Infamous 2: First Impressions

In my tradition of playing games about a million years after they come out, I’ve finally got around to playing Infamous 2. I did rather enjoy Infamous, although I think a lot of that was due to the fact that it was a free download after the PSN hacking extravaganza. With that in mind, is the sequel living up to the predecessor?

Story

Carrying straight on from the ending of the last game, the legendary Beast rocks up to Empire City, takes a kicking from Cole McGrath, then gets so offended he blows the entire city up in retaliation. Cole, best mate Zeke and new girl Kuo run away on a boat and end up in New Marais (which is NOT New Orleans), where The Militia are making life difficult for everyone.

It’s all ok, but it does a bit like a retread of the last game. Here are the evil dudes, blow them up, here are some bigger dudes, blow them up too, now go electrify some stuff. Agent Kuo does feel a bit like she’s been inserted purely because they were lacking a female character. Maybe she’ll come into her own later, but... we’ll see.

Missions

Again, this is kind of same old, same old. You still have your story missions, then your ‘good’ or ‘evil’ side quests. The missions are even reminiscent of the last game’s ones. Take some photos. Break up gangs of Militia. Collect medical supplies. Yeah yeah yeah, whatever.

In fairness, there is the option to play user created missions, but seeing as PSN is being mardy and not accepting my password to log in (EVEN THOUGH IT IS THE RIGHT PASSWORD AND I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL HULK SMASH EVERYTHING) I haven’t been able to play them. Once I get it fixed I’ll report back.

Exploration

This is what Infamous 2 does well. This time around you can still climb up any building you fancy, flying around on your electric hand jetpack thing or grinding along powerlines as you please. Plus, they’ve included some cool buildings for you to scale, including a whacking great cathedral.

Also, there are mini missions dotted around as you explore the city. Depending on your bias (good or evil), you can stop muggings, defuse bombs, attack police and break up protests against you. They show up on your HUD randomly and it does feel organic, as if you’re stumbling across the events. I like it.

Combat

Still the same, but it’s still good. Cole can shoot electricity from his hands, throw bombs, push enemies back with a shockwave, and now he can summon up ‘ionic storms’ that create tornadoes that sweep up everything in their path. All these attacks still rely on his personal supply of electricity, which can be replenished by draining any nearby electrical object. I’ve always liked that, though, because you’re never far from a streetlamp or something, meaning the flow is rarely interrupted.

The enemies require you to think tactically. Storming in guns blazing rarely goes down well. Instead, it’s better to hang from the rooftops, picking enemies off one by one till there’s a small manageable group for you to go in and attack face to face. Then there are the odd kamikaze enemies, who explode on contact to take you out with them. Trying to take them on from ground level is suicidal.

I AM enjoying it, despite how these first impressions sound; it’s just all a bit samey. I’ve only heard good things about the ending though, so maybe it’ll get better. Let’s hope so, anyway...

Burn the orphanage, or adopt all the orphans?

So I finally got into inFAMOUS, since I downloaded it as part of the Sony ‘we’re sorry all your stuff got hacked’ apology deal and I’m really enjoying it. I couldn’t at first, because all I saw was Generic Gravelly Voice Man running around shooting Bad Guys in a Gritty Urban Environment (admittedly with lightening from his hands like Spiderman gone wrong, but, you know). My brain just went ‘UGH GOD BORING’ and nearly gave up. However, I persevered as I’m not one to turn my nose up at a free game, and now I’m finally having fun.



As you are probably already aware, inFAMOUS features a ‘moral choice’ system, where you can either be super good or super evil, jumping around the city cleaning up the streets and healing people like a modern day Jesus, or running around shooting everyone in your path and making the city itself your bitch.

Now, me and Sunday Matt are both playing the game, but we’ve taken different paths. I’ve decided to go down the Jesus route, while he’s gone super shooty evil guy. I can never play as the bad guy, because I feel too bad to do horrible things. I’ve never seen the bad ending of Bioshock except on Youtube, because I could never bring myself to harm the Little Sisters. Yes, they’re just a collection of ones and zeroes, but I can’t do it!



I mean, look at that face. She loves you, and you want to kill her? You MONSTER.

It’s got me thinking. Moral choices have become a huge thing in video games in the last few years, and while I welcome it, there does seem to be some big gaping holes in it, narrative wise. Let’s use inFAMOUS as an example, mostly because it’s still fresh in my mind, and well, it’s my post, so I’ll do what I want. Nyah.

My issue is the game stays basically the same whatever choice you make. Ok, yes, your cutscenes will be different, and the residents of Empire City will either help you or attack you depending on your behaviour, but the basic game is the same. You still get called out for help whether you’re good or evil and the neutral missions are just bizarre. If you’re evil, your appearance changes and you pretty much look like this:



If you needed help, would you approach THAT guy for it? Hell no.

Plus, no one ever says ‘please’. It’s all, ‘Cole, you need to go shoot the bad guys!’ I know the city’s under threat, but that’s no excuse for bad manners.

Ahem. Where was I? Right. It makes no sense for evil Cole to be taking orders from others, when he’s intent on taking over the city and terrifying everyone in his path. You can fiddle with the cutscenes all you want, we can still see what you’ve basically done is put in an artificial gameplay lengthening device.

The other issue is that the choices are always so black and white. This highlighted in inFAMOUS when you come across a moral pathway and a cutscene runs while Cole outlines his two choices. They are always, but always, either kill the puppy, or find the puppy a loving home. There’s never a middle ground, and it feels very stilted.



In real life, your decisions are not always that clear cut. We make our choices based on multitudes of reasons, not just whether the action is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and we don’t get rewarded or punished in the same way. Life is too complicated to do that. Therefore, when we run across a situation like this in a game it feels off.

Obviously games are not at that level of narrative yet, and while moral choices are a step in the right direction, they’ve got a long way to go until they can tell a mature and challenging tale. Until then, I’ll be over here with the Little Sisters. They’re just so cute!