Thoughts on InFamous: Second Son

[dyremose]

Played it when I came out.. Liked infamous 1. Absolutely loved 2. Second son is my least favourite.. First off, the powers suffered from a focus on quantity over quality. Every substance you consumed to use, I felt like, gave you the same kind of powers but with just a difference in. aesthetics. The only reason I had for switching out power types was for the movement which granted was more diverse than in 2 (this doesnt mean more fun though as I found gliding on electrical wire to be more empowering.) I played through some of two afterwards to see if it was just nostalgia or what, and it truly did feel better. In 2 you only have electricity untill about halfway through, but you unlock a lot of variations for your powers.. A regular grenade can be changed on the fly to a levitation grenade or a missile can be changed to a homing one. Once you get your second power. (fire or ice) you get even more variations as you might now be able to create a sudden iceberg to launch you high into the air or a frontal launch into enemies which turns into an explosion at the end for the evil side.. This means evil vs good had more meaning since it dictated your power types.

I found the enemies more diverse in 2 aswell. The characters were cheesy but fun in 2. I enjoyed the Cole and zeke dynamic more than the delson and 'brother' one. Cole had some good dialogue with subtle humour hidden behind seriousness. Zeke was a bit controversial and I wouldn't have liked him if he was the main character, but the interplay between the two made his character work for me. Delson was too much of an edgy grumpy teenage character and the brother was just so boring and dry that I can't even remember his name.

I had huge hype for second son when it launched, but I feel sorry for those whose first introduction to the franchise was that one. Every moment felt like style over substance and that making the powers akin to each other had to be able to go from 2 powersets to 4 and release within the 'launch window' of the ps4.

Contrary to what might be insinuated here, I Dont necessarily want to go back to Cole mcgrath and the electrical powers. I theory the powers in second son was fine (except for video... That one was was just stupid.) but the execution just ruined the powers for me.. And infamous is all about the powers.