Infamous Second Son Review - Shows what open worlds are capable on PS4.

By Sam Coles:

Infamous Second Son is a game that I’ve been a bit hesitant with buying because of the mixed reception with gamers, in one camp you have people saying that it’s the worst Infamous game and in the other people are saying it’s great so you can understand my cautious nature. So what do I think? Well…. I’m in the middle I think it’s good but not great by any stretch.

In Infamous Second Son you play as Delsin Rowe who is a young anarchist who goes around causing trouble by doing graffiti for the most part who also has an older brother who happens to be a police officer. On their travels after his old brother catches him as he’s doing his thing they stumble upon a prison transport with not your usual convicts, these convicts have super powers and are called Conduits. Delsin gets into an altercation with one of them and finds out that he can absorb their powers, Delsin thinks that this is fantastic but however does not know the repercussions of being a Conduit. Delsin’s older brother explains that Conduits are branded as “Bio terrorist” so he must hide his power or find a cure for him. So you then set out for Seattle looking for a cure and take down the leader of the DUP and gain more powers in the process.

The story isn’t inspiring by any means but it does its job to keep you motivated to push you through it as the game is well voice acted coupled with fantastic facial animation and sometimes funny quips in the dialogue.

The gameplay in this game is a super hero type sandbox game and what I mean by this is that you traverse the city by non-traditional means by gliding with your neon powers or running up walls, which is great fun once you get a rhythm of gliding and running up walls to then get into combat. You have a selection from four power types that you gradually get through game Smoke, Neon, Video and Concrete. Here is a breakdown on the powers:

Smoke:

Smoke has attacks if you didn’t guess it already around smoke and some fire based attacks, so you’ll be able to shoot fireballs out of your and turn into smoke to dodge or go through air vents. You can draw more energy from smoking chimes or burnt out cars.

Neon:

Probably the most visually intense of the powers as it is colourful and bright. This allows you to shoot neon lasers out of your hands as well as the ability to run up walls in a stream of bright purply pink stream as you dodge enemy gun fire.

Video:

This one is a very bizarre one because Infamous has always been about elements when it came down to powers and the last time I checked video isn’t an element but none less it doesn’t mean that this power is not cool. You have the ability to fly for a short amount of time with the digital wings you can spawn when you press circle. You have a rapid fire primary attack that is very effective against ground troops coupled with a homing attack that shoots swords.

Concrete:

This is the last power that you gain and it’s probably the most powerful ability you get with its rock dash which makes you invulnerable to all incoming attacks for a short while and you can also smash cars out of the way with it. You also get a three burst shooting attack for taking down enemies and of course an attack that shoots four massive rocks out at the same time to take down tougher and bigger soldiers.

Graphics are beautiful especially during the night time segments when it’s raining, seeing the bright neon signs reflect off the puddles as you see each rain drop hit the ground. The visual effects on the powers are bright and colourful which really helps differentiate each power so none look the same. The facial animation as I discussed briefly above is top notch and as it should as it’s the new generation of consoles really capturing the emotion of each character as they’re locked in conversation.

Now the negatives that I have is that the sandbox in my opinion is really, really small which would have been fine for the 7^th or 6^th generation, but not in the 8^th generation. Another thing that I had trouble with as the bizarre dimming effect with the powers every time I used a power and it makes the game seem very dark even when I turned the brightness up it just annoys me. The final negative is that the game is far too short, just when I was really getting into the campaign it was over and I know you’re meant to play it twice, but I’m not going to play it twice because some characters may have different hats on or jackets with no major difference in story.

Overall though Infamous Second Son isn’t a bad game, but it does fall short with its open world and campaign length, but if you have a PS4 I would say pick this up as it’s fairly cheap now and is a blast with gameplay.