Once upon a time, two years ago, we were graced with Infamous, A ps3 exclusive that was about a bike messenger/urban explorer who got superpowers of lightning. The gameplay was a variation on the sandbox presented within GTA, although no guns or driving (with story purposes given too!). The plot was fairly coherent, and the gameplay was awesome (with a few minor flaws). On tuesday, we were given Infamous two, which picks up within a month of the previous games ending.
You can all go watch the Yahtzee review of Infamous and Prototype to get a basic feel for how the first game played, and some of it's mechanics (in particular the moral choice system).
Ready?
As I mentioned, Infamous 2 picks up very quickly after the end of the first game with Cole McGrath (the hero from the first) and his buddy Zeke running off to New Marais because Cole is told that there is a place he can become strong enough to defeat the Beast (a creature exposition about in the first game, right before the final boss). The person taking them will become one of Cole's new partners, Kuo. The other partner doesn't appear for a bit and overall feels... out of place, but more on that later.
Cole with the two lovely sidekicks.
They added a sort of Ticking Clock mechanic to the game, but it doesn't really work because the clock only operates with the story based missions. The "clock" is represented on a world map in your pause screen, which unabashedly shows you exactly where the two cities currently in the gameworld are in the US.
New Marais is nice, and varied, compared to Empire City, and is loosely based on New Orleans. It does include the trappings of Orleans, with the Bayou, swamp shacks, plantations, and then the general big city stuff. And yet, I still felt myself missing Empire city as I played, but I think that's mainly becuase I preferred being able to be 3 miles up on buildings, rather than having one of the tallest buildings be about 8 stories until you get into "heavy industrial".
You start he game with a few of the old powers (particularly your hand grenade, and the static float), but there are still a few missing from your old set that are unlocked later. And even more oddly I feel like they changed a pair of the powers controls around on me (I could be wrong on this, it's been a bit since I played infamous one, but I remember the triangle being grenades in the first with it being square in the second). Took a little getting used to but eventually it all came back and I was able to annihilate with the best of them. However, the biggest new addition to your arsenal are "Ionic storms", the replacement for the lightning strikes from the previous. These are your nukes, and you get one of em to start with, and a second one later after molding your powers onto the powers of one of your allies. You get a VERY limited number that are based around a drop from an enemy rather than the proximity of a nearby transformer. They work fairly well, but I do wish they'd found a way to put in a targeted nuke as well (as in lots of damage on one target very quickly).
Previously to unlock powers you'd end up down in the sewers completing circuit to power different districts of the city, with each completed circuit giving you a new power that you'd then learn how to use before turning on the final relay to unlock that segment of the town. Now the powers are gained through a different means (basically once you get the plot macguffin, you're gonna get a new power), same with "turning on" different sections of the city. I wouldn't mind that much if unlocking the city didn't feel so... illogical. Basically to send power to a new section of the city, Cole gets to a power relay, and fires off a "Tesla Missile" (which looks a bit like the starfighters from star wars episode 1) which you then fly (like all good missiles in games are flown to their targets) to the next relay to start moving the power. Then Cole gets to hop his way across town to the relay, and flick it on. Once you turn it on, you stand guard for about 60 seconds as the enemies try to please their leader and switch it back off.
I will send wave after wave of my men to make sure that generator stays OFF!
Once the Relay is on for good, then it somehow radiates an attack that wipe out all the enemies and turns on the sector of the city. Not much variation as time goes on, with only one of them showing any innovation, and even then that ends up being more annoying than fun.
Now then, onto characters.
Cole McGrath is the protagonist once again! He's lost much of his runners garb from the first game and instead sports a more Teeshirt and Jeans look to him. He seems to have a lot more personality this game (being playful with Zeke and the girls) and his voice doesn't sound inherently evil. However, the oddest change has to be his face. I don't know why this bugs me but it does... they seem to have gone in and changed the geometry of his face so that it looks like his old face had a head to head meeting with a freight train.
Compare
Other than that one real annoyance, Cole seems pretty good. Admittedly I've only played with a "good" character to this point so...
