I Reviewed Every InFAMOUS Game

the infamous series is one I hold close to my heart I first played it when the PlayStation Network went down and we got the first Infamous for free and from then on I was hooked because of that I have over the years reviewed every Infamous game and yes that includes Festival of Blood and first light so this video will be a compilation of those reviews and the video where I rank the games at the end as usual I know you Gamers have this video on the second monitor while you're grinding camos or sleeping I see you so I've made sure the audio is remix to a more consistent volume I should also let you know that as I kept reviewing the games my microphone quality got better so apologies for the varying quality but with that said thank you for your support and I hope you enjoy the video I remember waking up one morning in 2011 and seeing that the PlayStation network was down it was a frequent Occurrence at the time and while I don't remember much from the time as I was only 10 years old I do remember just thinking oh that's weird I guess I'll play God tomorrow another day passed with PSN being down and then a week and it eventually turned into months obviously I wasn't the only one who was upset at this and when the network came back online I was greeted with a gift of two possible games the games that stood out to me were Little Big Planet Dead Nation and Infamous I had never heard of Infamous despite the game coming out a few years prior but oh boy was I interested I essentially saw it as a video game surrounding Electro from Spider-Man I downloaded it and holy hell was I hooked from start to finish since I've been returning to the Infamous games I was really excited to relive this experience as I haven't played it since I first did over a decade ago coming back around I found those Rose tinted goggles wore off very quickly and playing through this Jagged borderline slideshow became more of a chore than anything I found that the mission design was pretty repetitive and the whole game felt very padded the moment-to-moment gameplay while being good enough to carry the game suffered from contradictions I made it quite often frustrating even on the easier difficulties this doesn't mean it was all bad though as it had some great characters and the game had so much potential now I have to clarify Infamous one is a very rough game don't get me wrong it's fun at times but looking at today now of course this game is old and I get that but overall my playthrough of Infamous was not only a bit of fun but also mind-lovingly annoying I'll get into all my reasons throughout this video so with that being said let's get into Infamous 11 years later I have to get this out of the way before we get to basically anything else and that is The Game's look now I know that Graphics aren't super important and for me I got used to them pretty quickly even if they don't look the best the color palette here is so dark and muddy that everything just sort of Blends together and the characters with Unique Designs don't really look the best I mean some of them look great like our protagonists or some of the villains but the animations are really where I'm lost here take our character Cole McGrath his Idol animations are smooth and they seem goofing around with his powers or depending on the situation shriveled over they're really well done in animation such as when calling in a lightning storm convey the feeling that Cole is putting all of his power into such an attack but others such as the beginning of the game like dude what it just feels like they had an a team and A B team for animations and it seems all too clear what was animated by The A-Team and what was an animated by the B Team fortunately not all cutscenes are in Game and in this case we get a comic-like animation that looks iconic and these animations were so well received and so well done that they became a staple in the series I also really like the UI here as it doesn't take up too much space yet it gives you all the information you need of course the most important part of a game's presentation in my eyes is how it looks in gameplay for me personally it was easy to look past or at least laugh at the animations in some of the cutscenes but the gameplay animations are still really good to this day and they make the gameplay that much better the lightning that comes off your hands illuminates dark sewers and the way it fries the many enemies looks awesome it also looks good when cooking civilians if you swing that way seriously some of the effects here are Top Notch and it helped to keep me entertained and I also really appreciated that despite the blast of electricity going just about all over the place I never found myself being disoriented or never felt like there was too much going on the only thing I didn't like is when a Karma moment occurs there's like a logo in the corner that doesn't really look like it fits in with the art style that's literally the only criticism I can come up with with the games ourselves so I feel like it speaks to how well it was done the game begins with a bomb of source going off and we the player are at Ground Zero discovering that we now have the ability to control electricity it's because of such a bomb that the whole of Empire City is thrown into quarantine and subsequent chaos and damn straight if it doesn't look like it even when the weather is nice and bright the streets still contrast the clear skies with garbage and Rubble littered literally everywhere you guys know I don't really enjoy this kind of aesthetic but I have to admit that the game does a great job of Designing a world that looks like it's been to Hell and back the city is split into three different districts and they have few differences to separate them but it was ultimately enough to keep you familiar the neon District sees a lot of tall buildings neon signs and it's the largest District it's home to the Reapers who corrupt and control through the use of this hallucinogenic black sludge the Warren is a rundown slum that after the bomb went off has been taken over by these Trashman enemies which hide in garbage bags and have turned entire city blocks into ragtag castles the historic district is where the bomb went off and as such doesn't have much for buildings that are still standing most people here aren't standing either as they've either been evaporated by the bomb or are killed by this District's enemies the first Sons as far as world design itself goes it's okay I think the map suffers from being way too large there are a lot of assets and general structures that are reused and it makes the world feel very redundant at times especially in the neon district there are such large buildings that traversal can be a little boring at times especially in the beginning of the game as you'll find yourself often scaling a building mindlessly spamming X I just feel like a smaller world would have been better for keeping the game a little more condensed and allowing the world to have a little more variety each Mission sees you traversing so much of the map and maybe asking for the world to be a bit smaller is a bit much but at least a fast travel system would have been nice I did enjoy the different districts however as I found the historic district to be my favorite as it feels like it's the smallest and has the most significant story and gameplay wise I don't want to talk about the way you move around the world too much here but generally speaking the game can't keep up with such a large World both mechanically and technically and that's one of my biggest issues with this game this game puts my PlayStation 3s fan on overdrive and the game runs like I do and that's barely at all it feels like I'm watching a PowerPoint slide at times as a frame rate chugs at essentially every opportunity I didn't have the game crash at all but I also didn't see the game hit a solid 30 FPS for longer than a few seconds it's more of a consistent 15 to 20. I wonder if such a large world is a reason for this as in certain boss fights like the one against Sasha the game has 60 FPS for a brief moment and it immediately went back down the drain once I started blasting the black tar villain I think these performance issues are just due to the game's scope I feel like if the powers were turned down and if the world was smaller the game could have run better but who knows since we're still on the topic of the world it's worth discussing how we Traverse said world and that is quite slowly at times the pseudo parkour system here just used coal latching onto whatever Ledger climbable object is nearby and it offers for some fun platforming sections that is if it worked properly maybe that was harsh it's not that it doesn't work but it often fails and while it's never something huge it's a small issue that can result in death when using thrusters and making long jumps coal will phase through a climbable object rather than grabbing onto it like he usually does the platforming sections here were a lot of fun and scaling a massive garbage based Castle was super cool but when you miss a jump that isn't your fault and it results in failing on multiple occasions it can really kill your momentum and your fun the running speed is fast enough to get from point A to point B but by the time the game expands its scope to three different districts you'll need something much faster you don't get your traversal base Powers until an hour or two into the game and those powers are the thrusters and the grind ability the thrusters are a game changer as they allow you to clear some of the larger gaps between buildings and they can keep the momentum moving they also allow for some great air control though at higher speeds it does nothing but slow you down if you're even remotely pointing in any direction aside from Straight Ahead the next is the grinding ability which is another game changer of sorts it allows you to grind on the power lines across the city and that includes the rails of the trains this makes traversal a lot of fun however the power lines are put in some strange places to explain what I'm saying I'll explain how this power Works essentially when stepping on a power line You'll Be accelerated along said line when reaching the end of such a line You'll continue your momentum in the air now typically your momentum can carry you across a rooftop meaning that you could potentially land on another power line continuing the momentum and looking like a champ while you're doing it the issue is that when you have such a heavy forward momentum you can't adjust your trajectory enough to land on the other line if the lines were just moved slightly over a bit or if you had a little more control in the air then it wouldn't be a big deal but it's ultimately a pain and it feels like I'm always so close to getting an awesome grind combo there are also a myriad of moments where I was thrown off a platform because of a bug or some dumb luck and having the ability to make a difference in my mid-air trajectory would have been awesome so generally speaking the movement lacked a sense of fluidity and it left me wanting more the movement felt slow and clunky to the point where it caused a lot of deaths and enough eye rolls to give me motion sickness I really appreciate that this game has a lot of platforming sections in fact I think it has more than any other Infamous game but holy hell if they aren't a pain in the ass due to these controls and Hell the future games improved on the climbing system so more traversal would have been awesome to see fortunately your powers are not just restricted to the thrusters in the power line boosts as you have a myriad of tools at your disposal all of which have some good uses and I never felt like any of them were overpowered or overshadowed by any other moves you have your basic bolts which will serve you well even up to the end of the day game the main advantage of this move is that it's not tied with your energy bar in the top left even when you have no power you can still summon Old Reliable and it likely will be summoned multiple times even when you have some of the more damaging moves you also have the shock wave which is pretty self-explanatory it uses a small amount of power and it's good for reflecting projectiles and Zoning yourself from enemies as some will try to rush you there are a few missions where you have to defend a vehicle while standing on top of it and this move will be invaluable for those as you can see multiple Rockets coming at you at just about any moment the grenade is great for nailing an enemy behind cover or just doing decent damage to a large group they use a moderate amount of power and do some decent damage but this move is especially useful for making an enemy vulnerable once they get hit with their grenade they'll be knocked down and stunned which can allow you to get some hits in with your basic bolt upgrades can increase the damage and it makes it useful for boss fights some enemies might be a little too far away to hit or are in a tricky spot and you can use a Precision shot which is essentially a Tighter deadlier and as the name would suggest more precise basic bolt shot it uses a large amount of power and has its use for sniping enemies are being a little too evasive the megawatt hammer is an electric missile that uses a moderate amount of electricity and does a fair bit of damage it's useful for boss fights as the rocket moves quite slowly and it's meant for when an enemy is in a very compromised position as otherwise most enemies will just evade the attack the thunder drop sees you crashing into the ground in order to do damage to nearby enemies it doesn't use any power but I didn't find much use for it as the game heavily encourages you to play the range game if you are up close and personal then you might as well use some of your Nifty melee attacks which see cold just punching the enemy melee does barely any damage and I legitimately could not find a proper use for it you also unlock an electric Shield which can be used in very particular scenarios and this was an upgrade I actually forgot about because I never really used it finally the last upgrade you get is the lightning storm which just annihilates whenever it hits it uses a metric ass load of energy and it's a great move there's also something called a karmic overload essentially coal for a brief period of time will have and say it with me boys I'm sorry it can be achieved once your karmic rank is maxed out and that is certainly gonna take some work however this can allow you to cause a hell of a lot of Havoc it's a neat power and while it could be considered pretty overpowered you can't use it all that often and every time you use it it drains some of your karma meter meaning you'll have to wait quite some time to get it back to Max I really like the selection of powers or at least most of them my issue doesn't lie with the power themselves but more the way that they're used in gameplay it seemed like the levels in the enemies are designed for a cover shooter but the powers are designed for a game that's more movement based I feel like the level design in the enemies are constantly at odds with the powers the levels have many barricades and Ledges for cover and you can shoot from whatever you're latched onto and there are a lot of powers that help you deal with other enemies are behind cover such as the grenades but enemies will often move far too quickly and a lot of enemies will just flat out rush you so in a lot of cases you need to be on the move but when you're outside of cover you get riddled with bullets so I feel like I'm getting so many mixed signals from this game on top of that it feels like the game is way too hard now I know I'm about to get bombarded by a million comments calling me me a scrub and I should just get good but hear me out okay I played this game once on normal difficulty and once on easy and there are a bunch of enemies that can one shot you any explosives like grenades or the Rockets can one shot you and the enemies move much faster than you in some cases meaning that the enemies can very quickly surround you and when most of these enemies have grenade launchers Bazookas or shotguns which too shot you even on easy mode and some of them can go invisible I found myself saying oh what the [ __ ] on multiple occasions the levels were also padded out quite frequently as a lot of missions saw you doing the same task multiple times and these tasks were usually spaced out across the entire map meaning you would have to go from point A where you destroyed a satellite while fighting an absurd amount of enemies to doing the same thing at point B and then point C and in some cases there is even a point D to give an example of one of the most boring levels for me I'll bring up one of the final missions in the game which sees you traversing the entirety of the city to disable these hot air balloons that are spraying poisonous gas everywhere there are four of these one in the Warren one in the historic district and two in the neon they all see you doing the same thing taking out the UAV equipped with the missiles in order not to get sniped out of the sky then using your new thunderstorm power to take down the force field and finally you can Waltz onto it and press triangle to disable the machine the problem I have with this mission is that it just got boring having to move across the entire map only to do the same thing four times felt like a waste of time especially because the traversal isn't fast enough to make covering the whole map anything but a chore and that's what you'll be doing for the majority of this Mission as disabling the hot air balloon doesn't take a lot of time and it never really changes aside from the enemies guarding it there was a similar mission where there were four boats all over the Warren and you had to blow up the engines on all of them and it took ages to Traverse the map especially since part of the map is not powered up by this point meaning you couldn't use the grind rails I just felt like this was borderline filler there were a few other missions that felt Beyond tedious but that doesn't mean there weren't some really fun ones too I can at least appreciate that there were some neat twists put on the gameplay as well such as having to protect a vehicle while being on top of it using your powers to push obstacles out of the way there's another way you have to stand on top of a generator that supplies you with constant electricity meaning that there are no limits to how many Powers you can use it's a great time and even though it dropped the game to two frames per hour it was a lot of fun my favorite mission is the one in which you have to climb alden's Tower as much as the climbing system didn't work as intended all the time it wasn't intrusive enough to ruin the mission which saw you climbing up a massive trash Tower and taking out enemies along the way as you go through you have to continually raise an elevator site your buddy Zeke can join you I feel like the enemies here were perfect balance as they were overwhelming enough to challenge you but not so overwhelming as to feel unfair other favorites include the prison break mission where you can stand on top of an electrified floor which pumps you full of power meaning you can launch grenades and Rockets all over the place so while a lot of the levels had some good Concepts some most certainly didn't and on top of that the damage these enemies do is just absurd in some cases I think gameplay is as best however when the karma comes into play karma is something I've loved since the beginning even if I criticized it very heavily in my Infamous Second Son video here I can confidently say it's really good and it actually had some gameplay and packs apart from the typical good guys have to not shoot civilians and bad guys can just do whatever they want let me give you an example when playing through a mission in which you have to turn some pipes to