Original take on the superhero genre, great story and acting, graphically accomplished and well-presented, freedom to explore a well-rendered Seattle
Difficulty curve can be very challenging at times, checkpoint system can be irritating
"My god, look at the skin on that old woman's face! Can you see those lines animate? That's amazing."
That's a partial transcript of an outburst I had in front of my brother when playing through Infamous: Second Son for the first time. The first major release for the PlayStation 4 since its launch, next-gen benefits were starkly present from skin to cityscape.
Developed by Sucker Punch, the studio responsible for the popular Infamous action games on the PlayStation 3, you play Delsin Rowe -- a cool, though often tirelessly cocky, 24-year-old. He's a Conduit, which, like in Infamous 2, is the friendlier name given to one who has acquired the superhuman power to use elements such as smoke and light as weapons.
The unfriendly name? Bio-terrorist.
Story and gameplay
The difference in the colloquialisms underscores the moral choice premise of Second Son. You acquire the power to wield forces of nature for good or ill at the start of the game -- something Delsin goes from terrified to gleeful about in a matter of minutes, actually -- and you'll spend the game deciding to exploit that to benefit humanity and become a hero, or rebel against society and become "infamous". Think of Fable, but instead of your dog and a castle, it's your punk rock female sidekick in torn leggings and a badass ability to melt people with lightwaves. Safe to say, playing as a ruthless cretin is more rewarding.
Through the story, a clear narrative told via main missions and optional side-quests in a gorgeous open-world rendition of present-day Seattle, you will rise up against government bodies that want Conduits gone. Your older brother, unlike my own mentioned earlier, is a police officer. You are an unemployed graffiti artist with a penchant for disregarding authority. The natural tension that difference in lifestyle choice causes between the two of them is made only more enjoyable by the fact they evidently care deeply about each other.
This family bond, and more broadly Delsin's ties to his homeland outside Seattle, is conveyed through stellar actor performances.
Tremendous voice acting delivered through intricate facial animation and motion capture gives Second Son a deeply impressive ability to make its characters believable and emotionally worth investing in. It's a graphically accomplished game too that, alongside *Ryse:
Son of Rome* on Xbox One, demonstrates how good videogame facial motion capture is becoming on consoles.
Combat and difficulty
Gameplay is a mixed bag on occasion, but broadly is satisfying.
The open-world design of Seattle is married with an ability to zip around it in a way that reminded me of the Batman: Arkham games. Combat on foot, however, does not -- it favours quick dashes to avoid enemy fire, chopping and changing between attack modes, and lots of hiding and seeking out recharges for your powers to outwit what are normally large groups of opponents attacking you hard with a variety of tactics, from a variety of positions.
It's combat I found challenging at first, and continually challenging as I got better at it. Enemies are not a walk in the park, even if you're fighting them in a park while walking. They're scattered in huge numbers throughout the city and many missions require you to annihilate a whole army, it seems, before the story can continue. That's great for gamers who want to be challenged, but the difficulty curve is quite steep at times simply because of the numbers of enemies you'll need to take down at once -- and the AI is smart, tricky and ruthlessly good at employing tactics against you. Resources for recharging your powers are not scarce like, say, bullets and health are in Bioshock, but they do require some speedy seeking out during combat that can border on frustrating at times.
This extends into some of the boss battles mid-game. They are bloody hard when they want to be, and out of nowhere. On a couple of occasions I even wondered whether I'd accidentally advanced too far in the game because the battles were so long and so challenging for what I felt was fair for the progression I'd made through the game at that point. But, perseverance is key, and you'll beat them.
Just expect to have your skills tested to their limits at all times (you can always drop the difficulty in the game down when you feel like it, but in the industry we call this "cheating, you wuss").
And if you die, pray you're not too far from a checkpoint or you'll find yourself needing to traverse Seattle to get back to the action.
Conclusion
Infamous is a highly accomplished game that combines a tremendously fun premise with well-acted characters, next-gen graphical flourishes left and right and an open world of activities that makes Sucker Punch's Seattle shimmer with believability. It's a challenging game, with occasional spikes in the difficulty curve that could test the patience of a gamer used to having his or her hand held during tough moments. But by and large it's a release I suspect will see broadly positive acclaim for its scope, execution and twist on the superhero genre.
And don't forget: if you want to see an old lady's facial wrinkles rendered with realism so good it made this review now on two occasions, it's worth the purchase alone.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