For Infamous 2 there were two sidekicks chosen for the game, both of whom have powers. The first is Lucy Kuo. Kuo is an NSA agent who works with John from the first game (or did, before the events of the first game) to infiltrate the First Sons (the ancient conspiracy). She's the one who ultimately gets you to New Marais and shows you around during the tutorial phase. Then you get separated and she gets powers of Ice. Although she doesn't quip like everyone's favorite Austrian.
I am afraid I cannot give her a proper membership card to the Cold Powered Individuals Union
Basically she's you're "Good" sidekick, and ends up getting quite a bit of development over the course of the game, as she's featured in the dead drops, the main story, and has a bit of a character moment carved from her soul during the story.
Then there's Nix, God do I hate Nix. I understand that Sucker Punch was trying to set up this whole duality thing, where you have one person spouting the "good" ideas and one person saying the "bad" ideas, but Nix just feels... shoehorned. She has some development, but it all feels forced and the reasons for this development feels very baseless. Where Kuo's character arc is driven as part of the plot, you basically have to take moments out of the plot to give Nix some attention beyond "Hey, your idea about blowing shit up? Let's do/not do that!"
She's supposed to be this sort of half-broken woman who grew up in the swamps and watched everything she loved get toasted to a crisp by one of the villain characters. But as I mentioned, it all comes off feeling very forced because other than having hero-worship for Cole, there's very little to connect her to him... or the main plot. She's the evil character, bloodthirsty and violent, and her power is tied to fire. Her and Kuo don't get along. And given how she acts, I half expected her to turn up in a cutscene dressed up and acting like Tia Dalma from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Now I don' wan tcha be talkin bout me boyah!
I'm now ashamed of my self for that.
And finally there's Zeke. Fat Sidekick Du jour. Right now he's playing repentant for actions that he took in the first game out of selfishness. It actually shows quite a bit how he's grown overall. Where before he was totally self obsessed and scared of everything (and using Cole and his abilities to do things like... get a gals brother out of jail so zeke might be able to get a lay), now he's basically being an intelligence agent and all around inventor of the game. He's the guy who made the biggest new thing for Cole's constant use, the Amp. It's... kinda nice to see him shaping up. He is also a bit of the humans playing, because he seems to be sitting on a couch on an open roof top drinkin beer and watching TV half the time you talk to him. And he's so jaded by Cole's over the top stunts that at one point Cole activates a MacGuffin and lights off like a star behind Zeke, and Zeke doesn't even wake up from his nap.
Well, the beers in the truck, the house is clean, the cat's chasing one of those pi-... Cole, would you PLEASE tell me before you go knocking out every light on the block and then melting a hole in the roof? I just replaced that tar!
Finally, let's talk about the moral choice system a bit. It's basically like the one in the first, but there are MANY more random events going on, and the choices between good and evil are all cartoonishly slanted... except for one.
Here be spoilers, abandon hope all ye who enter here:
You can all go watch the Yahtzee review of Infamous and Prototype to get a basic feel for how the first game played, and some of it's mechanics (in particular the moral choice system).
Ready?
As I mentioned, Infamous 2 picks up very quickly after the end of the first game with Cole McGrath (the hero from the first) and his buddy Zeke running off to New Marais because Cole is told that there is a place he can become strong enough to defeat the Beast (a creature exposition about in the first game, right before the final boss). The person taking them will become one of Cole's new partners, Kuo. The other partner doesn't appear for a bit and overall feels... out of place, but more on that later.
Cole with the two lovely sidekicks.
They added a sort of Ticking Clock mechanic to the game, but it doesn't really work because the clock only operates with the story based missions. The "clock" is represented on a world map in your pause screen, which unabashedly shows you exactly where the two cities currently in the gameworld are in the US.
New Marais is nice, and varied, compared to Empire City, and is loosely based on New Orleans. It does include the trappings of Orleans, with the Bayou, swamp shacks, plantations, and then the general big city stuff. And yet, I still felt myself missing Empire city as I played, but I think that's mainly becuase I preferred being able to be 3 miles up on buildings, rather than having one of the tallest buildings be about 8 stories until you get into "heavy industrial".