stop the poisoning of the city's water supply you're presented with a choice if you turn the valve yourself you'll get a blast of tar in the face meaning you'll be sent on a trip of Swords which greatly affects how well you can shoot and you'll have your energy limited you could either turn the valve yourself and sacrifice your power and vision or get a civilian to do it I also like the way Cole presents this choice in his head he says whose Health matters more his or mine so not only does this directly affect gameplay but it also poses a dilemma that while having a clear good and bad option presents justification for both sides I could understand why someone would force the person to do it as coal is essentially the only one with the ability to stop the other conduits running around and if he's not in Tip-Top shape that could result in thousands more dying this is even better when compared to Second Sun where Hiro Delson is a pretty cool guy and evil delsit is just a psychopath in some scenarios take the First Choice from Infamous Second Son done Delson can either turn himself in take the beating or say nothing and make everyone else take the beating as well the evil action in this case isn't very justifiable as it's clear that Augustine knows that Delson is a conduit regardless I like the choices here more as they typically serve a purpose outside of being bad for the sake of being bad or good for the sake of being good take the very first Karma moment where there are multiple crates on the ground you could use your powers to shock the people that try to go for it leaving more food for your friends or you could let everyone have a fair share I would say it's justifiable to want to keep the food for yourself as you don't know when the next drop will be coming I would personally choose to share it with everyone else but I mean would I if I'm in a quarantine City for an undetermined amount of time I don't know if my morals would hold up of course there are one or two where the choices literally do you want the people to respect or fear you and while these are pretty basic they don't happen very often there are a bunch of powers locked behind your karmic rank which I appreciated as it made the gameplay of my two playthroughs different enough to keep me entertained there is another choice I want to bring up which happens near the end of the game you and your content John finally Tracked Down the race sphere and you have the choice to either destroy it or Set It Off setting it off with theoretically Grant you even greater Powers at the sacrifice of thousands more dying attempting to do so will lock you into the infamous rank no matter what rank you are prior you'll be swapped to the infamous Rank and you'll gain a considerable amount of power and experience your karmic meter will also look poisoned and it looks awesome I like this a lot because no matter what your karmic rank is you can always go back no matter how many evil actions you made or how many people you injured you can always go back and become the hero but there are just some things you can't come back from it's the ultimate choice and it solidifies Cole's power hungry near demonic features and personality there's another Karma moment that I wanted to bring up because it caused some discourse between myself and my friend nam12399 who has a channel by the way he also makes video essays you can find it in the description essentially the choice sees you in between two high-rises one holds six doctors and the other holds Trish your love interest you do not have time to save both of them I like the show it's a lot because like a lot of others both choices are justifiable I mean of course six doctors is a morally correct choice but I wouldn't blame someone for choosing to save the person they love the twist that's being put on this choice is that it doesn't matter no matter what you choose Trish will die if you choose the doctors she dies if you choose to save her then it turns out that she was actually on the building with the doctors now Nam didn't like this because what's the point of having a choice if it doesn't matter what you choose I on the other hand really liked this choice because it's pointless when a game has a choice system as a central mechanic having a choice that changes nothing when most choices do make these ripples further enforces the idea that sometimes you just can't change fate Trish was meant to die and this Choice made me as the player feel just as powerless as Cole someone who is blessed with more power than any human could ever dream of no matter who you are how much electricity you can drain you can't save everyone it's not just these contained choices that differ based on your actions but there are quite a few dialogue interactions between Cole and his friends that'll change depending on your karmic rank for example after clearing one of the game's underground substations you get a call from Zeke where he explains that your work has reduced crime in the city and if you're good he'll congratulate you however if you're evil he'll comment on your new look and how it looks like Cole is becoming corrupted and twisted by the way yeah I didn't want to say anything before but uh oh you're starting to look different Dark Twisted that kind of thing it's not good for your collection brother you know what I really don't care what people think of me I'll talk to you later I'm doing what I can Zeke no one needs to throw me a parade I know man I know still your clothes change based on what side of the karmic skill you fall on and I found these changes to be pretty cool if a little minuscule at times for example here's some funny stuff I could play through from the early game to late game when comparing the two pieces of footage side by side there isn't much of a difference with your appearance comparing your neutral appearance to the end of my evil playthrough then you can see that cole looks Twisted the veins on his body are like black tar crawling up his body and once you reach the rank of Infamous you get his palpatine-like appearance and Cole ends up resembling a demon more than a human I also appreciate that the color of your lightning changes based on your karma alignment shooting red lightning looked so good and if you set off the race fear again you end up with black lightning and it looks incredible there are little Karma moments within the gameplay such as when someone is on the floor you could heal this person through your powers or you could consume their life force filling your power meter and healing you entirely I appreciated this because even when I was on a good playthrough if I was in a bind I would end up bio-leaching somebody and just tanking the karmic hit just for the sake of surviving the karma system here is so good in my eyes because it really feels like the world react to your actions if you're evil people on the street will start to beat the hell out of you and main characters will state their distaste with such actions Trish will either praise or condemn you based on your karmic Rank and when we compare this directly to Second Son we see why I prefer the karma system here with Reggie's death and second son he says the same thing no matter what your actions were beforehand but with Trish she'll show her disappointment in you if you're evil and reassure you that you're doing the right thing if you're good just long enough to say that she was proud of me for what I'd become proud that I was helping people with my Powers just long enough to say that she was ashamed of what I'd become that God had given me these powers and I'd squandered them hurting others and thinking only of myself the game even shows you what you could possibly end up like when you fight Sasha Cole asks himself if his powers will cause him to have a warped body and a twisted mind and depending on your choices that is exactly what happens Sasha's boss fight gameplays as much like all the other boss fights that being nothing special she spawns some enemies and throws some attacks at you but they're really easily dodged and after all of her attacks she just sits there for a bit allowing you time to pump her full of electricity the boss fight against Alden is much the same except I got slammed by a car on my way there he just throws some stuff at you and you just have to throw some grenades and Rockets at him and then he eventually goes down this is unfortunately the same sentiment for Kessler who just does some basic attacks that you can you guessed it Dodge easily and he gets taken down even easier the boss fights here weren't too bad but they all felt underwhelming aside from Kessler since it has some really good plot significance I think it was pretty cool to have the final boss fight at Ground Zero where the game began and while we're on the topic of the beginning of the game I have to say this game has easily the coolest opening of any game we see the streets of Empire City and upon pressing start we see the ray place for your explosion we then wake up at the center and that's where the game begins so finally I guess I should talk about the story which I don't mind I don't think it's great but I don't think it's bad either the story sees Cole McGrath waking up in the center of a crater and with the ability to control electricity after not being able to control his powers he wakes up two weeks later to see that the city has gone into quarantine and essentially the [ __ ] has hit the fan after trying to escape he gets trapped in a room with an FBI agent named Moya who sends Cole on a quest to find the bomb that was set off at the start of the game and find moya's husband John who has gone missing if Cole does this and Moya will secure him and Zeke away out of the city we then run into Kessler a mysterious figure who gives Cole a vision of the future after tracking down the leader of the Reapers a gang that runs the neon District cool ends up in the warring after narrowly escaping the first Sons a group of highly trained super soldiers in the war and we come across these trash men who end up capturing Zeke after he tries to help out kolamoya after tracking down the race fear Zeke with the sphere in his hands runs off with Kessler with hopes of wanting powers like Cole After tracking down Kessler's whereabouts in the history District Cole gives Chase and deals with Alden along the way upon entering the historic district Cole meets up with Jon who reveals that he has no affiliation with Moya and with that knowledge Cole and John track down the race here on their own and during the capture of the race fear it implodes and consumes Jon with Jon and the race you're gone Kessler meets Cole one final time and shows cool that Kessler is actually cool from the future and that Kessler orchestrated Cole's journey in order to prepare him for a conduit that would end the world named the Beast upon killing Kessler Cole reflects on his stance within the city and vows to prepare himself for the beast's coming I don't really feel much about the story there are some cool moments here and there but I didn't feel like there was much to sink my teeth into I had a similar issue with Second Son where it felt like not much happened with the story my main issues stem from Kessler Kessler's story goes like this he had powers and decided not to stop the Beast so he used and I quote his newest and most dangerous power a one-way trip back in time what look if you can get past this seemingly out of nowhere excuse for Kessler to go back in time then you'll probably be fine with a story and for me yeah I can get past it it's not like this game was super grounded in realism anyway so believing that Kessler truly did orchestrate everything with Cole yeah I buy it the only thing is I don't know why Kessler didn't just kill Jon the race fear is what gave Jon his powers and it's heavily implied by some audio files in Infamous 2 that Kessler knew Jon was the Beast so I don't know why he would avoid killing Jon this might be just an issue with Infamous 2 as it contradicted information presented here but I don't know I like some of the arcs with the characters like Zeke Zeke's jealousy grows as the game goes on and I really enjoyed it because Zeke really wanted to do some good but just didn't really have the opportunity this is even more so with Cole if he's evil as Zeke wants to do good but instead his friend gets the powers to really make a change and he uses it for Domination it really justifies Zeke's choice to ditch coal otherwise if you're good Zeke's Choice doesn't make the same amount of sense Trisha's character feels so weird because even if you're kind and caring she doesn't really give you the time of day because some guy on the TV said that you're a terrorist I just don't understand why she would believe the guy on the TV rather than her own boyfriend it just made no sense to me and it made me not like Trish at all I think the best part of the story is the little interactions between cold and Zeke it's a ton of fun hearing these guys talk about the situation on their hands and I specifically liked how Zeke talked about if the government got their hands on the race fear and if they were able to create conduits he says it wouldn't turn out well and if you played Second Son then you know that he was more than correct get the hell out of me thought of the government getting their hands on that race fear did you already have this conversation I know I know you got caught pissing in the wind but think about this for a second if nothing dishes out superpowers wants to stop oh Uncle Sam from juicing up the entire military or the cops we'd have no defense against that so overall I like this game for the most part there were a few moments that made me audibly airing my frustrations but there were also a lot of moments where I found myself saying out loud okay that was awesome the graphics are certainly not the best aren't distracting enough past the first hour as you'll get used to it pretty quickly the gameplay while being janky at times and a little too difficult with the enemies that can move faster than you and kill you in one hit also showed an incredible amount of potential on top of so being pretty fun most of the time the story wasn't the best and there were a few questions I had by the end but it was good enough to set up the future games and it didn't jump out of the realism box too much I really liked the karma system in this game as the decisions typically fell into a moral gray area and they had Direct impacts on the story and on the gameplay it had a lot of memorable characters and memorable moments in general I think while Infamous one was pretty consistently Rocky it showed a ton of potential I'm even more excited to cover Infamous 2. Sucker Punch clearly showed that they knew what they were doing and no matter what side of the karmic skill you fell on at the end of your playthrough the series certainly had a bright future a perfect sequel is a game that improves on essentially everything from the first game it expands a story told in the first game expands a gameplay and ideally sees some refined graphical Fidelity now a perfect sequel is not a perfect game in my eyes I don't think Infamous 2 is a perfect game a really good game hell yeah but not a perfect one with that being said it improves on almost everything from the first game and that in my eyes makes it damn close to the perfect sequel now if you have not seen my video on Infamous 1 I highly recommend that you take a look at it as it explains what I liked and didn't like but I can very briefly give a recap here essentially Infamous 1 was a really ambitious game and as I argued in my video on it too ambitious for its own good the map seemed too large for the traversal abilities to keep up with and it was even too large for the console to keep up with textures were often muddy and Poppin was almost as numerous as the major frame rate drops which would often tank into the single digits those same textures also just had a very muddy color scheme that made Empire City a bit of an eyesore at times the story was pretty interesting and despite being relatively simple on the surface had a ton of lore and kept me engaged despite it being a little cheesy which again I didn't mind the traversal was a little too primitive for me though and there were too many skyscrapers with little ways to scale them effectively Mission design was fun in some cases but often felt like padding and others the morality system did a really good job of justifying both the good and evil options and your choices actually made a reasonable difference the combat was a little too difficult for my taste but not in a good way I found too many enemies just flat out one shot at you and these same enemies had the ability to go invisible boss fights were often just okay and they unfortunately were pretty unremarkable aside from the spectacle alone now I want to clarify something from my Infamous one video a lot of you thought that I didn't like the game and that's not entirely true I have a lot of problems with Infamous 1 and while it may seem like they prevent me from enjoying myself they don't really my biggest issue with the game was the difficulty and so to remedy that I just played on easy mode which made it a lot more tolerable and I was very easily able to look past the different frame rate drops and muddy textures I like the game a lot but I feel like it's a game that works better in my memory fortunately Infamous 2 in my eyes has a better story better characters a better world better gameplay and better graphical Fidelity than its ancestor and I'm gonna try and explain why I feel that way throughout this video before we go any further though I have to clarify that I will be spoiling everything from both Infamous 1 and 2. these games are pretty old so if you haven't played them by now you probably won't ever if you have been interested but haven't had the chance to snag a copy of the game and you still want to hear my thoughts then proceed with caution finally this video is just my opinion and I'm not here to objectively judge this game's quality I'm simply telling you guys what I like and don't like I know that much like my Infamous one video some of you may disagree with what I'm saying and I'm totally open to talking about it in the comments I was happy to see that a lot of you on the first Infamous video were pretty respectful and I hope we can do that again here so now that all of that is out of the way let's get down to it as I stated earlier just about everything in the first Infamous both good and bad was improved on or expanded upon here in Infamous 2. Infamous 1 Stars Cole McGrath a courier that ends up gaining the power to control electricity after a package he is delivering which is a radioactive bomb called the Ray sphere detonates Cole was not the only one who had powers activated by the race fear and his goal is to stop those who are using their powers for evil he gains a reputation as a hero and after defeating a mysterious figure named Kessler he prepares for an abominable foe named the Beast now there is also an evil route but the good ending is Canon so I'll stick with that for a more in-depth summary and Analysis please refer to my Infamous one video Infamous 2 takes place a few months after the events of Infamous 1 where our protagonist Cole McGrath is preparing for the arrival of the Beast he's working with a contact named quo and as they are preparing the Beast arrives he absolutely thrashes Cole and he has to flee to the other side of the country to power up in the city of numerae and that's all you need to know for now first things first I have to talk about the new voice actor for Cole Cole's voice in the first game was really Gruff too much so for me and I found that he sounded too depressed and dark I'm doing what I can no one needs to throw me a parade I know man I know here he sounds a lot better and it will immediately make a good impression on you first boat out of town chick's got some