a result, Cole and Zeke have had to relocate New Marais and see how they can prevent total destruction at the hands of the Beast. If inFamous 2 is your first inFamous experience and you fear that the story will go over the top of your head more than a flock of birds going south for the winter; then fear not. Yes the story links to the events that preceded in inFamous but you get a nice summary of what happened prior and you're up-to-date rather quickly.
  
  Now let's get this straight, I had no obvious emotional attachment to Cole in inFamous, nor did I have any hidden emotional attachment to Cole either. In inFamous 2, I have a teeny bit; which is clearly progress and development of his character as a whole. His voice is less Christian Bale and more human. Instead of the game having Cole and Zeke as a knock-off Batman & Robin duo like the entirety of the last game, we have additional characters which add to the magnitude of the stories decisions and plot. Alongside Cole and Zeke we have Kuo and Nix. Both of these foxy, ferocious, fearsome women represent your typical good role, bad role characters which again will influence and effectively dictate the end of the story based on your actions e.g. who you side with. Kuo is initially a regular secret agent turned superhero with powers and all that good stuff, she's good and seeks the morally appropriate action that is positive and sensible for everyone. Whereas Nix is pretty much an evil femme fatale who leads you to trouble and wants to commit heinous actions of evil. So what's your poison eh?
  
  I enjoyed the story and felt it was strong, the continuous update of how far away The Beast is always a nice reminder of the destructive force approaching. But it doesn't feel as involved as it should be. The introduction the game sees an early battle with the beast and Cole fails miserably to conquer it. It shows he's weak and needs to get stronger in order to best it. But after this, the beast is pretty much absent throughout the game. Considering the game is centred on the beast and climaxing towards a confrontation with this monstrous wall of destruction; I'd have expected more anxiety induced by visual means instead of audio and characters talking about it. Building up to the all-important criticality of facing the beast, I'd have liked videos or captioned pictures showing it getting closer and letting you know that it's coming for you. Instead I was playing with a cold sense of disappointment and a rather anti-climactic ending to an otherwise fine story.
  
  Compared to the last game, EVERYTHING is better. The graphics are shinier and more explosions are always a visual delight, especially when the game doesn't suffer from bad graphical hitches that make the original game look choppy and ugly. I loved deliberately throwing grenades around me and at cars just to see the whirlwind of chaos be unleashed into a bright ball of beauty. Manoeuvrability is inherently sleeker and more satisfying. Instead of the laboured mashing of the jump button to scale a large building, Sucker Punch studios have now introduced vertical ascensions poles which you hop on to and they will spring you up to the summit of a building like a geyser. The melee combo is more fluid and feels better, plus there is a now a gauge that fills up with each successful attack on an enemy. Once this bar reaches optimum capacity then you can unleash a finishing attack, the only drawback is that the camera zooms in when you hit an enemy and when you're facing a group of them then your vision is severely impaired and it's very difficult to know what's coming next.
  
  Taking control of a supercharged human with capabilities such as sending cars hurtling miles with a shockwave, throwing cars at wherever you so desire and creating an ionic vortex (an electric tornado) to gobble up the enemies and spit them out like a baby's dummy is a LOT of fun. Predictably the game takes all of your powers from the previous game and gives them a little boost with jumper leads to add some extra zap to them. By the end of the game I felt like a 16 tonne weight covered in electricity. I was a walking thunder storm of awesome power that could negotiate areas with ease as I spring boarded into the air and glided everywhere with my static thrusters. It's completely satisfying and you can mix and match powers, even more so if they're used in tandem with one of your sidekicks. Cole McGrath can make Iron Man look as mobile as someone with a Zimmer frame and Captain America as strong a teenager trying to lift his first over-sized dumbbell.
  
  The scale of the map is roughly the same size as the first game and there is a decent amount of things to do in it. It will probably take you between 15-20 hours to do everything in the game, this includes: finding all the hidden blast shards, all side missions (dependant on karma based choices), story missions and finding the dead drops which are pigeons with radio transmissions attached to them; as most pigeons do. You get two quite different campaigns based on your own perception of humanity. You're both the hero and the saviour of New Marais, looking flashier than Superman and kicking more arse than Jackie Chan and Jet Li when they're in bad mood. OR you're the brutal, sadistic and most definitely sinister figure that remorselessly slays civilians, defies authority and will definitely make his way onto Santa's naughty list without it having to be checked twice.
  
  Despite the positive differences between this and its predecessor. One of the short falls for InFamous 2, and to some extent the same as InFamous 1, is the repetition and unimaginative side missions. Now you only get a limited amount of variety in the side missions, some are more story driven which can be fun and have a fun bearing on your karmic choice. But as for the rest, they range from kill all enemies in a given area, jump on an electrical transformer and quickly get to the next one nearby to re-activate it, finding a hidden package based on a picture and taking pictures of different objects and situations. It's such a shame as the game has variety and depth in its development, but falters with boring side missions that I only did out of necessity for total completion; otherwise I'd have left them to rot like the proverbial apple.
  