You start he game with a few of the old powers (particularly your hand grenade, and the static float), but there are still a few missing from your old set that are unlocked later. And even more oddly I feel like they changed a pair of the powers controls around on me (I could be wrong on this, it's been a bit since I played infamous one, but I remember the triangle being grenades in the first with it being square in the second). Took a little getting used to but eventually it all came back and I was able to annihilate with the best of them. However, the biggest new addition to your arsenal are "Ionic storms", the replacement for the lightning strikes from the previous. These are your nukes, and you get one of em to start with, and a second one later after molding your powers onto the powers of one of your allies. You get a VERY limited number that are based around a drop from an enemy rather than the proximity of a nearby transformer. They work fairly well, but I do wish they'd found a way to put in a targeted nuke as well (as in lots of damage on one target very quickly).
Previously to unlock powers you'd end up down in the sewers completing circuit to power different districts of the city, with each completed circuit giving you a new power that you'd then learn how to use before turning on the final relay to unlock that segment of the town. Now the powers are gained through a different means (basically once you get the plot macguffin, you're gonna get a new power), same with "turning on" different sections of the city. I wouldn't mind that much if unlocking the city didn't feel so... illogical. Basically to send power to a new section of the city, Cole gets to a power relay, and fires off a "Tesla Missile" (which looks a bit like the starfighters from star wars episode 1) which you then fly (like all good missiles in games are flown to their targets) to the next relay to start moving the power. Then Cole gets to hop his way across town to the relay, and flick it on. Once you turn it on, you stand guard for about 60 seconds as the enemies try to please their leader and switch it back off.
I will send wave after wave of my men to make sure that generator stays OFF!
Once the Relay is on for good, then it somehow radiates an attack that wipe out all the enemies and turns on the sector of the city. Not much variation as time goes on, with only one of them showing any innovation, and even then that ends up being more annoying than fun.
Now then, onto characters.
Cole McGrath is the protagonist once again! He's lost much of his runners garb from the first game and instead sports a more Teeshirt and Jeans look to him. He seems to have a lot more personality this game (being playful with Zeke and the girls) and his voice doesn't sound inherently evil. However, the oddest change has to be his face. I don't know why this bugs me but it does... they seem to have gone in and changed the geometry of his face so that it looks like his old face had a head to head meeting with a freight train.
Compare
Other than that one real annoyance, Cole seems pretty good. Admittedly I've only played with a "good" character to this point so...
For Infamous 2 there were two sidekicks chosen for the game, both of whom have powers. The first is Lucy Kuo. Kuo is an NSA agent who works with John from the first game (or did, before the events of the first game) to infiltrate the First Sons (the ancient conspiracy). She's the one who ultimately gets you to New Marais and shows you around during the tutorial phase. Then you get separated and she gets powers of Ice. Although she doesn't quip like everyone's favorite Austrian.
I am afraid I cannot give her a proper membership card to the Cold Powered Individuals Union
Basically she's you're "Good" sidekick, and ends up getting quite a bit of development over the course of the game, as she's featured in the dead drops, the main story, and has a bit of a character moment carved from her soul during the story.
Then there's Nix, God do I hate Nix. I understand that Sucker Punch was trying to set up this whole duality thing, where you have one person spouting the "good" ideas and one person saying the "bad" ideas, but Nix just feels... shoehorned. She has some development, but it all feels forced and the reasons for this development feels very baseless. Where Kuo's character arc is driven as part of the plot, you basically have to take moments out of the plot to give Nix some attention beyond "Hey, your idea about blowing shit up? Let's do/not do that!"
She's supposed to be this sort of half-broken woman who grew up in the swamps and watched everything she loved get toasted to a crisp by one of the villain characters. But as I mentioned, it all comes off feeling very forced because other than having hero-worship for Cole, there's very little to connect her to him... or the main plot. She's the evil character, bloodthirsty and violent, and her power is tied to fire. Her and Kuo don't get along. And given how she acts, I half expected her to turn up in a cutscene dressed up and acting like Tia Dalma from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Now I don' wan tcha be talkin bout me boyah!