connections this is going to be a short-term visit man we're just gonna get in I'm gonna get some new powers nowhere to come right back come on man you deserve to relax all the iconic voices for people like Zeke return and the voice actors do a great job with their roles ranging from quo to Knicks to this game's side villain Bertrand the music in the first game for myself at least was not very memorable however the music This Time Around especially the ending credits theme really fits the game I won't touch on this too much since music is so subjective but I enjoyed the soundtrack here a lot and felt it was better than the first the sounds of cool frying the militia and the sounds of the different enemies all sound great and it seems there's a lot more clarity in the game's audio which I appreciated as far as the looks of the game it looks way better than the original the opening title screen is somehow just as good as the first games and the graphical Fidelity here is through the roof sure the resolution is still pretty low but I found myself experiencing far less pop in and the designs of characters like Cole feel so much better the environments still keep their muddy run down aesthetic from the first game however they have some more color mixed in with them as neon signs and bright green grass clutter the streets to create a city that looks lived in and it's also just nice to look at the city itself is designed quite well too but we'll talk about that later character models here look really good and we don't see the same goofy facial animations from the first game characters like Bertrand and the Beast have incredible designs that are easily recognizable and I'd argue that characters like Z kavaneer iconic designs the lightning effects in the other superpowers look awesome here and honestly I think the footage speaks for itself as for the performance I can say that it runs better than Infamous 1 but it doesn't run that much better don't get me wrong it is far more optimized than the first game and I don't believe I ever got into a situation where the frame rate hit the single digits but the game consistently drops below 30fps fortunately much like the first game I don't think it really impacted my experience it was never so bad that it would hinder my ability to play but it was at least noticeable regardless it runs much better than the first game which is surprising because the effects here are truly on another level and the map feels so much denser when it comes to the cutscenes they still have their comic style to them and they look so good I won't expand on it too much because they are near identity equal to the first game's cutscenes and I already covered those in my first Infamous video but regardless they look good here too as far as the in-game cutscenes they also look fantastic the visuals here really bring this game to New Life and I feel like a gush over it for ages But ultimately the art style change may put some people off and I understand that this just might not be your cup of tea but let me tell you it is mine even the fine details presented in the story as a whole were done so well in my eyes take Zeke for example at the beginning of the game he looks as handsome as ever but as the game goes on he contracts a deadly virus going around new Murray and it isn't revealed until one of the final missions despite this you can actually see Zeke's complexion get worse over time and near the end of the game his face looks dead white what I find funny is that on my evil playthrough Cole actually looked worse than Zeke his actions and his powers have corrupted him so much that he looks more sick and twisted than someone with a deadly virus I thought this was a nice detail and it's not the only one like this over the course of the game when looking at the way the race fear virus has affected the town it's so cool that they nailed the realism and the details of people being sick on the ground and nobody wearing a [ __ ] mask animations this time around look a lot more heroic cool strikes these poses when in the air and when landing on a ground that resembled a pose that Spider-Man would strike and it really gives you this idea that Cole is a superhuman his movements and actions are far more exaggerated and it made a lot of sense when compared to the first game his actions were a little more rigid and stiff likely due to his powers being new and him having to try especially hard to control them here however he moves with a lot more fluidity and he seems more comfortable with his powers I'm not saying the developers intended this but I think it's a happy accident that shows us a slight evolution in Cole's experience with his powers he still puts a ton of force into his attacks though especially the Rockets which see him slugging what looks like a cannonball from his hand and the powers outside of electricity look amazing too ice appears gracefully and shatters enemies with a great amount of style and the other power Napalm looks incredible from the firebird strike that essentially lets you fly for only a brief period to the Ash and tar like grenades you throw I've find it interesting when comparing this game's style to the style of the Arkham series while both games are way different their comic book Origins are quite similar and the first entry in the series for both games had a dark and grittier aesthetic however I find it cool how Arkham went the route of making the game darker and more realistic while Infamous 2 doubles down on the comic book aesthetic since I've already talked about the city so much and how good it looks I think we should talk about the design of the city and why I like it a lot more than Empire City to recap the main things I didn't really like about Empire City were as follows I felt like the buildings were too tall and it often took too long to scale those buildings making traversal inefficient and not very fun I felt like the map was not very traversal friendly as it was difficult to grind from one power line to another and clearing large gaps between buildings could take a fair bit I also know that this is an issue with the traversal in the first game as well as the city's design but finally I felt that the different islands didn't do enough to separate themselves both aesthetically and through its design they all just had large buildings Made of Stone or brick and there were little in the way of landmarks barring Ground Zero row numerate off the bat is much shorter than Empire City I'm not totally sure if it's bigger than Empire City but it's definitely more horizontal Empire City was a very vertical environment every building was tall and the gaps between buildings were often large or at least too large to be cleared in a single bound new Murray on the other hand has a ton of shorter buildings with smaller gaps in between them which take advantage of Cole's more horizontal movement to elaborate further when you look at Cole's Powers most of them accelerate him along the x-axis they Propel him forwards not upwards the thrusters help him gain more distance grinding rails gives him a way to move around quickly along the x-axis and none of these Powers Propel him upwards very much even one of the new powers in the game The Firebird strike sees you clearing a large distance in mere seconds and that's the closest we're gonna get to direct flight in this game that doesn't mean you couldn't gain height if you wanted to but you weren't going to get to a rooftop without using some of your free running abilities now along with making the city tailored for this kind of movement the game also gives you some vertical movement options most notable is the ice launch which propels you upward and is a really useful tool for traversal the thrusters you can get an upgrade here too making traversal even better by far the best addition to the game's traversal are these vertical poles that are on the sides of buildings they act as grind rails and can be used to very quickly scale the side of a building it is in my eyes such an ingenious idea as it allows you to very quickly scale a building when chasing a Target or when you need to get some high ground for an advantage in a fight it allows the game to have higher buildings while also removing the pace breaking climbing of the first game the final industrial area that you enter in the game has these massive structures that you can scale efficiently with this new vertical grind pull and it gives you both the higher buildings without sacrificing your momentum this isn't the only time the game has its cake and eats it too but we'll discuss that later as for the different districts this time around I enjoyed almost all of them the first district you get to after working your way through the swamps in the second mission is the vilkachin it sees a lot of medium-sized buildings with small to large gaps in between them perfect for trying out new traversal abilities and familiarize yourself with the landscape as their roofs here are flat and there are easy places to take cover behind I really appreciated that halfway through this District you unlock the upgraded thrusters which allow you to go farther with your thrusters a small change but a very welcome one I appreciate that the first few missions reminded me of the problems I had with Infamous ones traversal which saw me barely missing jumps simply because my thrusters were not powerful enough and I like that the game near immediately remedied that problem the second district you enter Ascension Parish sees some more complicated structures like cemeteries and homes with slanted roofs there are not as many places and objects to take cover behind here so you have to get a little crafty such as using the peak of a house's roof to Shield yourself from enemy fire the Locale here wasn't my favorite but I think it works perfectly fine the next District you enter is flood town now I have to admit I can't stand this place okay I'm exaggerating a little bit it's not that bad as I just found it a little Annoying In all honesty as the name would make you believe the entire town is flooded and if you're at all familiar with this series or electricity then you know that coal and water don't mix very well and if the water is deep enough it'll lead to an instant game over fortunately the water and flood town is not deep enough to kill you most of the time but your Mobility is hindered and the water and your health will be decimated with each second spent submerged I actually like this from a design perspective a lot it's constant platforming from one submerged house to the next and considering that you enter this District directly after gaining a new traversal ability be that the ice launch or the firebird strike it gives you the perfect obstacle course of sorts to test out and master your expanded movement options the reason why I'm not a fan of it is because the missions here were on the boring and monotonous side and there isn't a ton of color here I'm not saying that you need a colorful map for it to be aesthetically pleasing just look at the Arkham games which typically have a color palette of black gray and more black yet look really good here it feels as though it leans towards the ugly side and it doesn't help that the missions here don't always take advantage of the level's design or even your powers the final District you enter is a Gas Works and is one of my favorites this is where the game reintroduces the verticality of the first game but also equips you with the proper tools to use it to your advantage this district is filled with tall structures with grind poles going along them allowing you to get from the ground to 100 feet in the sky in mere seconds considering that the enemies here are the most advanced at this point having the ability to freely move among the map is even more appreciated especially when you unlock the final upgrade to Cole's abilities the lightning tether and it's really a game changer and while I will talk about it more later in this video I have to commend the fact that this environment was really made to take advantage of all of your abilities you'll have to mix rail grinding and thrusters with your tether to get around and I appreciate when an environment immediately requires the use of a new ability the environments here are also awesome and even though flood Town wasn't my particular cup of tea I can certainly appreciate what it goes for environments seem to be built around your abilities to the same extent that your abilities are built around the environment and it led me to enjoying this city a lot more than Empire City overall the city had a wider color palette and more diverse aesthetic different aspects that affect gameplay in a significant can weigh yet they still felt like they were all part of a connected world I think new Murray is easily an improvement over Empire City in every way and it even has a Subway that's got to be one of the strangest product placements in a game and it stands out like a sore thumb but I kind of love it as soon as we've already dipped our toes into it we should talk about the traversal Cole here on foot moves similarly to the way he did an Infamous one though I swear his running speed has been increased a bit because he really looks like he's hauling ass on top of that due to the game's wonderful animations he looks like he's putting all of his force behind him when he's on the grind rails and the distance you go once you hit the end of that wire is huge when you get the decision to swap Powers with either quo or NYX you get either the firebird strike or the ice launch the ice launch gives you a sizeable jump and mixed with the thrusters it can give some considerable distance I appreciated that with the ice launch it's the perfect height for you to get to the wires around the city meaning you'll no longer have to climb up the pole adding a new layer of efficiency and fun the firebird strike on the other hand feels like a primitive smoke Dash as it says you straightforward making clearing even the largest of gaps a breeze the only issue I have with the firebird strike is that your momentum is immediately stunted upon exiting the strike since it's a strike I really wish you could gain some forward momentum from it especially since in my experience I've yet to see too many people use this ability in combat as most from what I have seen have used it for traversal purposes the tether on the other hand as I mentioned is a complete Game Changer and allows you to tether and pull yourself towards anything within the vicinity I absolutely love this ability and my only real complaint is that we don't get a ton of time to use it in the main story it seems like the game ends right after you get it but I guess it is useful for side quests and Cleanup in the post game the tether is the closest we're gonna get to a sucker punch developed Spider-Man game is you can cancel a tether Midway through and throw it another in the air leading to a lot of moments where you just don't touch the ground for minutes at a time on top of the mechanics of the game is the ability to swap power semi on the fly all of your traversal abilities are mapped to R2 and you must swap between your ice launch the firebird strike and the lightning tether I would have liked if we could map different powers to different buttons I could potentially map The Firebird strike to Triangle and the ice launch to x with the tether to R2 allowing me to use them in unison rather than having to pull up the menu to swap between them it may seem like a nitpick but an extra level of Freedom here would have been really nice also for the last point of discussion I'd like to ask why is the firebird strike not called The Phoenix strike it sounds so much cooler than Firebird so overall the traversal in my eyes was a lot more fun than the first game and was improved on in every way now of course this game's traversal is obviously better because it literally has the same Powers as the first game but with just more to use and with more powerful thrusters so that's no surprise but I truly feel that the world's design here is what made the traversal so fun this is so much better when compared to Infamous 1 as it felt like the level design was always working against you another aspect in which the first game felt like the environment was working against you was in the combat in the first game as I mentioned the environment was very flat and I think that this was by Design so I don't want to hate on it too much there were always place to take cover behind but it made you play the game like a cover shooter a lot of Cole's abilities felt like they were being pulled in both directions as he had abilities that would stun or knock down an enemy such as a grenade or the shock wave which can be really useful when trying to get an enemy out of cover on the other hand though if you yourself are not behind cover you'll be killed lightning fast they gave you all of these powers that let you fire an electric bazooka from your hand and yet made you frail as glass here as I've already mentioned with your increased vertical of movement you are able to avoid enemies way better and getting to The High Ground when necessary won't leave you exposed for a long enough time to die five times over on top of that a lot of the later game areas give you multiple different things to take cover behind not just a basic stump or lump of sandbags I won't bother going over the powers from the first game because I already covered them in depth in that first video so I'll instead cover the new powers here as there are quite a few for starters I'll talk about the brand new powers and then discuss the variants later the ice launch and Firebird strikes have already been commented on but what I didn't mention too much is that the firebird strike can also be used in combat though I didn't find a ton of use for it I assume this is why it costs more than the ice launch to perform as the ice launch only costs one bar of electricity while the firebird strike cost two when choosing to obtain quo's Powers you also get access to the ice Shield which functions the same as the first game and if you choose NYX you get to summon these little demon things called spikers and they're truly awesome they also have access to some new finishing moves the first of which being the ionic Vortex this summons a huge tornado down on the path in front of you and decimates everything in front of it it was really convenient when there were a ton of enemies in the line in front of you and not every enemy drops an ionic charge so I never found myself with the ability to really spam this the ionic storm does return but not until the late game and it functions the same as the first game the ionic drain is a variant of these ionic abilities that allows you to bio leech everyone in the immediate vicinity in one shot and look at how many enemies you can take out with this this shit's crazy on close end you get the ionic freeze which essentially freezes and incapacitates everyone in a 90 degree angle in front of you pretty cool but ultimately pretty tame in comparison to the other abilities and I think it might be the least useful if you have a bunch of enemies in front of you and you need to take them out quickly you are better off just using the tornado also returning from the first game is the ability to restrain enemies heal injured civilians and bio leech them to consume their life force and heal yourself it's nice for some quick Karma points but other than that I didn't use them too often so those are all of the new powers and it may seem like there isn't much here but that's because a lot of the quote unquote new powers come from the variants assigned to your basic abilities for example you have your basic lightning bolt called the alpha bolt which is a little peashooter but you can't unlock a new variant called the pincer bolt which sends out three bolts at a much slower fire rate that Arc and hit your target the advantages of using this is that because