  InFamous 2 is a fun story-based platfomer as it can easily leave you in shock and awe one moment and electrically discharged the next. The game thrives on giving the user incredible empowerment with the big range of abilities and possibilities of defeating enemies and moving around the map. The story is a lot stronger with better dialogue and more characters that help shape the story into a more exciting plot. You get enough bang for your buck in an adventure that's worth playing twice and if you can overlook the tame side missions that, for the most part, lack serious imagination, then you'll have a hell of a lot in New Marais. Now go Ride The Lightening!
  

• Matthew Brew January 31, 2012 PS3

  ****

  Infamous 2 begins in Empire city dramatically with the attack of the revered "beast" shown as Mcgrath's main adversary at the end of the first game. Immediately we can see the graphics have been ramped up a notch, faces are much more alive & lighting is ten times better giving the whole game a "hd" feel compared to the first games grainy graphics of dark grey tones. The game opens with a brief demonstration of Mcgrath's powers and even lets you summon an electrical storm upon your enemy, but this is clearly shown to be nothing against this monster that is the beast. Mcgrath is simply no match. Yet.
  
  The story basically covers Mcgrath's development of new powers in the new city of New Marais, basically sucker punch's take on New Orleans, all with the aim of defeating the beast. To develop your powers you must find blast cores, which upgrade your powers significantly, as each core is absorbed however the beast is rampaging through North America; destroying everything in his path and heading straight for New Marais. It is told mainly through animated cut scenes, however the original comic strip style cut scenes have made a return and are equally as refreshing and original as ever and tell the story superbly. The main protagonist has a completely new look from the first game, the voice actor has changed and he looks much younger, personally i prefer the old Mcgrath; he just felt more of the gritty sort of hero his character is meant to be. We do see some familiar faces here, Zeke, Mcgrath's slightly chubby and hilarious best friend, makes a return with slightly cliche one liners and an unfortunately shallow character. We also see the introduction of new characters here: Nix, another conduit like Mcgrath but instead with the ability to manipulate fire: Kuo, starting off as an agent she too becomes a conduit in the game with the ability to manipulate ice & fly. There is a wide character range and suitably so, as it is a sandbox game and there is a lot to do, but sometimes it feels like character development is a bit under done: i find myself often wishing the developers had gone deeper with a lot of these characters and who they really are. However overall the story is good & provides a satisfying play through that will draw you in, even if it is lacking in some areas.
  
  The game play has also had a face lift, attempts to make free running more fluid are clear, with the inclusion of new powers which allow a jump to be electrically charged when leaping off a car; hence giving more altitude. Static thrusters are included from the start this time and when upgraded allow longer gliding times and provide an upwards boost when first launched. Another key aspect of the game play that has changed is melee, there is now the "amp" which serves as basically an electrical sword for you to perform acrobatic electrical attacks with. For the most part it works well and greatly improves on the lacking melee from the first game, but the camera zooms in far too close when attacking not allowing you to see whether an enemy is coming from behind or indeed what anyone else is doing. However for the most part combat has remained the same, with a basic style of a third person shooter but with electric bolts rather than guns. The ability to upgrade powers from the start menu has also been improved with different variations on electrical shock waves, grenades and even tornadoes available; the best improvement for me is that once an upgrade is bought it can be switched between by a simple press of the left directional button reducing the amount of time navigating clunky menus. New powers are also available that are not electrically based, there is now the inclusion of ice and fire powers which adds a whole new element to game play and steps up the combat a notch. There is also a return of the karma system, with clearly laid out bad and good choices allowing your character to become a super hero, or a super villain. I don't find this system particularly effective as it so linear, it detracts from the realism as the choice is pointless, as you always know you can just go back and replay the mission; and the only real motivation to be either good or evil is to unlock different powers. This is a major flaw in infamous 2 in my opinion, but it does give replay value as evil or good are missions are locked out once you have chosen.
  
  The game, being sandbox, has a lot to do and is made up of story missions and side missions, the side missions fall a little flat, with an element of repetitiveness to them that make them boring. The story in the side missions is also very under developed which leaves the player with a very unsatisfied feeling upon completion. However the story missions go a lot more in depth with characters and story, and are good fun to play, however clunky aspects of combat like how hard it is to aim correctly and how easy it is to die let them down.
  
  Blast shards have also made a return in Infamous 2, 305 of them. They again upgrade the amount of electrical energy that you can store and are scattered all around New Marais and it is up to the player to find them all. This was one of the most difficult challenges in the original game and again returns to frustrate perfectionists such as myself, however it is extremely satisfying and very well done by sucker punch.
  
  There is also the new inclusion of player content, players get to design their own infamous missions to be played by others. These appear as green exclamation marks on the mini map and allow the game to extend its play time as the content is in theory infinite. The design features are well made up and user friendly and it is incredibly satisfying to find a creative and original mission to perform.
  
  Overall i think this game is very good value for money, it is packed full of things to do with at least two playthroughs required to complete the game fully. There is at least 50 hours worth of game play here, it is missing a bit of polish that would have beeen very nice to see in character development and game play but overall it is very satisfying to play and will keep you amused for a long time to come.

• inFAMOUS 2: GamesCom Trailer PS3 | 02:04 Play Trailer
• inFAMOUS 2: Quest for Power PS3 | 01:52 Play Trailer