inFAMOUS 2 review

Have Sucker Punch scored a winning Cole with its superhero sequel? Pete Willington offers his inFAMOUS 2 review.

The credits to inFAMOUS 2 began to roll about forty eight hours ago and even now, as I stare at this blank document before me, I'm still massively conflicted about my review. The notes that I took while playing are a mix of high praise and damning criticism. The fifteen hours it took to complete the story plus a good number of side missions feel like both a wonderful experience and an utter waste of time. It’s as if Cole's heroic and villainous decisions have lifted themselves from the game and wormed their way into my mind. Now I have to make a choice of my own. Do I tell you to hand over nearly £50 of your hard earned money (although you should be able to find it new for sub-£40 anywhere online) for Sucker Punch's latest effort?

The original inFAMOUS introduced Cole, a postal courier who gained control over electricity after becoming involved with a conspiracy straight out of a comic book. After levelling a huge portion of the first title's setting, Empire City, by mistake, he slowly developed his powers and chose to fight for good or evil, depending on decisions the player made during their journey. It was a unique ‘origins’ tale with a focus on scaling tall buildings and defeating large groups of enemies with high voltage zaps. While it was by no means successful in everything it attempted to do, it was a decent take on how to handle a superhero within the medium of videogames.

[/caption] The action has moved from Empire City to New Marais, a locale that has more in common with New Orleans than the New York of the original. New Marais is overrun by the seemingly evil Bertrand and his militia, under the pretence of providing security in the face of the oncoming Beast, a giant and seemingly unstoppable monster tearing through the East Coast of the United States. Though you can start the title afresh, players of the original can also choose to continue their story from the first game, bringing minor changes to the plot and automatically aligning Cole as either a hero or a menace according to how you played the first game.

Tales of the script
What follows is a race against time to find a series of Blast Cores, items which unlock new powers for Cole and will eventually enable him to power up the Ray Field Inhibitor, a super weapon that should put paid to The Beast's mysterious plans. Helping him along the way is NSA Agent Kuo, the borderline sociopath Nix and returning from inFAMOUS is Cole's best friend Zeke. This alliance is a fragile one though; Kuo and Nix are constantly at odds and there's a lot of bad blood between Zeke and the protagonist. It's a decent set up that – especially towards the final acts of the game – really has potential to take superhero titles to a new level.

There are truly touching scenes of interaction, such as one in which Zeke and Cole are simply relaxing together on a couch, watching a movie. The vignette is but two minutes long but it wonderfully conveys their mutual brotherly love in the face of adversity. There are few words and none with any meaning, yet it remains a powerful moment of truly mature storytelling and actor direction within this medium. If this level of quality permeated the entire experience, inFAMOUS 2 would be a true contender to Arkham Asylum for the superhero videogame crown, bringing the uneasy tension of team based comic books like The X-Men and JLA to consoles.

However, three quarters of the writing is tripe. And that's not to say it's bad in a for-some-reason-excusable “yeah but come on, it's just video games dialogue” way, it's so poor that I often had to press pause on the controller and calm myself down it made me so angry. Cole, the sort of person who threw out a couple of humorous quips in the first inFAMOUS, is in the middle of fighting a giant enemy and uncharacteristically shouts “where are the testicles on this thing?” Uh... what?

When he's fighting a new enemy that can burrow underground he blurts “big ass filthy mole monsters” and when Kuo is giving him advice on some inmates, he sniggers "Ha! 'penal' code". Yet it doesn't just stop with Cole, the rest of the cast is subject to this childish wordsmithery. In its worst moment, Nix refers to the predominantly white Militia she faces as “Crackers”. I'm not averse to the discussion of race issues in games, but it's not the place of a title that's more than happy to make nob jokes at every turn. Consequently it's just offensive.

Without fail inFAMOUS manages to rip you out of the story's universe whenever you're just settling in and getting comfortable. One example: the game-inspired sex film puns adorning a XXX cinema in New Marais. It's difficult to buy into an attempt at a serious story when you're stood atop a notice declaring that “Call Of Booty” is now playing. These aren't subtle nods to a knowing player in the form of easter eggs, they're neon lit and in-your-face at almost every opportunity the developer gets. Another example? Civilian protesters baying for your hide and chanting “Cole is crap” (ugh...) while you are stood amongst them and none of them are batting an eyelid. 