basic enemies on normal difficulty take three headshots to go down you can knock somebody in literally one shot the downside is that there is a slower fire rate so if you're not hitting your shots and you'll be in some trouble there is also the Magnum bolt which sees you firing a single bolt which allows you to hit enemies hard but again there is a slow fire rate the difference between this and the pincers that the pincer arcs meaning that it can land some better shots on enemies behind cover there's also the rapid fire bolt which turns the electric pistol you had on your hand to a submachine gun and it's perfect for spraying and praying I'd like to draw your attention to another change made to your basic bolts in this game and that is that it now uses electricity in the first game you could fire this bad boy till the cows come home and it wouldn't drain your power but here not so much it doesn't use that much power but it uses enough that I found myself looking for a power source more often and it prevented me from draining a power source and spamming my Rockets as I didn't want to leave myself with no power so I was a little more precise with how and when I used my power when it comes to the shock wave there are a few new variants such as the nightmare blast which stuns your enemies for a while and there's the shatter blast which freezes enemies and functions similarly to the graviton blast which sends enemies back like normal but they are suspended in the air for longer finally there's a punch blast which is the same as the basic blast but with a tighter spread and it does more damage when it comes to the grenades you have the basic grenade and eventually there is a sticky grenade which is self-explanatory and then there's the double grenade which is much the same the big ones are the Napalm grenade which explode on impact like the double grenade but it does the most damage the cryogenic grenade freezes weaker enemies on impact and does some good damage too finally the cluster grenades is just the double grenade but better in my eyes and last up is the Rockets which have some variants like the tripwire Rockets which are again self-explanatory and the redirect Rockets which function almost the same as in the first game variants also include the sticky rocket along with the ice and Napalm Rockets but they all serve the same function acting as some good heavy damage for bosses and decent AOE damage for groups finally the most quote unquote out their ability I found was the Kinesis which sees you picking up any old object and tossing it at your enemies I found this move to be useful and I think it's used in some pretty fun ways within the campaign fun thing I found about this Kinesis ability though when standing on a car or any wide object Cole will stand on top of it and raise it off the ground if you let go of R2 and press it again the object will arise again before going back to its default height if you time this right though and consistently let go and press R2 with a rhythm of sorts you can start raising it infinitely and well it's definitely a lot of fun thank you [Music] the reason I wanted to bring up these different variants was because there is a really neat system tied to unlocking them remember the stunts from the first game they would give you rewards for using your powers in different ways those rewards being either trophies or experience and for that reason I never bothered to experiment with them too much in Infamous 2 they lock these power variants Behind These stunts and most of the stunts you have to perform are really useful so not only are you being encouraged to use your powers in a more efficient and stylish manner such as sending enemies flying off of a building with a blast but you were also being rewarded with a new type of blast I also appreciated that these challenges were never too hard but did require a fair amount of effort or at least most of them did I mentioned this once already but I felt the way that you switch Powers could have used some refinement I like that you can switch powers on the Fly and all but it still brings up a menu that completely pauses the game I would have preferred something akin to a weapon wheel of sorts that just slows down the game to make it less jarring or better yet map a shortcut to the controller that allows you to cycle Powers freely without pausing at all for example take up on the d-pad you can have a shortcut where if you press up on the d-pad and the button corresponding to the power at the same time you'll swap the same way you would in the menu but it happens in real time I feel that this could give players the ability to express themselves so much more with the power system and to further this Freedom they could add an advanced power mapping tool in the settings that lets you map each power to a different button or a combination of buttons imagine the freedom this could allow you you could have a build that focuses on bolts and grenades and you can mix cryogenic grenades with Napalm grenades or mix an ice launch with a Firebird strike and then finish it off with a lightning tether of course I know I say this a lot but I'm not a game designer so I don't know if this would be crazy difficult to implement in future games and take what I say with a grain of salt I'm just spitballing here so overall I feel like the combat here is so much better than the first game simply due to the extended Arsenal every ability from the first game has made a return barring the gigawatt blades now not sure if you guys know about this but in the first Infamous game there's this melee weapon called the gigawatt blades which replaced your basic lame melee attacks this however had to be downloaded from the PlayStation store and the PlayStation Store hates me and wouldn't let me do it so I didn't really have any footage of it instead just imagine some really cool electric blades coming from Cole's hands and they do Insane damage but at the cost of a lot of your power in Infamous 2 we get the amp and oh man is this thing so much cooler than the gigawatt blades first off it's more balanced as it uses no power yet does decent damage on top of how awesome it looks you can make it look even better by performing a finisher move these look flashy and take out an enemy in no time however it gets better at about the halfway point in the story you unlock Ultra finishers which are even flashier and my God these things are fun it's great too because the melee is now an actual viable strategy so back to what I was saying literally every ability from the first game is here and some so there's no question that it's an improvement because if you don't like the new abilities you don't have to use them I personally wasn't a huge fan of the ice grenades and other cryogenic abilities so I just stuck with the classics and now that we've covered the gameplay side of things we should mention how these gameplay mechanics are applied Mission and level design here was really good in my eyes with a lot of Mix-Ups and a few boss fights mixed in for good measure the opening level serves as a good example as it gets you right into the action and as the player you are given tips and tutorials for how to play the game while also feeling how insanely powerful coal is having been beaten so bad you go from firing these mortars from your hands to these little electric lemons and wanting to have that again is your initial drive to play the game more you just want to get back to that point where you can unleash thunderstorms at will The Following mission in the swamp introduces you to your traversal abilities along with introducing Karma which I'll have to cover later the opening moments of the game were really a ton of fun and they did a fantastic job of introducing the many characters in this story and the way things unfold happen at a great Pace when heading to Dr Wolf's Lab at the beginning of the game you can get an idea of how grinding on wires work works and chaining them together tracking down Bertrand for the first time and chasing his limo allows you to refine that skill and is particularly easy and fun in this Mission directly after you end up taking down a helicopter and it's also over the top but without breaking the suspension of disbelief once you finish up everything in the starting areas you can move into flood town now flood town is by far the most boring part of the game and I will try to explain why so let's start with the first mission which sees you powering up flood Town these missions are fine but the environment here works best when you're constantly moving however in this Mission you're forced to power up the generators which essentially lock you in place on top of that a lot of enemies are in the water for this Mission now this Mission takes place right after you swap Powers with Nicks and quo but using anything other than electricity here will leave you at a disadvantage since a lot of the enemies here are in the water meaning one basic bolt will fry everyone I would have enjoyed an environment that encouraged us to make use of our new powers and if we are going to be placed in this environment where movement is capitalize when in combat we shouldn't be in a mission that basically locks Us in place the next mission you have to complete here is the Dunbar beam which sees you using a spotlight to take out these huge waves of monsters now this would be a lot of fun if the game didn't make you go to what feels like three different locations on 10 different occasions furthering this is how you take down these enemies you literally just aim at them in most turret sections you would at least have to aim at fire but here it's literally just looking at them it melts health bars and it can take out a large group of these guys but we do it so much here that it got boring and I dreaded this mission on each playthrough I guess it's not that bad but when we're given this Titan of a character to play as it feels ridiculous that we're using machines that any old Joe could use it would be cool if when there are a ton of enemies around the beam would break down and then Cole would have to come in and finish off all the remaining enemies we get a slight Taste of this at the end of the mission when returning to your safe house but ultimately everything leading up to that point had me pretty disengaged one of the missions after this sees you putting a cap on some holes that are spouting fire this task takes ages and it doesn't really move the plot along at all I just found myself getting bored here because a lot of the missions in flood Town didn't Advance the plot now there are missions and cutscenes in flood town that do Advance the plot but for example with the Dunbar machine the advancement that happens in the plot is finding out that LaRoche has a blast core and didn't tell Zeke about it this happens at the end of the mission and it is caused by a cryogenic soldier saving the group from a swarm of enemies and doing so only to get the blast core could we not have just gotten a call from Zeke before the mission starts explaining that the base is under attack skipping the whole Dunbar beam thing now I want to clarify again that these missions are not atrocious at all I just wasn't rocking with it to be fair though for every low in the game there are about five high moments and these are really the only missions that annoyed me there was also a really good variety in the missions such as a mission which sees you powering up a bus and protecting it as you lead it to a plantation blowing its sky high missions like the final encounter with the Beast are so much fun in both the evil and heroic playthroughs are Beyond satisfying the mission design here is actually quite similar to the first game which has some really cool levels but I enjoy the missions here because the environments complement the gameplay so much more I also cannot make a video on this game without talking about the coolest concept and by far one of the best missions in the entire franchise in one of the final missions Cole is tasked with taking down an insane amount of enemies and these guys are all top tier doing a huge amount of damage and taking a huge amount too the catch is there's a thunderstorm that night meaning you can charge yourself up from the sky which like wow what an awesome concept and you really feel like a Powerhouse here just spamming rockets and drawing energy from the sky man it was just so well done further missions taking place in the Gas Works are really fun due to the added verticality and they make a really good use of your abilities while introducing new powers and enemies the enemies here are pretty diverse and fun to combat the militia are your run-of-the-mill thugs akin to the reefers in the first game some wheeled riot shields and some have machine guns pretty basic but I have no quarrels with them the corrupt are the swamp monsters that have some variety they are melee based and as such are perfect targets for your new amp however some of them function very similarly to the suicide bombers from Infamous 1 and they are equally as annoying the cryogenic soldiers are the most unique enemy in the game and they serve as a really fun set of foes they use guns and conduit powers to deal some damage to you with some using ice shields and some using shotguns these shotgun soldiers can move incredibly fast and they get right up in your face and just blast you where these guys improve over the shotgun foes in the original game is that they just can't go invisible and here there is a solid delay between when they aim their shotgun and when they fire so you have ample time to distance yourself the enemies are not locked to one District necessarily though as the game goes on the cryogenic soldiers will become more present as they are the most difficult enemies to fight what I have yet to mention about these enemy groups are the handful of mini bosses tied to them the militia don't have any mini bosses unless you count the minigun enemies but I don't think I would because they don't have a health bar the corrupted have many different mini bosses and even full-on bosses the first of which is the ravager these guys can Burrow under the ground and can do some pretty hefty damage on top of that much like a lot of the mini bosses their rough exterior leaves them unfazed by regular electric attacks you'll have to make use of some of your more explosive abilities such as the grenades Rockets blasts or Kinesis to take these guys down they were pretty fun and challenging enough to fight and they even get a slight upgrade later in the game where they can spawn these tiny monsters called spikers that can nibble away at your health the Devourer is next up and this guy can only be damaged through his weak point in his mouth he contains a lot of abilities like spinning his toxic bile at you and he can blow you back with a Roar on top of that he can send out his tongue to grab you and try to eat you this type of mini boss is a lot of fun for me and what I like about the two mini bosses here here is that they reflect Bertrand's moveset hitting weak points that projectiles the ability to spawn enemies the tongues that pull people in are all present in bird transfied to a larger degree I really appreciate boss fights and incorporate skills you've already learned over the course of the game so I found Bertrand and his mini boss counterparts to be really well done here the cryogenic mini bosses are also pretty fun as the first the crusher has some pretty intense attacks such as spawning these chunks of ice on the ground picking them up and then tossing them at you they also have some melee based attacks and can move quite quickly they're eventually followed up by the Titans who are easily the bulkiest and strongest mini bosses in the game as they can fire an intense Ice Beam at you along with other projectiles that come out at a pretty quick speed they are damaged through normal means like rockets and grenades but can have their limbs blown off when their health is low enough you can expose their weak point through a QuickTime event and with it can start doing some more damage I like the rate at which these mini bosses were introduced and used after their introduction they spiced up gameplay without becoming too saturated the only real bad instance I had with a mini boss is one where a Titan is spawned on a boat the Titan has the ability to send you flying away from them if you get too close on the boat with all the enemies surrounding you and all the explosions that could hit you in such a tight space the odds of coal getting too close to the Titan is pretty high and if that Titan were to blast you away there's a high chance you'll end up in the water giving you an instant game over other than that these were pretty fun then there are also the actual boss fights in the game which are really good barring a few but we'll get to those as they become relevant first off I may as well talk about the fight against Bertrand both occasions since they function quite similarly to one another the first time you see them you're being chased through the city with him hot on your Trail and you take him down by taking out his weak points this fight is short and is picked up on and expanded upon in his second fight near the end of the game which is much harder as there are a lot more complexity to his moves and he has further moves at his disposal as I mentioned before they are all derivative of the smaller mini bosses and we spend a lot of the fight leading Bertrand into explosives and causing him to tear the very Island that he owns apart shooting the missiles that get lodged in his skin while hanging from a helicopter was a really awesome set piece and overall the fight was fine not too mechanically deep but cool enough next up is NYX who uses the RFI against you when you first encounter her she is taken down quite easily through melee or Rockets though her second phase on top of the cathedral is a lot harder due to her intense move set she uses a lot of abilities against you that you have such as the firebird strike and it felt really well balanced as she is damaged like a normal enemy I wish I had more to say about it but I don't it was just a good time the quote on the other hand is a different story and that's because her fight was less than 10 seconds I did not experience her fight at all because when she spawned I just blasted her with the rapid fire bolt and it was over before I knew it I should also mention that my recordings were done in one session for each playthrough and when I finished quo I just laughed it off and my monkey brain did not at any point until the autosave had taken over thought huh maybe I have to critique this boss fight and I should probably reload a save finally we have the fight against the Beast this boss fight only takes place in the good playthrough unfortunately and is quite similar to your first encounter in the first game the difference is you're now a little bit stronger and your goal isn't even to take the guy down it's just to stall him I'm actually quite torn on this fight if I'm being honest I like it a lot but we've seen the Beast take down half of the east coast and even survived a nuke so we know that unless coal is packing a serious nuke size lightning bolt in his back pocket there isn't much we can do but I would have enjoyed something a little more than just wailing on him until the health bar hit zero this was an issue I had with the first Infamous as well and while some of the fights here are better mechanically speaking this fight feels inferior and quite underwhelming when compared to Bertrand we don't use our abilities in different ways to take him down at least not in his first stage on the other hand though it felt so good to just unleash all of Cole's powers in this climactic David vs Goliath battle furthering this is when the Beast returns and Cole is wielding the RFI since it is fully charged we literally have unlimited power and it felt so good to