I'm now ashamed of my self for that.
And finally there's Zeke. Fat Sidekick Du jour. Right now he's playing repentant for actions that he took in the first game out of selfishness. It actually shows quite a bit how he's grown overall. Where before he was totally self obsessed and scared of everything (and using Cole and his abilities to do things like... get a gals brother out of jail so zeke might be able to get a lay), now he's basically being an intelligence agent and all around inventor of the game. He's the guy who made the biggest new thing for Cole's constant use, the Amp. It's... kinda nice to see him shaping up. He is also a bit of the humans playing, because he seems to be sitting on a couch on an open roof top drinkin beer and watching TV half the time you talk to him. And he's so jaded by Cole's over the top stunts that at one point Cole activates a MacGuffin and lights off like a star behind Zeke, and Zeke doesn't even wake up from his nap.
Well, the beers in the truck, the house is clean, the cat's chasing one of those pi-... Cole, would you PLEASE tell me before you go knocking out every light on the block and then melting a hole in the roof? I just replaced that tar!
Finally, let's talk about the moral choice system a bit. It's basically like the one in the first, but there are MANY more random events going on, and the choices between good and evil are all cartoonishly slanted... except for one.
Here be spoilers, abandon hope all ye who enter here:
Are you really sure you want to see these here spoilers?
Of the end of the game?
Ok, the last choice of the game's plot is thus:
You can either A) Choose to kill all the humans on the planet and save as many "conduits" as you can (including yourself) or B) do the exact opposite, and have all the humans stay alive while the conduits die (including yourself.)
This would be an AMAZING choice if they hadn't added in the Good/Evil Dichotomy. According to the game, going suicidal and saving all the humans on the planet is the inherently good choice compared to saving the Conduits. And yet you could make VERY compelling cases for a good character to choose either. And what compounds the fact that this choice is so idiotic is that Not only are is the choice itself "good" and "evil" but you also have to have the Karma of Good or Evil in order to perform the choice associated. So if you want a "good" character to decide that conduits should live and humans should die, then you have to go out, eat babies, zap street musicians and generally make life hell for millions, in order to become "evil" to make the one choice to save the conduits.
Understand, this is the sort of choice people WANT when they're given moral dilemmas. But you can't arbitrarily tack on "Good" and "evil" to the choice, as that removes the entire "dilemma" part of the dilemma (particularly with this idiotic design). Instead of weighing the options and choosing what you thing is right and/or proper for your character, you instead say "Do I need more points for being a jerk? or can I be a altruist this once?" I don't know exactly why I'm adding this discussion except that it bugged me and it's 4 am.
You can either A) Choose to kill all the humans on the planet and save as many "conduits" as you can (including yourself) or B) do the exact opposite, and have all the humans stay alive while the conduits die (including yourself.)
This would be an AMAZING choice if they hadn't added in the Good/Evil Dichotomy. According to the game, going suicidal and saving all the humans on the planet is the inherently good choice compared to saving the Conduits. And yet you could make VERY compelling cases for a good character to choose either. And what compounds the fact that this choice is so idiotic is that Not only are is the choice itself "good" and "evil" but you also have to have the Karma of Good or Evil in order to perform the choice associated. So if you want a "good" character to decide that conduits should live and humans should die, then you have to go out, eat babies, zap street musicians and generally make life hell for millions, in order to become "evil" to make the one choice to save the conduits.
Understand, this is the sort of choice people WANT when they're given moral dilemmas. But you can't arbitrarily tack on "Good" and "evil" to the choice, as that removes the entire "dilemma" part of the dilemma (particularly with this idiotic design). Instead of weighing the options and choosing what you thing is right and/or proper for your character, you instead say "Do I need more points for being a jerk? or can I be a altruist this once?" I don't know exactly why I'm adding this discussion except that it bugged me and it's 4 am.