One more? A whole group of enemies tumbling to their deaths from a tall building after the AI confuses itself in an attempt to reach you. On that note, AI is a combination of foes successfully and intelligently repositioning themselves to get a better shot at you, mixed with moments where teams at mortar positions will fire shells vertically should you get too close, killing themselves in the process when the shells rain straight back down. NPCs react to the events around them but often run in front of fire from safety or become stuck in animation loops. Even for an open world game, there's an abnormal amount of jank present, to the point that the game feels unfinished.

Current affairs
There are definitive improvements over the original though. Many of the new powers garner an added degree of manoeuvrability to Cole, allowing players to approach situations in multiple ways. In the later stages, with the ability to glide over long distances or zip around from building to building like an electrified Spiderman, the feeling of being a supremely mobile superhero is a rewarding one.

The game engine handles big gestures and movements well, though when it comes to precision, the ‘stickiness’ of the previous inFAMOUS returns to ill effect. Want to leap from a skyscraper to the thin line of a power cable? No problem. Want to walk slowly up to a ladder and climb up it? Bad luck, you'll spend 30 seconds fighting the magnetic effect of Cole reaching for a nearby window ledge or popping himself up onto an adjacent dumpster. It's the same with climbing in general; in 2009 hammering the jump button to make your way up the side of a building was acceptable, in a post-Assassin's Creed 2 world, it's laughable.

In terms of powers, you start the game with access to almost every ability Cole had at his disposal at the end of the first outing, with those that you don't have being rapidly regained, which sidesteps the Metroid syndrome of having to re-learn them. On top of this are either fire or ice powers, depending on which karmic line you tread. Fire is a more destructive and wider reaching element, suitable for players that don't mind a little collateral damage along the way, whereas ice is more focused and accurate. There's a greater emphasis on hand-to-hand combat too, with Cole wielding The Amp, essentially a large baton charged with electricity.

Going toe-to-toe is a more viable option in inFAMOUS 2 than its predecessor, although the camera awkwardly shifts to a lower position to make battles look more impressive. This has the unfortunate effect of limiting a player's perception of the environment and enemies around them and coupled with the lack of a directional indicator to show the angle at which you’re being attacked, it's easy to be defeated by simply not knowing who's shooting at you when engaged in fisticuffs.

Wise up, Sucker (Punch)
Missions range from killing each opponent to tailing a certain enemy to guarding a specific position and there's definitely more choice here than the first title. You'll still be engaged in basic crowd control style shootery, with dozens of foes per mission, but it's good to see that this aspect has improved. Boss fights are initially more impressive too. The sheer scale of The Beast, for instance, is a sight to behold. Yet these battles are all repeated at least once and consist of little more than working out a very simple attack pattern before shooting at a glowing weak point.

With the increase in movement capabilities at the player's disposal, Sucker Punch could have brought some fresh ideas for these encounters. Alas it's just a case of dodging fire and unleashing powers when you have access to them. These powers look really impressive for the most part, as does the game itself. It still retains a little of the grime from inFAMOUS but it suits this dirty dusty city of New Marais well. Some neat lighting effects, such as darkening the entire area when throwing out an Ionic Vortex, really inject some excitement and comic-book coolness to proceedings.

Character models for the main players have an air of the iconic about them, yet most NPCs look basic and uninspired. You'll also see the same pedestrian tropes a little too often, another facet that snaps you out of your immersion in the game. The audio is fine but unremarkable, a decent orchestral electronic score underlying the action, allied with some suitably bombastic effects. If there's a downside to this element, it's that the mixing and position of sounds is a little off.

The novel online component of inFAMOUS 2 is the User Generated Content (or UGC) and is, frankly, a waste of time. It's neat that Sony want to encourage developers to push the whole Play.Create.Share thing, but the setting of an open world evidently isn't ripe for user made levels. It's difficult to properly box off areas to stop a user wandering off a player made course and there's little to no opportunities for creators to give direction to those players. When even the team that made the title that encompasses this content can't make levels that are more inspiring than the odd mini-game, you know the gimmick is pretty limited.

So there we are. inFAMOUS 2 is a game of two halves that are constantly at war with one another. In some ways it improves upon the great systems of play of the first title and touches on greatness with short bursts of true comic book genius. On the other, it's a sloppy and unrefined iteration on a game that wasn't stellar two years ago. The final quarter of inFAMOUS 2 holds the most interesting ideas and play experiences the title has to offer, but is it worth the previous 12 hours – and in turn the entry price of £50 – to see them? No. No I suppose it's not...

6/10

Words: Pete Willington

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