just one last time go balls to the wall again on one hand it's literally just pumping a big man full of electricity but there's that piece in the spectacle of it alone was enough for me to not really care now at this point we should probably discuss the elephant in the room regarding these bosses being that there are only four boss fights in the game a maximum of three per play through that being Bertrand quo Nix and the Beast I bring this up now because you may notice that aside from the ending the only boss fight is against Bertrand I didn't mind this because there was a good balance of mini bosses mixed in and plenty of amazing set pieces to keep the game interesting while yes the evil ending sees you only fighting Knicks it also allows you to tear ass through new Murray with the Beast acting as a little devil on his shoulder and it just doesn't get better than that gameplay wise so when comparing it to the first game the boss fights are fine they're not much of an improvement mechanically I mean it's not like the bar was set very high with the first infamous us as it was but I at least felt like the pacing of the boss fights were well done here I just wanted another boss fight in between the Bertrand fights I think it would have kept the pace up though I'm not sure if boss fights or sucker punches Forte I mean even an Infamous Second Son the boss fights are essentially the same as they are here so maybe it's okay for them to rely on the intense set pieces to carry the fights rather than the mechanical depth because of that I can't say for sure which game has better boss fights though I can at least say that I prefer Infamous 2 since it had a larger scale which the first game didn't really have I should also mention that there are some side quests in the game that can be done to clear an enemy's presence in a part of the map they function near identically to the first game and were just as mediocre that's why I didn't talk about them at all in my Infamous 1 video I just had nothing to say on them and here it's basically the same thing I can at least praise both games for not making the side quests necessary and you'll have no struggles with feeling under-leveled if you do decide to skip them finally before we get into the story we should take a look at the karma system and how it's handled when it comes to gameplay it is quite quite similar in that if you're good you need to be a little more mindful of your surroundings and if you are evil you can just go balls to the wall all the time if you're good your stature will be more rigid and heroic and if you're evil not only will your clothes and skin tone reflect that but your stance will also be hilariously slouched the first decision you come across is when entering new Murray you can charge up the generator to lower a bridge charge it up to get across into the village filled with militia however if you want to make life a little bit easier you can overcharge the generator causing it to explode this will wipe out the entire militia presence but also the women and children both choices are Justified if you ask me of course one is clearly the wrong option but it reminded me of the tar decision from the first game where if you take the blast of tar you'll have your powers limited but if you get someone else to do it then you can cruise through with no problems whose health is more important yours or theirs it's especially nice seeing these kinds of decisions when we compare it to the decisions made in Infamous Second Son where the options are literally redeem or corrupt the youth the more stilted choices from the first game here are absent and it makes the choices feel a little more gameplay driven what I do miss from the first game is the moments in which the game takes an active look into Cole's mind he'll stop for a moment and actively weigh the pros and cons of each decision it just went a long way for making both choices justifiable this only happens at the last decision the final decision is also the only official morality based decision that takes place outside of gameplay what I don't really enjoy necessarily is the restrictive nature of this decision it's posed as an actual decision however if you were on an evil playthrough you would have to spend your time doing kind actions to switch your Morality In order to make the heroic decision now on one hand I understand to an extent why they did this because if you were able to make a decision regardless of your karmic alignment it could defeat the purpose of having the decisions lead up to that point in the story it wouldn't make sense for Cole throughout the entire story to disregard normal humans and yet in the final moments sacrifices life to essentially eliminate The evolutionary jump to save those who he deemed worthless pawns up to that point though at the same time they didn't have to give you the choice it would have been really cool in my eyes if they took away your choice and if Cole's decision was predetermined based on your actions up to that point it would be especially neat considering that all major decisions in the game are left up to the player the descriptions of the options talk about fulfilling your destiny and if the decision was made for you it could allow the game to comment more on Destiny and morality but It ultimately doesn't at least not as much as it could most of the actual choices in the game are made in gameplay like the first game healing citizens restraining enemies bio leeching stealing blast shards and shooting street performers the major story decisions however are made in these split missions you're given two missions in front of you and whichever you choose the other will be locked out what makes this in my eyes not as good as the first game is that Cole does not really give his thoughts on any of this when nearing one of the missions either quo or NYX will call you and encourage you to choose the other Mission these never did much to convince me and that's because a lot of the decisions here not all of them were pretty black and white some on the other hand are presented in a moral gray area but are still treated as a black and white decision at the halfway point in the game you'll be given the option to swap Powers with either quo or NYX no matter what you choose the machine that transfers the powers is destroyed so nobody gets Cole's Powers so you essentially have the choice to get ice or Napalm the issue is quo is a heroic playthrough exclusive meaning that if you are evil and choose to swap to quo you'll be swapped from Evil to heroic Karma the thing that bothered me about this decision is it is the only decision in the game that seemed to have no clear distinction between what is right and wrong it shouldn't make a difference who you swap Powers with since either option results in Cole gaining a new moveset and the other receiving nothing so why is it then that this decision is the only one not color coded I know that I have mentioned in my second son review that I felt the decision should not be so black and white but wise morality tied to this at all I can only assume it is because NYX encourages Cole to indulge in his evil desires and because quo encourages him to do the opposite But ultimately making this decision tied to your karma just threw me off what's worse is that some of nix's and Cole's powers are tied to your karma so if you pick quo's powers and then decide to swap to an evil playthrough you just won't have either of their powers I think the major difference with the karma in this game compared to the first game is that it drastically changes the missions in the first Infamous you were doing the same missions regardless of karma however the missions will be approached differently for the example of the oil tankers you could tank the damage that would come from manually shutting down the tank or override it injuring the people but saving yourself in Infamous 2 the overarching goal might be the same but the way you approach that goal is entirely different for example when trying to break into a militarized fort to get the power transfer device you have two options quo suggests we empower the resistance to entice them to work with us or or you can Sage a militia attack with NYX where she's in Disguise as one of the militia mowing down LaRosa's men allowing a perfect opportunity for Cole to swoop in and convince them that he is the only protection that they have these missions are wildly different from each other but what makes them a little underwhelming is the outcome and consequences of this choice and many others I bring up this specific choice because in my eyes it falls apart when you look at it a little more correct me if I'm wrong but nobody in their right mind would want to take nyx's roads in quo's plan she is essentially empowering the resistance that is going to help us storm the fort in nyx's plan we are literally killing and weakening the forces that we want help from on top of wanting her allies to be sick and unarmed when storming the fort she also claims that if the resistance is too strong then they won't depend on the conduits for help but why would they refuse the conduit's help Cole is already pretty friendly with LaRoche and it's not like the healthy and heavily armed militia ever stood a chance as it is is the mission at least fun yeah but logically it makes no sense and this is unfortunately a running theme that persists throughout the game and something that we have seen gets worse in second sun take the choice as presented to you in flood Town Cole and the Gang are trying to figure out the next way to take down Bertrand NYX tells him that Bertrand is actually creating the monsters that have invaded new Murray quo makes a very good suggestion she thinks that they should find evidence and put him on blast in front of the entire city turning them against this political figure now NYX suggests that they find some of the creatures and work to get them on their side and states that they could cause a ton of chaos together but how does this further the plot at all and how does this help them achieve their goal of taking Bertrand down it's not like they can build their own monster Army to combat his seemingly Unlimited Supply so again nobody in their right mind would picnics as options because it's just a waste of time on top of that it doesn't even serve her karmic role because training these monsters to fight for you isn't a bad thing now there is an issue with the karma system here and the way it affects the story in that it really doesn't I'm not asking for the game to have a million different branching paths based on your decisions but for the sake of replay value having only a handful of missions exclusive to each playthrough isn't entirely enough for me I also felt like my actions did not result in any real change to explain what I mean in a more visual manner I want you to take a look at this line here this is the story now in a typical story if you were to choose to say expose per Trend it would Branch out and you would be led down the line to where the city is now on your side and they could help you in the next fight against Bertrand if you choose to raise an army that would Branch out as well and that Army would help you in the fight and it could cause even other ramifications but I don't want my expectations to seem too high on the line it would split and then continue the way it actually works here is that the line splits for a moment and then immediately goes back to its neutral state in which your choices have had no impact in reality if you is an army it makes no impact and if you expose Bertrand to the city it also makes no impact these branching paths are just dropped as if they never happened now is this better than the first game on one hand yeah because the choices didn't make much of an impact on the story there as well and it didn't result in any new missions but on the other hand both options when you were presented with a choice in the first game were justifiable so I do enjoy the first games karma more but ultimately I can see why you would like this game's Karma system more as well I think this is overall the only point in which the game could be considered inferior to the first game so now that we have covered the karma and have touched on some of the choices in the story I'd like to analyze the story as a whole whilst giving a summary Cole picks up his training at Empire City with Lucy quo a Government contact attempting to help him prepare for the arrival of the Beast the Beast shows up and absolutely destroys Empire City and coal Cole and the Gang narrowly escape and fleets enumerate where Cole meets Dr Wolf Wolf has had his blast course stolen blast cores are what is needed for coal to acquire new abilities and charge the RFI the RFI also known as the Rayfield inhibitor can essentially work as an anti-ray sphere and takes Powers away from any conduits on top of that it can completely cure the plague that has infected a majority of the world a plague spawned from the radiation poisoning that was left over from the blast in Empire City we track down the blast cores and try to deal with numere's new dictator Joseph Bertrand who's using his militia to turn a once Rowdy and party-driven City into a large-scale prison along the way Dr Wolf is killed and quo is captured when we find her we see that she has been given cryogenic powers that allow her to control ice though it is not explained how these Powers were given to her within the story itself it's touched on I believe in audio logs but it doesn't really matter regardless her powers have been copied onto soldiers similar to how the dup had Augustine's concrete abilities we also meet with a conduit named NYX who was given Powers after Bertrand used another ray sphere in the swamps of numerae explaining her powers and were trans we work to collect blast shards and we eventually befriend the leader of the resistance against the militia LaRoche and with his help we take down Bertrand and eventually get powerful enough to charge the RFI I'm gonna try and analyze this upcoming decision here more than any of the others because it actually makes a difference in the story since it changes what ending you get before this decision Cole meets up with Jon your contact from the first game who gets consumed by the race fear he explains that the plague that is wiping out Humanity will not stop and that he can actually save people from that plague Jon has the power to identify who has the plague and who has the conduit Gene Jon can activate that Gene and cure them but those that are not lucky enough to have such a gene will die considering that around 1 in 16 people are conduits this option certainly gets your hands dirty when charging the RFI NYX quo and Cole all felt that they were dying and this information was hidden from them by wolf quo realizing that she will have to sacrifice her life is now more inclined to join Jon and Nyx wants to kill the Beast no matter what it's only to get revenge on Jon for killing her swamp creatures that she stole from her Trend now I like this Choice a lot because both sides are justifiable on one hand the Beast is everything that Kessler worked towards he spent decades crafting a master plan just so he could create coal and turn him into the only thing capable of stopping the Beast it's the only way to save Humanity but at the cost of any conduits whether they are activated or not otherwise Jon will destroy the entire world and Humanity will have to start almost all over again on the other hand Jon's method as quo States works it is a Surefire way to guarantee that Humanity survives this plague as activated conduits are immune to it it's an evolutionary jump that some would say is necessary as we know from what Nix has told us Empire City was not the only location with a ray sphere are humans going to continue to create these race fears and these explosions what if we stop the virus kill all conduits and then another psycho like Bertrand comes along and creates a new sphere setting it off and then leaving Humanity with the same plague and the same dilemma what if in this hypothetical next pandemic we don't have both the RFI or the Beast to give us a Surefire way out of it the choices boiled down to who should be saved the humans or the conduits I like that this choice is a moral gray area and that the typical enforcers of heroism and villainy are swapped here NYX wants you to take down Jon and quill wants you to join him and their motivations are really good quill has always been someone who wants to do the right thing but now that her life is on the line she just wants to survive and she's scared Nicks on the other hand is flat out just looking for Revenge she doesn't care what is right or wrong she only cares about killing Jon I enjoy that they form their stances not based on the game's designated side of the morality coin that is given to them but because of their own personality traits even then they still somewhat enforce the different sides of the way this series portrays morality based on the decision to get revenge on Hank and Infamous Second Son it's clear that sucker punch sees Revenge as an evil action so NYX falls into that side of Karma and yet it influences her to make what this game determines as the right decision doing the right thing for the wrong reasons I think that's what I mostly don't like about this choice voice though the fact that it poses this really interesting dilemma and yet it makes the decision for you the game color codes the decision so there's no denying which decision is right and which one is wrong on top of that as I mentioned before the decision is made for you is if you want to swap to what the game defines as the evil decision you'll be set out on the evil path it completely defeated the purpose of having a choice and it made this really well presented dilemma feel underwhelming if you choose to help Jon you have to Rampage through new Murray having your powers Amplified by the Beast and you have to fight Nicks along the way and the game really does a great job of making you feel like a Powerhouse you also have to kill Nixon eventually kill Zeke the way the game forces you to take your time with killing Zeke is just completely wrenching at the heartstrings and despite Zeke betraying you in the first game and despite your relationship between Zeke being so on the Rocks throughout the game you really felt bad about it after everyone who could pose a physical or emotional threat is out of the way Jon tells you that he is simply too tired to keep going he then transfers his powers into coal and Cole essentially leads the charge going across the world to finish Jon's work if you choose to charge the RFI then you need to go fix it up since it was damaged by Zeke earlier quo ends up shutting down the power across new Murray and so we have to get it turned back on to proceed we have a fight with quo and because it lasted eight seconds we very quickly move on to charging the RFI at the Cathedral but as we're planning to leave Nick sacrifices herself to stun the Beast and it gives us enough time to fully charge the RFI before hitting the button though we get one last fight with Jon and it's no competition when we have the RFI powering us up and Jon's Powers which further amplify our own we absolutely annihilate him once he's done we're about to press the button but quo shows up repenting for the wrong choice she admits that she was just scared to die and Cole shares this sentiment regardless he pushes the button and it's a happy ever after all the humans are cured and all the conduits are dead Cole is hailed as a hero but Zeke takes him out to sea for his burial we we see a bolt of lightning at the very end that supposedly hints at Cole still being alive but I don't want to get into any speculation I both the endings here are pretty satisfying and I appreciate that the most important plot points are wrapped up in both endings I feel like it was a satisfying conclusion if we