Saturday, June 18, 2011

Review: inFamous 2

inFamous is one of those games that is a sequel with very small amounts of change made on it's original. I found the small changes interesting but it didn't really change it very much, to the point of not really being noticeable. Also it took me 5 days to finish the game... 5 DAYS! I never take longer then 3 unless it's a JRPG or an Assassin's Creed game. The question is, is it a good game? Read on to find out in my review of inFamous 2(heh heh, that rhymes.)

The story follows on straight after the events of inFamous so if you are returning like me then you already know what happened but they brief you on the last games events. Cole Mc Grath has travelled to New Marais in the hopes of increasing his powers so he can defeat the beast who has come to destroy everything in it's path, especially since the beast drained his powers. Once there he finds out that a former member of the First Sons named Bertrand has taken over the town and a slue of swamp monsters are terrorising the inhabitants of New Marais. Now he has to choose to save or terrorise the people in his quest to defeat the beast.

The game is a mixed element game. It's a sandbox game that has a fair bit in common with Assassin's Creed and is kind of a 3rd person shooter hybrid as well. It's hard to give it a proper definition but it's a genre on it's own. The gameplay is exactly the same as the first inFamous with some extra moves but it doesn't make much difference. The melee combat has been improved with a combo ability that also has finishers when the gauge is filled but still no lock-on for the melee which makes the camera an adversary as well. You can now customise your abilities you have equipped in the to change the style of super powers to suit yourself(I went full lightning with ice rockets for mine).

The game like all sandbox games is mission based with plenty of side missions to do and also has collectibles to consume hours of your time if your either a completist or a trophy hunter. Like in the first inFamous you have to find blast shards to increase your max power gauge and they are a pain in the butt to hunt down without a map or a system of searching like I use. Also some Karma opportunities show up that also contain Blast Shards and can throw you off the hunt. These Karma missions are usually kill people missions and bomb disposal.

The game has a morality system. This effects some of the super powers you obtain during the game as well as the colour, Red is evil and Blue is good... go figure. Building Karma is pretty easy, especially evil Karma. Some of the missions in the game also effect Karma and the story so choose wisely.

There are dozens of side missions to complete in the game and some are Karma based and can get locked out after choosing one of them. I highly recommend playing 2 times for each set of Karma missions and then play a more personal experience, especially if you want the trophies. After completing these mission you will take over territory in New Marais and doing so reduces and sometimes removes the enemies from spawning in the area taken.

The enemies in the games are a bit different from the first one. If you remember it was just soldiers and trash robots, in inFamous 2 you get soldiers, ice conduit soldiers, humanoid swamp monsters and boss monsters that become regular enemies for some strange reason. What's worse is that these boss monsters have really cheap attacks and really like to corner you.

The game also has User Generated Content. It's confusing to use... seriously and no tutorial either. You can make a variety of mission types and if you can work out how to use the tools to there fullest you can make some interesting creations. I made 1 mission called Intel Confiscation so you can see... I suck at it. I'm not really good at making stuff outside of my unpublished and difficult levels in LittleBigPlanet and LittleBigPlanet 2... they also look like crap aesthetically.

So is inFamous 2 a good game... Yes, especially if you liked the first game. Not much has been changed but that can be a good thing. Sure it doesn't innovate any more then the first one but it's still a fun game with plenty of faffing about. Also if you're like me then you can play it more then once. I played the original 6 times with different choices but twice with full morality, probably do it again with this one too. inFamous 2 lives up to the quality of the first one and won't disappoint. I give it a 4/5. Looking forward to a possible 3rd game.

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