Infamous: Second Son A new hero is born
Fittingly, for a series that’s making the leap from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4, inFamous: Second Son is all about being bigger, faster and prettier than what has come before it. Déjà vu is the obvious flavour when stepping into new hero Delsin Rowe’s boots, with gameplay and controls feeling familiar and instinctual. Whether that’s a good thing will depend on your view of inFamous’s PS3 outings.
Like previous protagonist Cole McGrath, Rowe is struggling with the responsibilities and attentions that come bundled with possessing the superhuman abilities of a Conduit (read: mutant). Are they a gift? Are they affliction? It’s the same question that X-Men has been asking since the Sixties. Low marks for originality, then. Higher marks for how developer Sucker Punch is attempting to tell the story within the visually impressive open-world it has built as Rowe’s playground, though. Our demo begins with Rowe, sporting aging-rocker jacket and identity-sapping beanie, having to choose between guiding fellow young Conduit Abigail ‘Fetch’ Walker down a road of redemption or corruption.
Corrupt her and she turns into a psychopath whose sole focus seems to be the complete and utter annihilation of anyone who speaks out against the Conduits – not least the Department of Unified Protection, a government-founded group formed to suppress Conduit activity. Redeem her and she becomes the ultimate symbol of co-habitation, intent on showing humans that they’ve nothing to fear from Conduits by embarking on a quest of good-natured vigilantism.
Your choice is made following a cut-scene in which Fetch is being berated for trying to take matters into her hands, attracting unwanted attention and forcing Rowe into taking her under his wing. ‘Redeem’ and ‘Corrupt’ appear quite literally on-screen, with your choice having an instantaneous effect on your easily-influenced new protégée. Following your decision you’re thrown into a mission that sets the tone for things to come. The corrupt mission is the most fun of the two and plays more credibly into the heavy-handed comic book vibe emitted by Rowe, the world and the underlying themes of acceptance, fear and suspicion. Having caught wind of anti-Conduit protests taking place around the city, Fetch and Rowe set out to break up the gatherings of those they see as simple-minded, prejudiced low-lives and teach their leader a lesson.
This involves making your way across the city to protest groups marked on your mini-map, then debilitating the protesters and destroying the various banners and iconography that our ‘heroes’ have taken offence to. In the face of Rowe’s powers, your victims don’t stand a chance.
Said powers are split into two distinct sets: Smoke and Neon. Broadly speaking, Smoke is superior at short range, encouraging an all-out aggression approach that’s better at dealing a lot of damage quickly. Chains tipped with flame allow you to jump straight into the middle of a group and take them out quickly, all the better if you materialise and throw a smoke grenade from the palm of your hand first to soften them up and disorientate them.
Neon is more refined, better suited to long-range combat and, when used intelligently, allows you to largely disable an enemy threat before going in close to finish off any stragglers. What you’re essentially playing with here are lasers that can be shot from your fists, alongside an ability to highlight an enemy’s weak point to take them out more efficiently. If you do get in close, Rowe is able to manifest a purple lightsaber-esque sword of light which lacks the crowd control effect of his Smoke chains but is good enough for single enemies. Without more playing time it’s impossible to say which is best, but we’ll go out on a limb and a say a mix of both is probably the smartest approach. Whatever the case, testing out the capabilities of both is an enjoyable experience that hints at a significant depth waiting to be unearthed. Rewind a little, select the Redeem option, and everything is different. The mission you’re thrown into is not a mere variation on the bash-the-protestor gig offered by the Corrupt option – this is a whole new ball game.
Having gotten word that an organised gang of drug dealers is using a series of houseboats as storage and distribution centres for their product, Rowe and Fetch take it upon themselves to put them out of business. Seeing as Rowe, inexplicably, cannot swim, and the houseboats are moored along jetties separated by channels of water too wide to safely jump across (without being mowed down by gunfire), sniping with your Neon lasers is the best course of action.
Your goal here is to fight your way past numerous, heavily-armed drug dealers in a bid to identify those houseboats being used as makeshift warehouses. Once all three have been identified (why is it always three?) you need to mark the houses with a graffiti tag so that Fetch, standing watch over you from the safety of a tall building nearby, can use her own laser ability to burn them down from afar.
With the houseboats reduced to dust, all that remains is to follow a truck containing an already dispatched shipment and put an end to the gang. It’s here that Rowe can show off the parkour abilities he’s inherited from McGrath, albeit with a twist. With Neon power active you can literally fly up walls in a stream of light, removing the need to seek out and use ledges for climbing. Smoke, on the other hand, gives you the option of transforming into a mist and transporting yourself through handily placed vents to emerge on the opposite side of a structure.
While the Redeem mission is decent entertainment in its own right, the helpful boy scout act doesn’t really fit with Rowe’s obnoxious and surly personality. The most interesting thing about it is that it’s mutually exclusive from the Corrupt mission – whichever one you plump for seemingly removing the other option from your game entirely. To what extent that changes the overall experience and direction of the narrative will be one of things that makes or breaks Second Son.
The fact that the good/bad morality options extend beyond simply altering the outlook of your own character is also of great interest. Just how much does Fetch’s life change, for example, due to the choices you make and the path you lead her down? Are you able to alter that course once it has begun? Will her actions change your own view of the game world and of Rowe himself? Notwithstanding Grand Theft Auto, open-world games of this sort are hardly famed for their ability to tell a well-crafted narrative in an engaging and thought-provoking fashion, so thumbs up to Sucker Punch for at least trying.
It’s confusing, then, that with such ambition to provide above-average storytelling, Rowe should be chosen as the focal point. In both personality and image, he is the embodiment of focus-tested mediocrity. A character so lacking in intrigue that just looking at him makes those games of Hungry Hippos you used to play against your arthritic granny seem attractive by comparison. At least the sloppy third-person camera, which can lose track of the action during combat, means there are moments when you pretend you’re playing as someone else. Just why the camera remains an issue, as it has done for each and every inFamous up to this point, is a mystery.
On a more positive note, what the camera does manage to properly frame is legitimately stunning to look at and performs splendidly in terms of advertising the PS4’s graphical capabilities. Rain creates a damp sheen on the street that reflects the neon lights of billboards during night time, exaggerating an already heavily stylised visual approach, and there’s seemingly no end to the draw distance across the Seattle skyline. Further, the lack of loading screens (granted, not a new ‘feature’ nowadays) and the impressive level of civilian traffic and pedestrians is proof of the work Sucker Punch has put into making this environment feel alive and dynamic.
We haven’t got long to wait now to find out whether that technical and artistic quality is going to be enough to overcome the clear deficiencies when it comes to Rowe’s command of the lead role. As the first major exclusive PS4 release since launch, there’s a lot riding on Second Son’s success – here’s hoping the full game lives up to its well-hyped billing.
John Robertson