ignore the karma system at play and I feel it did a better job than Infamous 1. for example when the looming threat of the Beast is present throughout the entire game every time you obtain a blast chord the game tells you how far away the Beast is and when you press pause you can also see a map of how far the Beast is and the cities he has destroyed there's even a point where you can clearly see the Beast just over the horizon of new Murray the game reinforces how much of a threat it is on multiple occasions including a mission where you launch a literal nuke at it and it survives we then have to struggle to get ourselves and Zeke out of the area and despite me hilariously dropping a light on him it was just one of the awesome set pieces here the only issue I have with the story is how it is ultimately hindered by the karma some tasks such as exposing Bertrand end up meaning nothing to the overall plot because the story insists on remaining as neutral as possible cold responds the same in cutscenes regardless of his karmic alignment and I'm not asking for wildly different branching paths here but at least some more noticeable differences would be nice fortunately the characters don't suffer from this issue aside from coal to an extent and I'd like to now transition into the characters in the game Cole doesn't talk much here he's strong and stoic but he's still hurting from the events of the first Infamous as shown when Zeke asks about Trish actually man reminds me of taking care of you after the blasting Empire uh and me and Trish were worried sick for nothing sure should have been worried and he got her killed [Music] he still carries that guilt and Trish's untimely death is not the only thing that haunts Cole here his relationship with Zeke is as unstable as ever and Cole doesn't seem to trust him 100 percent and even blames him to an extent for everything that happened and honestly I don't blame him Zeke portrayed you in the first game and was ultimately pretty selfish he's still selfish here to an extent as he seems to near expect Cole to sacrifice himself to charge the RFI but we can get into that later I'll die if you don't so will millions of others I like that Cole seems more confident in his powers as he now has a lot more control over it and he's a little arrogant in some cases and I appreciate the way the game presents this because it allows Cole to feel like his own character with personality traits outside of his morality even when he's heroic and makes the right decisions he's still a little self-indulgent as shown when he decides to instead of immediately charging the RFI enjoys his powers one more time before it's all over he's all too eager to consume the first blast chord to the point where he nearly blows off Dr Wolf together we will defeat the Beast oh enough of the pet dog wolf let's do this [Applause] he snaps under stressful situations and I just appreciate when heroes are not made out to be this biblical Prophet who is a paragon through and through Zeke is much the same as the first game with his classic one-liners and lackadaisical approach to everything easy quote we get there we're gonna be about the Three B's that's beer boobs and mechanical bullets gentlemen I don't think that you understand the scope of what is going on here The Duality between Cole and Zeke is pretty interesting and seeing Zeke essentially on his best behavior is a constant reminder that he still feels bad for screwing over Cole back in Empire City listen to the sadness in his voice when Cole brings up that event you join the militia wow it's more like a Zeke Dunbar double agent you get it I'm a spy for our side right oh yeah little faith well my face been shaking before Z I thought that was water under the bridge come on man it's clear that Zeke has to an extent learned from the events of Empire City too he is no longer power hungry and his detrimental jealousy of coal has turned into a great deal of respect remember when Zeke tried to play the role of Hiro in the first game and got captured by alden's Trashmen well now he's not sneaking into bases on his own sure he's finding ways to help such as joining the militia in order to gain Intel but in the game he ends up playing the sidekick role rather than trying to be the hero though he does have his moments of heroism such as when he saves Cole from Bertrand who has him locked in a cage meaning he can't use his powers I think it's pretty poetic that in the first game Cole has to save Zeke from a cage and in this game Zeke is saving coal from a cage this is what causes Cole to realize that Zeke really is there for him and that he needs to stop treating him so poorly their best friends in the game hammers at home so well take the cutscene where they just sit down crack open a beer and just relax together you ever had one of those friends you know the one that you're so close to that sometimes you'll just do things together without really talking at all your both just chilling out enjoying each other's company well if you're wondering what that's like I'd say this is a very accurate representation even in the evil ending when you have to kill Zeke it's brutally clear that neither of them want to do it but their goals force them against each other and for Zeke it's a fight he can't win NYX is an interesting character due to her backstory and style but I found myself not liking her more than anything this is due to how she feels like she doesn't have a ton to her character outside of pushing the plot along her reasonings for wanting to do the things she does are so unproductive to the goal that I'm left wondering what the point of her was aside from being a counter to quo quo on the other hand is a little more fleshed out though it seems her story is skipped over a bit here what I mean is that she's clearly a good person but when she gets her powers she ends up herding coal and quo says that she just doesn't know how to control her powers and that she's scared and I liked seeing that I wanted to see more of how someone like her would react in a situation like that but instead literally right after this cut scene she starts kicking ass and her learning to control her powers is never brought up again past this point until the final decision she is ultimately feeling the same role as NYX and that they both act as the angel and devil on Cole's shoulders Bertrand was a neat villain though there isn't much surrounding him in the story there is a plot with him attempting to create these super soldiers made for war but this is not touched on aside from the mission in which it's introduced since we take him down pretty soon after I would have enjoyed seeing more about this but I can also see why they didn't bother focusing on it too much Jon was interesting too since as explained earlier his method of curing the plague is a justifiable one I also appreciated that Jon seemingly untied loose end from the first game as tied up here LaRoche was just okay he didn't do much so I don't really have a ton to say on him he's just a perv which I guess is his biggest personality trait but yeah not much to go on here I like the story here generally speaking dude the excellent voice acting and due to how climactic the ending was I think it certainly has some more missed opportunities in the first game story but I also think that's because it's so much bigger than the first game I think as far as sequel goes it does a good job of tying up any Loose Ends from the first game and giving a satisfying conclusion for the pre-existing characters however some of the newer characters felt a little underdeveloped which parallel some of my issues with the first game story instead of Trish being underdeveloped we have NYX who felt underdeveloped I think that is where I'm torn most here I feel that this story works as a sequel seeing as it does tie up those loose ends but at the same time it creates a new list of problems and untied Loose Ends that's why at the beginning of this video I explained that Infamous 2 is almost a perfect sequel but not a perfect game it did so much to refine the experience of the first Infamous and it added so much to it that it makes it a must play for any fan of the series there are some issues here but it was ultimately a really fun time and in my eyes a satisfying conclusion to Cole's Story the game looks much nicer and runs much better too even if it still Falls below the 30 FPS mark on a frequent basis the powers from the first game all return in some form here and it gets even better when you factor in two new elements to control and a huge variety of Powers at your disposal the traversal was much tighter this time around and the setting seemed to have been especially designed to make use of your movement this led to the traversal and overall gameplay being a lot more fun for me since I was able to move freely without having to scale a skyscraper for 20 seconds the boss fights are still pretty primitive here but ultimately it was a little more complex than the first game's fights and the spectacle of it was turned up to 11. the karma system here was really why I say this is almost a perfect sequel because I think the first game did it better the different decisions here didn't often have an impact on the story and they were typically very black and white hell some of them were even decided for you and not in a good way like how Infamous one handled the Trish decision fortunately the well-written story and fun characters made up for it even if it still left some to be desired Infamous 2 was a fun time and a game that I can definitely see myself going back to I think in some cases it's probably the best Infamous game in the series I still think my favorite isn't from a second son but if someone were to ask me which one is the best I think this is a no-brainer with that being said I've looked at all three of the mainline Infamous games and I would really love to see a sequel to delson's story or just another Infamous game in general I won't say that this series is done for me since I have yet to take a look at Infamous Festival of Blood but that'll be for another video as for now I'm hopeful for the future of this series because I truly believe it has a bright future ahead of it and there's still more to explore in the world and gameplay of Infamous if the series does end here then I gotta be honest it'll feel like an incomplete story and it's gonna suck because I love this series and I'm sure gonna miss it Infamous 2 was and still is one of my favorite games for the PlayStation 3. it did so much to expand on the first game from its characters to its world to its gameplay and while it wasn't perfect I'd argue it was quite close now with the game so financially and critically successful and based on the clear amount of passion the developers and fans had towards the character and the series it's hard to see a character as likable as Cole get canned after only two games thankfully this is where the Standalone expansion Infamous Festival of Blood comes in released surprisingly only a few months after Infamous 2. this is an expansion I don't see many people talking about these days which is unfortunate because despite it being short on both length and ideas it'll still quench a die hard's thirst for more Infamous but not much else since this is a DLC I'll be it a standalone DLC I'll attempt to hold it to my own definition of what makes a good DLC which I have outlined a few times before essentially I'm looking for something that expands on the story The gameplay and the world of whatever base game it is attached to and Festival blood hit some of these notes and while not the best game out there I recommend any Infamous fan give it a shot or at least I would if there weren't so many hurdles in the way before we go any further I need to remind you that there will be full spoilers here for both this expansion and Infamous 2. even the footage up to this point has been relatively riddled with spoilers since this DLC is only a few hours long I also want to add that I was not able to secure this game on my PlayStation 3. and for that reason I had to record and play through this on my PlayStation 5 through the use of PS now because of that there might be some parts of the footage here that are Beyond unkind to the frame rate and the resolution from what I read online though this is an issue with the streaming service itself and if you're playing this on a PS3 it supposedly runs the same as Infamous 2 did there is a pretty noticeable delay that also comes with the streaming service so if I look like I'm playing while I'm shit-faced it's just a delay though According to some of your comments my aim isn't that great when I'm sober either this is why I mentioned the hurdles earlier if you want to play this you're going to need a PlayStation 4 or 5 a stable internet connection and a subscription to PlayStation now and on top of that you'll still be playing on what feels like a mosaic filter throughout and you'll see frame rates that make you question if it's even worth the 13 Canadian dollars per month because of this it makes it hard to immediately recommend this DLC or not after some more consideration I'd say that if you're planning on playing this on PS now which is pretty much the only way and if you have a really good internet connection I'd recommend it only because you can not only play this but a bunch of other games through PS now including the other Infamous games I also want to give a general warning to those that may try and grab codes for this game online while grabbing the infamous series for these videos I purchased the infamous collection that came with the discs for both Infamous 1 and 2. and it also came with a code for Festival of Blood and the code was there but it was expired I didn't even think that a code could have expired and thankfully with PS now it didn't really matter but I figured I'd let you guys know since I consider myself a relatively intelligent gentleman and yet I was stupid enough to make this mistake so who knows maybe you are too anyways I was very excited to go Winter Festival of Blood because of how much I enjoyed Infamous First Light which I've also covered on my channel and because I've just come off the trails of my Infamous 2 video and was still in love with Cole Zeke and the infamous Universe I was ready to dive in the concept for this particular story is that on power night a pseudo Halloween coal is bitten by a legendary vampire Bloody Mary and has to use his Newfound vampire powers to defeat her and reverse his Newfound Powers as the only way he can sustain himself is by killing others and sucking their blood as far as presentation goes it's nearly identical to Infamous 2 and that's not a bad thing by any means the new tools at Kohl's disposal on the new UI all look great and look like you would expect them to just about everything here has a demonic spooky twist to it from the environments to even the pause screen which has a beastly coal shooting a hungered gaze towards the player animations of coal throwing his new stake into a vampire are satisfying to the nth degree and the new design of Cole's clothes look good too as it opts for an evil look which combines the clothing of a neutral Karma a coal with the stance of a Bad Karma coal of course with a blood splatter on the chest for good measure this is further reflected in the narrative but let's instead shift to how the game presents that narrative technically the cutscenes here look like they always did though for a few missions in order to promote the use of the game's user-generated content and level designing tools a few missions take place almost entirely within said level creators which means that cutscenes are jarringly cheap I like that these comic book s cutscenes are possible within the level Creator and for players making levels this is great and I understand that this was done to promote the ugc which I don't believe received much love in Infamous 2 because I remember back when it was still online that I didn't care much for it though I was 12 at the time so regardless I still think mixing in the classic cutscenes here would have been helpful since the themes and topics discussed NSAID cutscenes are really interesting fortunately this is the biggest criticism I have with the presentation and it's barely even a criticism at that going back to those user generated levels though I actually can't say much on them since they are offline I wasn't able to play them outside of the ones you're forced to complete in the main story and I'm sure this feature added a ton of value to the game at the time and while I don't typically hold games that are nearly a decade old to today's standards in this case I just have to ignore this feature and judge the game by today's release where it just isn't here furthermore after completing a large handful of ugc missions you can unlock an alternate skin for coal that features accentuated vampiric qualities but I unfortunately could not get footage of this and if you are playing this game today chances are you're not going to see it in game either going back to what I like I have to say that I appreciate the revamped numerate here the expansion takes place in just one District of numerator to keep things tight and I like this decision because coupled with the streets that have totems and large crowds the town feels claustrophobic at times this is reinforced by the catacombs that are now available for exploration which have many tight corridors and poorly lit areas not only does the poor lighting here allow you to feel a little more out of your depth but it allows your eyes to Feast upon the stark contrast as presented once you shoot a few bolts around as the orange electricity illuminates the room and it felt reminiscent of the sewers within the first Infamous game the Skies of new Murray are also great as they see some giant balloons fireworks and something I really like here is that you can actually encounter Mary in the Overworld you can't attack her and trying to do so will cause some of your power to be temporarily limited and she'll summon a squad of bloodsuckers to cause you some trouble but damn if it wasn't so cool just seeing her she just flies around as a swarm of bats and eventually hits the ground to feed on some innocence and while simplistic it's just one of those neat things I wish had been done more it reminded me of seeing the Beast Over the Horizon in Infamous 2. so while nothing major has changed with the city or the game's presentation as a whole there were enough minor changes to give this game its own identity and for anyone to be able to tell from just a single screenshot that yup this is Festival of Blood another defining feature for the game's identity is the powers at your disposal as you've likely seen in the footage up to this point Cole has some new vampiric powers before we sink our teeth right in though we have to acknowledge that there is no Karma meter here and its replacement is the corruption meter which fuels Cole's vampire base Powers they are separate from his electric powers meaning you can't use electricity through the corruption meter and you can't perform any vampire Shenanigans with your electric charges keeping the powers interchangeable but not the power sources was a good decision as it adds a new if not minimal layer to the gameplay where you have two power sources to keep track of and where you can assuming both are charged mixed swarms of bats into your electric light shows another positive this decision brings is that it fits within The Narrative of the game which I will touch on briefly here Cole within the context of the story has a consistent hunger for blood which can only be satiated through sucking a civilian's blood which kills them there are a few points in the narrative where Cole and Zeke Ponder the morality of curb and Cole's hunger and there could be some ludo-narrative dissonance if the game is portraying coal as a bad guy which the game does and you as