When it comes to sandbox shooters on the PlayStation 3, few games come to mind more quickly than Infamous. Back in 2009, the first game in the series took the market by storm, no pun intended. Since then, developer Sucker Punch has promised at least two more games in the series and the latest one, Infamous 2, definitely delivers.
Cole is back and on a rampage to better his own powers in order to take down the Beast of Empire City. Since the town is completely destroyed by the Beast’s arrival, Cole, his buddy Zeke and new acquaintance NSA Agent Lucy Kuo head down to New Marais to discover any new powers Cole can acquire to defeat the Beast.
During the course of your journey you will come across the Militia. The Militia is an army-like purification group designed to “eliminate” any threats to the people of New Marais, and they label Cole as one of those threats. While being aware of the Militia trying to kill you, Cole has to also be wary of genetically modified ice soldiers created by the Militia leader Bertrand as well as swamp monsters that just want to kill everything.
Along for the ride with Cole are new weapons and powers at his disposal. Created by his buddy Zeke, he’s given The Amp, a powerful melee weapon that will also amplify Cole’s powers. You can use the Amp to perform powerful combo attacks at close range, a welcome new addition to Infamous 2.
There is also an upgrade system in place similar to the previous game where players can purchase new powers or upgrades to existing powers. A slight modification to this is the addition of multiple powers for certain buttons. This forces the player to pick and choose which power he actually wants to use which can vary from situation to situation.
Also similar to the previous game is the karma system. More heroic actions will earn you different power-ups than the same levels of the more evil actions. However, unlike the previous game, the outcome of the player interactions with non-player characters will differ slightly depending on how you make choices in this game. A nice bonus is that if you reached maximum karma of one end on the first Infamous, you will start out on the first level of either Hero or Infamous rank depending on which you were in the first game.
Blast shards and Dead Drops are also in the game for the familiar scavenger hunt across the city that was present in the previous game. The town of New Marais is a model of New Orleans just as Empire City from the previous game was a model of New York City, so the game has a traditional Creole feel to it as you journey around in the sandbox environment.
There are a few negative aspects of this game. The first is that the enemies in the game are extremely good at aiming and predicting where you are going to move. Even playing on the medium difficulty, the player will still fined themselves getting hit by every single projectile fired in their direction. Another gripe was the climbing in the game isn’t as polished as it was in the previous game. Not too big a deal, but it got a little annoying.
If you were a fan of the first Infamous, I would highly recommend this to those players. Not only does it feature a good continuation of the storyline, the game is just as fun as it was previously, with added bonuses.