Achievement Unlocked: Drunk Review – Infamous Second Son
I just received a PS4 for my birthday. Yay, I’m old. Also my family is awesome for continuing to not only tolerate, but invest in my very bad habit.
Anyway. Infamous Second Son. Good game buuuut… I have some gripes. Mechanically speaking I am disappointed. They just re-skinned Cole’s abilities with smoke. It’s not actually cool sucking smoke from a chimney (unless you’re into obvious stoner metaphors) to continue to deal damage.
Electricity is an intrinsically more interesting power. Going out of their way to explain smoke is just dumb. Reviving people with smoke or restraining them with smoke for arbitrary karma points is dumb. I wish the game had broke the mold a little more.
That said. The story is engaging. The, finally, social message about native americans and inequality is welcomed and the environments are 3xs as good as its predecessor. Did I mention holy shit the environments are good? They’re seriously good. That there is a platforming/exploration element is almost a detriment with how realistic the world is. They have to add extra platforming bits that detract from how beautiful everything is.
Overall Infamous Second Son receives passing grades. The combat and mechanics are at once comfortably familiar and depressingly similar to its predecessors. Forced implementations of the gimmick PS4 touch pad controller are clunky and obvious but never take away from gameplay so we call it a wash. In the end the story and environments win it over for me.
4 out of 5. You should play it if you own a PS4. Don’t buy a PS4 on for this game alone – do buy a PS4 though because the Xbox One doesn’t give a fuck about you, the gamer, and their exclusives are on PC anyway.