the player are avoiding sucking the civilian's blood it could possibly create a disconnect while you can go most of the game without sucking a neck you're heavily encouraged because if you were to avoid it you'd be missing out out on the new powers at your disposal such as the bat swarm speaking of which Infamous has for a while now been the top dog when it comes to superhero games and what's one of the first powers that comes to mind when you think of a superhero chances are you probably said flight even in Infamous 2 the woman you rescue from the hospital near the end of the game straight up flies away and even quo has something like it though hers is more akin to delson's smoke Dash the point is flight is something on every person's Infamous Powers wish list or at least it was until this game came around of course adding flight wouldn't be so simple the issue generally is that flight is just far too simple of a mechanic to integrate into this game now I'm not saying that simple mechanics are bad the neon Dash ability from second sun and first light is a perfect example of how a simple traversal mechanic can still be fun this ability was as simple as pressing Circle and then steering your character not very deep at all but it was still entertaining enough that a lot of you probably spent minutes at a time just zipping across a Skyline the reason it worked there in my eyes is is because it wasn't necessarily the fastest way to Traverse it was the easiest means of traversal and arguably the prettiest and sure in some linear cases it was the fastest but when it came to the speed of traversal using a smoke vent was the fastest way to Traverse vertically and the same went for video on the horizontal axis to add to this the other powers traversal wise had a few more things to consider in order to make your trip as rewarding and efficient as possible neon served as a good all-rounder not the be-all end-all flight on the other hand is the be-all end-all it would be the fastest way to get from point A to point B and the most efficient the problems that immediately arise is that flight can only look so interesting if you're flying from point A to B chances are you'll Fly Above the skyline and just Cruise meaning you'll be hypothetically seeing your character in a superman-like pose for depending on the distance minutes at a time I can't imagine the nightmare it would be to keep the player entertained by visuals alone the next major issue which is only applicable to Infamous 2 in this case is that flight would negate every other reversal ability instead of chaining together thrusters and grind rails and Phoenix strikes and lightning tethers we could just fly I know I've harped on about the implications of flight within the series for a minute or two now but the reason I bring it up here is because Sucker Punch did Implement flight and they could have easily botched it they could have easily just added the ability to fly in a swarm of bats done nothing with it and called it a day but they didn't there are a handful of ways to make flight engaging to the player but I'll spare you another tangent and quit beating around the bush you have the ability to turn yourself into a swarm of bats and can fly for a short period of time the reason your flight is restricted is because it heavily drains your corruption meter the restrictive nature of this power however is why I like it so much and that's because it integrates well with your other powers each traversal base power from the base game is given to you as a means of traversing a part of the city the thrusters allow you to clear larger gaps the grinding is to cover a large amount of linear path quickly the tether and vertical power rails allow you to gain height but each of those abilities only solves the simplistic problem associated with them traversing the city is your problem and your powers are the tools for solving that problem but the combination of said Powers is what will give you the ultimate solution this is why flight works so well here it is powerful yet limited the only way to recharge your corruption meter is by biting down on an innocent bystander and those are most commonly found at street level most of your traversal in the game takes place either in the air or at an elevated plane even the vertical grind poles reinforce that sentiment as their only purpose is to get you to High Ground I and I assume a lot of you want to move in a fluid motion combining abilities with each other so your momentum is never killed using all of your corruption though isn't a good way to achieve this since you'll have to stop on the ground give someone a hickey and then get back to high ground so the best way to use the flight isn't bursts the thrusters in the game are really good for carrying you across large gaps but some are so large that you can just barely make it instead of latching onto the ledge and having your momentum effectively killed you can do a short burst of flight to give you the extra distance needed to clear that Gap what if you're using a grind Rail and you misjudge your Dismount meaning you'll miss the roof that you're aiming for the bat swarm can act as a safety net as it can be activated to quickly redirect cores since a majority of your objectives are on the ground you can start at Point a bite a neck hit the skies and Pace your corruption meter well enough so that by the time you hit point B your objective you'll be on street level within close proximity to another source of corruption meaning you've gone from point A to B without having to stop of course this is a bit of a difficult task but that's what makes the traversal in the Infamous game so engaging and it's even more so the case here if the challenge is too much though you can through collecting urns around the map increase your corruption meter to around double its original size before I move on I'll end this point of traversal by completely contradicting myself a little by acknowledging that it is a lot of fun to see how high you can fly and then slam into the ground even if it's not the peak of traversal it's a good time to goof around with your powers and unfortunately as far as new powers to goof around with go this is essentially where the train starts pump its brakes you can use your bat swarm to charge an enemy and if you hit them directly they'll be staked instantly the next new power you have isn't even a new power it's the stake and cross of Ignatius and it just replaces the amp and it provides more use than the amp as you can now stake vampires which is the only way to take them down for good but instead of creating distance between yourself and The Targets in front of you a more direct and close-up approach will be rewarded as you can quickly stake any foes down there is unfortunately little to say here as the stake doesn't change much in the gameplay department and those are pretty much the only major changes here when it comes to the combat which to me is a little disappointing there's also a new spin on your pseudo Eagle Vision from the first and second Infamous games as instead of using them to find blast shards your vampire sense can be used to find Collectibles audio logs and to seek out the firstborns that are hiding in plain sight disguised as humans it's again here pretty disappointing and underwhelming I would have liked to have seen some more offensive vampire powers we can have a new spin on the grenade for example imagine you can now through draining of a bit of the corruption meter throw a grenade that when exploding on impact bursts a significant amount of blood painting the walls and more importantly enemies hypothetically splattering some blood on the enemy would do minimal damage but the moisture on the enemy could greater conduct electricity and multiply the damage of your electric attacks Not only would this greater enforce the mix-and-match playstyle that the traversal instilled with how mixing electrokinetic abilities and vampire abilities led to a great sense of flow but it would also fit in with Cole's other powers when attacking there were a ton of ways to combine your powers in inFAMOUS 2 and having another ability that can be mixed and matched would be a perfect fit this is just one example though there are many more unlikely there are some that I myself have yet to think of of course considering the price point of this game I don't want my expectations to seem too high and I'm not asking for an entirely new moveset but I think when it comes to combat we're just one ability short of having something truly unique since the karma system isn't present here you might be curious as to what powers Cole has at his disposal and the answer is that we get some of his best from the evil and good side of his karmic state in Infamous 2. Cole canonically in this game aligns with the Good Karma however after he becomes a vampire his actions force him to dabble into the more Infamous side of the scale he begins the adventure with his tier 2 heroic abilities like the upgraded pulse heel and the slow firing but heavy-hitting Magnum bolts but once infected you switch to the rank of Infamous well not exactly as there is no rank but based on the powers at your disposal and your idle stance coal is likely in the infamous State he gets some heroic and villainous variants to his powers such as the rockets and grenades but the ionic abilities are not present you can unlock those aforementioned variants through staking vampires and can re-obtain some powers like the Magnum Bolt from the beginning that you lost after being bitten I believe that not having a Karma system allows the combat to be a little more fun overall as you don't have to worry about the civilians you injure considering that surprising amount of players only completed the Good Karma a playthrough of Infamous 2 allowing them to experience the other side of the coin was likely really nice for them too and this is doubly so when you take a look at the new handful of enemies you have to keep track of fortunately there are new enemies here in the form of the many vampires Mary sends after you there are typical grounds that have crossbows throwing knives and basic weapons which do pretty crazy damage and the more agile female grunts that while being a little harder to hit due to how they can take advantage of Vantage points have bullets that don't sting as much while there are some variants in the grunts I don't have a lot to say about them there are also these beasts-like firstborns that serve as many bosses and go down like any other enemy and that's why wailing at them and turning them into a bat Kebab I like their move set and they kept me entertained on both a visual level but also in the sense of difficulty something I've criticized the first and second Infamous games for was their balance and more specifically this related to difficulty my mistake in my previous Infamous videos was that I structured my argument in a way that painted the difficulty of the game as the problem that was not and is still not the case I now believe that the balance was to blame I specifically criticized the shotgun enemies in both the games as they could depending on the difficulty one shot you considering the stun that came along with that I felt it was pretty unfair towards the player another reason for this is that every enemy in the game if they were to get the drop on you offered you the chance to recuperate and bounce back whereas with these enemies that one-shotted you the same enemies that an Infamous one could also go invisible you don't have that chance to re-center and you get a game over and you just have to restart the fight while there's nothing necessarily wrong with having a game that punishes your mistakes an enemy that punishes you this harshly conflicts with all the other enemy designs and that's why I after criticizing how strong these enemies were and putting it under the issue of difficulty then contradicted Myself by criticizing the quo boss fight for being too easy all of this to say that I felt the game was quite balanced here as the enemies took a fair amount of damage and dealt a fair amount too and while they were challenging I didn't often feel like they were unfair every death while they can be counted on one hand felt like they happened because I simply lost control of the battle slipped up one too many times or because my aim was just imprecise the final gameplay aspect to touch on is the battle against Mary that comes and goes as quickly as the rest of the DLC does it's boiled down to a horror mode with little to actually keep you engaged and while this style of boss fight isn't inherently a bad thing I think the way they handled it here did not click with me Mary will spawn a small army of Empires to try and overwhelm you however before they can get to you they have to cross an area that is flooded with water up to their knees if you know anything about the Infamous games I'm sure you know that these enemies can be dealt with quickly and easily by just shooting the water you don't even have to aim at them you can just shoot in their general direction and if you don't hit the vampire's head on then you'll surely hit the water surrounding them some high tier vampires spawn close to you but dealing with them takes all of a few seconds and then is back to just shooting the water after wiping out a few waves Mary will just show up for a second I don't really know if she has any attacks because I would take a huge bite out of of her health bar rate when she showed up meaning she came and went as quickly as possible I think the boss fight could have been better if it was set in an actual open area while tackling this Foe and the catacombs is fitting thematically having the boss fight take place on top of the cathedral could also serve as a good thematic setting while giving the player and the boss more room to move I would much rather have an actual battle against Mary where both her and Cole are figuratively speaking on skates consistently traversing and trading blows back and forth perhaps my expectations are too high here I don't know though if I'm being honest my reason for playing this wasn't to experience a new world of gameplay but rather to have another story with my favorite cast and characters speaking of which the story and the characters here while being simple were interesting and the concept as a whole is truly great I just wish they really delved into the interesting ideas that they presented the game takes place during the events of Infamous 2 though it's not exactly clear when it takes place and it doesn't really matter since the story is not canon while the story itself is not canon I believe some of the lore here such as power Knight Mary and the vampires R the adventure begins with Zeke jabidiah Dunbar in a bar where he has almost everything he'd ever want beer and with the arrival of a scantily clad woman boobs but mechanical bulls are unfortunately not present in order to secure a knight of shenanigans with the aforementioned woman Zeke upon finding out that she takes an interest in Coal decides to tell her a story about coal vampires and piranite and this is where our gameplay takes place Zeke narrates over our gameplay and this is why I believe the game isn't Canon but the lore within it is regardless the story sees Cole heading into the catacombs to save a woman who is injured but it turns out it was just a trap for a vampire to kidnap Cole and sacrifice his blood to revive the long deceased Bloody Mary Cole's blood is Conduit blood though meaning he not only revived Mary to full youth but also gave her powers a boost Mary seeing the potential in Coal turns him into a vampire and unfortunately one of Mary's Powers is to control her vampires this means that not only is Cole a vampire now but when Sunrise comes will be under Mary's full control his goal is to find the cross of Ignatius staked down Mary and save not only himself but the civilians too as a vampiric coal will do nothing less than wreak havoc on new Murray after finding the cross and taking down Mary we leave the realm of Zeke's story and return to the bar where we see that Zeke has successfully seduced the woman from earlier unfortunately Cole shows up and the woman then makes it pretty clear that she's more interested in him than Zeke even if the story itself is as Bare Bones as it gets I enjoyed it because the writing and the voice acting was as it always is so top-notch I specifically enjoyed the lore around the vampires as we can find more lore about their head cheese Mary through a few of her teachings which recount her different interactions with The Mortals of the world it gives some insight into how she views herself as Mary believes she is a goddess of sorts but most of these pseudo audio logs are boiled down to I went here met this person and ate them throughout the actual story though it's explained that Mary isn't necessarily the head vampire but rather a gentleman named Marco is the first vampire he found Mary and admired her from a distance for some time until mary caught smallpox Marco believed that Mary was just too beautiful to die and converted her into a vampire the two began a rampage over Europe as partners and eventually as the lovers until father Ignatius staked Marco believing it would cure Mary but that would only be the case on the night of her infection it's explained that vampires are actually a type of conduit too but rather than conducting electricity neon or smoke for power they conduct blood for power this allows Cole and myself to at least sympathize with these guys whenever Cole enters a powered down area or whenever he is flat out low on charge he explains that he feels thirsty and just weak I assume this is the same thirst the vampires feel and while they may not want to sacrifice the innocent bystanders to satiate that thirst the feeling becomes so unbearable that they almost can't help it in the case of a lot of them when under Mary's control they literally don't have a choice either the gameplay reinforces his narrative as you are heavily encouraged within combat and traversal to sacrifice civilians to use your new vampire powers the story actually touches on the morality and ethics of this but it doesn't go as in depth as I would have liked it's explained that in order to save new Murray Cole must be at Peak Performance and that is not achievable without a few sacrifices on the opposite end these people are people as stated by Zeke and col wouldn't want to do something tonight that he couldn't live with tomorrow it is an interesting argument that is presented here and I would have liked a deeper dive into the ethics of the situation and I wanted the game to come to a definitive conclusion Instead This Side plot is left to the ugc missions meaning the comic-like scuffed cutscenes make this entire debate a little underwhelming they could have expanded upon the discussion by posing questions such as Can Cole drink a freshly staked vampire's blood since they were once human what are the implications of sucking an animal's blood how would Zeke feel about that again I understand that this DLC is small scale and I shouldn't expect a fully fleshed out story for such a cheap price but I question why they brought up the debate at all if they're not going to give it a proper conclusion I can at least say that it gave me some notable Food For Thought unfortunately another part of the story I had to use my imagination for was in the final moments where you summoned an ionic storm on Mary I know I said that the ionic storm wasn't in the game but this is actually the only point where it is in the game and it's a scripted event so I just glossed over it regardless the game immediately skipped ahead to Cole and the catacombs and it completely skipped the cutscene which I found strange and I'm unsure if this is just an issue with PS now or a glitch with the game itself even if I criticize The Narrative here extensively I did enjoy it to an extent and if you played Infamous 2's plot you'll enjoy this one to an extent as well it followed a lot of the same Beats from Infamous 2. the villain that is seen on the Overworld the timer between major story beats the acquisition of new powers to make hole capable of taking down the new villain and the light-hearted tone and it's okay that it retreads that ground because it works for the most part since I have discussed just about everything this game has to offer I have to acknowledge the strange limbo that this game is caught in as it isn't a direct add-on to Infamous 2. it does take place in the the same universe and looks like an expansion for Infamous 2 but it is a standalone download and is built to be enjoyed whether you have played its sister game or not because the story isn't Canon and its gameplay is similar enough to Infamous 2. it serves as an enjoyable time for Die Hard fans and casual gamers giving the series a try for the first time no spoilers for the first or second game are present here so recommending this to a friend is easy to clarify I consider this a standalone DLC I'm not considering it a full game because it was just not priced as a full game upon release and it just doesn't have enough content to justify such a title it has the potential to be a full-fledged title but it's just far too short and underdeveloped in a lot of ways Festival of Blood expands on the gameplay of Infamous 2 enough to Warrant a playthrough even if it leaves some to be desired and the same goes for how it expands the world and lore of Infamous I've stated many times before that a DLC story should not be integral to enjoying the base game and this DLC nails that balance of offering an entertaining story but without making the base game feel incomplete without it I think Festival of Blood found his foot between familiar characters of familiar tone and even a familiar structure but despite that it didn't expand its new ideas enough to completely satisfy me I'm torn between expecting a small story from a small game and expecting a large story and a better executed product because I know sucker punches Beyond capable of it and that this DLC has the potential for it Infamous 2 is arguably the best Infamous game in the franchise and adding even more to a product like that is quite tough any gameplay changes could completely throw off the gameplay and while I believe they struck a great balance with the enemies and the traversal with the new changes I don't think there was enough changes made to the powers within combat while on one hand changing the combat in a significant way could risk diminishing the critically acclaimed gameplay of Infamous 2 but if Done Right could have done more to represent this game's identity fortunately the presentation and Aesthetics of the game achieve this as a single screenshot of the game's heads up display pause screen or the many decorations of new Murray tell you that this is Festival of Blood and while Festival of Blood is a good time it's a good time assuming you're expectations are right attempting to play this game is no simple task as a current or next Generation console a stable above average internet connection and 13 Canadian dollars is required to play this so if you can play the game and put up with the input delay and unavoidable frame drops expect a short but entertaining if not a little underwhelming experience I don't want this video to seem like I don't enjoy the game because I do but I enjoy it because it's an excuse to hop back into Infamous 2 and when judging this game by its own merits I felt like there was more that needed to be done and I was just left wanting more Infamous Second Son is the third game in the infamous franchise the first Infamous came out and it was really good and I think you guys can all agree with that then the second Infamous came out and it improved on nearly everything from the original despite still having some glaring issues the Infamous games are some of the best games on the PlayStation 3 and are still must play titles to this day with the next generation of consoles coming around the corner though it was very important to have a real console seller right out of the gate and Sony's answer to this or more accurately sucker punches answer to this was Infamous Second Son unfortunately this game as far as I've seen has left the fan base a little divided with a lot of people saying things like the powers are underdeveloped and the gameplay isn't as fun as previous games and that the characters aren't very good I however disagree I think it's time somebody took more of a positive approach to this game to hopefully make you see it from a different perspective I want to clarify that I am a little biased here because this is easily my favorite game of all time being rivaled only by Spider-Man PS4 and Persona 5 but just because I love this game doesn't mean that I'm gonna go easy on it I want to talk about this game from pretty much top to bottom The Good the Bad and the Ugly I also want to make it clear that I won't be talking about the first and second Infamous games very much as I don't want this to be a comparison I just want to look at Second Sun in a vacuum with that being said let's talk about why I like this game so much and maybe convince you that it's not as bad as everyone says this video is definitely going to be a longer one than usual so for that reason I'll be very clearly splitting this video into different parts separating presentation and gameplay and so on so I feel before we get started we should set up some context to the game as it is a direct sequel to Infamous 2. Infamous 1 Stars Cole McGrath who is tasked to deliver a package that ends up exploding in his bag in the middle of Empire City afterwards he gains power over electricity as tasks with taking down the other superpowered beings called conduits that are causing havoc in the city there's a morality system in the game but the developers have confirmed that the Canon for the story is the Good Karma playthrough of both the first and second game as that's what most players did on their first playthrough anywho after saving the city from these conduits and having a run-in with his future self who tells him of a conduit called the beast the game ends and we are thrust into Infamous 2 where the Beast wrecks havoc on the world and Cole moves to new Murray to prepare and by the end of the game he sacrifices himself in order to off the Beast unfortunately this also killed a majority of conduits in the blast radius leading to the events of Infamous Second Son now I know that was an extreme oversimplification of the story but like I said I want to focus on Second Son in a vacuum and not make many comparisons to Infamous 1 or 2. anyways seven years after the events of Infamous 2 the number of conduits is at an all-time low and the department of unified protection is an organization built to capture and contain conduits and they have occupied Seattle unfortunately for them a new conduit named Dawson Rowe shows up and has a plot to stop the leader of the dup whose name is Brooke Augustine he does this through the use of his new powers smoke neon and video as far as the story goes that's really all you need to know for now and I promise we'll be taking a much deeper look at the story and its characters but as best we talk about the presentation and gameplay for now this game despite releasing in 2014 still looks gorgeous in the visuals with some of the powers are still stunning the cutscenes in this game look amazing with characters faces and actions all looking real and believable it's clear from the presentation alone that this game is very much grounded in reality of course aside from the whole superpower thing the buildings all have good design to them and don't really feel samey the cars driving around all look realistic and this combined with the civilians walking around definitely adds this feeling of really being in Seattle and yes the Space Needle is in the game and yes it looks amazing something a lot of open world games can struggle with when it comes to a sense of verticality is the tops of buildings a lot of buildings can feel empty or boring but the rooftops in second sun don't fall into this aspect as the rooftops all look real with mold on the ground then sticking out satellite dishes pipes and skylights littering the rooftops which gives him a very lived-in feel there's graffiti on the walls of buildings posters and other debris on the floor garbage bins and plants along the walls and the garbage bags outside of the garbage bins give the world that extra bit of detail it needs stores have modeled interiors and while they aren't full-blown Interiors they have enough detail like this coffee shop here where there's even an open sign a Wi-Fi sign and there's a counter with a cash register and a bench and even a chalkboard with the specials on it granted a lot of these Interiors are copy and pasted but just having something like this adds a layer of up to the world a bunch of stores have actual names to them too like Kalani and Kai bubble tea or Gabe and bren's Ninja Academy don't worry though there's still plenty of businesses like my favorite hotel to stay at when I'm in Seattle Hotel the design of the very buildings themselves are great too with even the windows having variety and they do a really good job of not just feeling like a big brick block even the streets have puddles in the ground leaves clutter the sidewalks and even the fire hydrants Street lamps and electrical boxes have an incredible amount of detail and don't really feel out of place for a very detailed example let's look at a single Rooftop in the game here you can see a man walking along the building and um okay let's move on there's cardboard boxes in the corner and a rope on the ground and next to that there's some leaves hanging over the edge and next to the vent and the Satellite Dish there's a billboard and a smoke stack next to an AC unit and on the other side there's a nice patio set with an umbrella some plants a skylight and you can even see what looks like some slight mold forming at the edge of the building and this is just one of the rooftops in the game and it perfectly illustrates how the city feels lived in and how the rooftops feel lived in without feeling cluttered it doesn't really feel like they have things on top of the rooftops just for the sake of having things on top of the roof I think I've gone on long enough about the design of Seattle and how incredible it is but it's really important to mention because I feel like the world sort of gets looked over in this game since you wouldn't notice the details when you're dashing around taking out dup soldiers it's clear that this game wanted to push the PlayStation 4 to its limits and it does so with flying colors or more specifically flying colors of smoke video and neon speaking of such flying colors the game's lighting engine works pretty well most of the time the effects like smoke and video look great no matter what but the Neon power has a bit of an issue with it it's clear based on how much light is on screen that the game adjusts its visuals however for some reason when using the neon power sometimes the lights on screen are so bright that it almost looks like an Ubisoft loading screen I'm not sure why it happens and this could be a problem only for me but bottom line it does happen it's unfortunate that this happens because the powers in this game all look spectacular with particle effects lights and general chaos taking Center Stage In fairness it doesn't happen often but it happens enough for me that I feel like it's necessary to mention it the designs of the dup towers and the soldiers look good and the enemies have enough variety to them for them to not feel too basic the general color scheme for the dup is black gray and yellow which I feel was an intentional design Choice it reflects the neutral state of the dup depending on the choices you make in the level of your karma Nelson will have the color scheme of white and blue or black and red so having the dup be a shade of yellow or having their powers give off a yellow light makes them always easy to identify and allows you to never lose track of what's going on none of the civilians wear this yellow either so when you're trying to be a hero and trying to avoid shooting civilians is easy for your eyes to lock onto the color yellow and quickly focus in I could be looking too far into this though with so many effects on screen at once it's common for a game to fluctuate in the FPS Department you can't really see it on the video here because everything was captured in 30 frames per second but the game constantly fluctuates between 60 and 30 FPS leading to some jarring drops though this is somewhat alleviated if you cap the frame rate to 30 FPS which is thank God an option in the menu even playing on a PS4 Pro doesn't save you from some of the frame drop for example I have the game consistently drop at a scene where a few enemies show up and trap you both times I played this Mission the frames dropped granted that was the most noticeable and lowest frame drop in the game that I had seen but it's not the only example of the unstable frame rate in fairness the frame rate never dropped low enough to get in the way and I understand that the way I talk about it makes it seem like the frames are dropping all the time but it's truly not a common occurrence and it only happens when things get super crazy the UI in the game also really fits in with the rugged rebellious nature of the game and its characters the UI doesn't get in the way of her and it does a great job of not being too eye-catching but also giving you all the the information you need the menu for some reason looks really neat and tidy which stylistically clashes with the rest of the game's menus if by no means looks bad and it clearly is meant to be in the style of a surveillance report on dulcin but I wonder if it would have looked better had it been in the style of every other UI asset in the game I'm not saying it looks bad by any means though I just really want to clarify that something that definitely looks good in this game though is the powers smoke has a lot of finesse to it as you Dash from vents to enemies and the way you dash forward into an enemy disappearing into a cloud of smoke only to reappear in front of them only to slam them to the ground looks so cool the way Delson splits into different lines of smoke when dashing is an animation that truly never gets old and that combined with his smoke thrusters makes getting around complete eye candy dulson's chain is slightly modified to have a fiery Cinder coming off of it making it look super badass the little puffs of smoke he shoots out of his hand really feel like they do some damage too and the cinder missiles feel so powerful and have so much weight to them sniping a satellite tower from hundreds of feet away with one of these missiles is incredibly fun too the way the sulfur bombs in cinderblast look is awesome as well but I won't spend all day time talking about it you can get the point by just sort of seeing it on screen one move that I really want to look at is the orbital drop one of the karmic super moves in the game dalson charges up and shoots himself into the air through three balls of smoke and reappears at the Apex of his jump once up there he gets his little smirk on his face which says a lot about the character and how he enjoys and also knows that he is about to devastate a convoy of the dup he then threw the use of his smoke thrusters accelerates towards the ground hitting him head on and disappearing into an explosion of smoke leaving a crater in the ground all the while this is happening in beautiful slow motion after the attack is done there's Ash floating around in the air within the vicinity and the entire atmosphere from this attack is presented spectacularly the video Power looks just as good as the others as it glitches out Delson and all the attacks have such an aggressive feel to them instead of his signature chain he wields a massive sword if you have good karma or these awesome claws if you have bad karma whenever he doesn't attack there's a glitched out effect and this glitch effect changes color based on your karmic state with the game not only having different powers for you but different colors such as the color of your clothes mentioned earlier earlier we can talk more about the different Karma specific Powers once we get into the gameplay but as far as video goes presentation wise everything from the bits fired from your hands to the swords you summon onto an enemy look awesome the way Dawson has a special glitch effect when going invisible helps you not lose track of him while amidst combat the super move for videos a spectacular Hellstorm where you summon angels and demons that bombard whatever is in front of you finally with neon this is all about being fast and bright every move is so bright and quick such as the dash which is literally just turning into a skeleton of neon light that speeds across the city and even up walls the chain is now a neon Sword and the sulfur bomb is now traded for a stasis bomb where any enemies caught in it will be stuck in time you can also Target a weak point that'll either evaporate an enemy or subdue them depending on where you hit them the neon super move is a radial burst that sees Dawson suspending everyone in the immediate vicinity and stasis it doesn't shoots a rapid fire of neon lasers which explode upon impact leaving the area around him in a fluorescent destruction as far as animations go you've probably seen that they look really good the cutscenes are a whole nother level characters faces convey a myriad of information and the faces don't fall into The Uncanny Valley the way delson's jacket moves with him is done very well and the animations of him falling look somehow just as cool as when he's kicking the enemy's ass as far as other trivial animations go such as a walk-in Run Cycle I think you've seen it on screen enough for you to see that they look good and I don't really have much to say about the animations other than they all really look good so I think we've talked about how the game looks and it's clear that the isolated animations and assets look great and when it's all put together with the world and the overall presentation it forms something much greater than the sum of its parts so I think now it's best that we talk about the gameplay let's start with the powers at your disposal the different powers have different uses and support different play Styles smoke is all about finesse and being a good all-rounder as far as traversal it's the weakest of the bunch but for traversal it makes up in its style the smoke Dash is an incredibly stylish way of getting around and you can Dash into red vents on the side of buildings and shoot out from the other side making scaling the buildings in Seattle very quick and fancy the dash Works while in combat 2 as it makes you hard to hit while in the dash and dashing up a building and can create some distance between you and the enemy the basic smoke shot that you get does do a good amount of damage but isn't as powerful as the video torrent and isn't as accurate as the neon bolts you can charge a basic smoke shot to use a cinder blast which can be really useful for crowd control and doing some extra damage to the heavier enemies the cinder missiles also fall into the common theme of this power as it is a middle of the road power where you fire a large smoke missile that is less accurate than the charge neon bolts and are technically less powerful than the Homing swords but they definitely have their uses the cinder missiles also have a very clear drop-off point and it was always a cool feeling when I would snipe a satellite dish from hundreds of feet away like I mentioned earlier the sulfur bombs will be your best friend when it comes to earning Good Karma as the bonds create a cloud of thick and heavy smoke and when an enemy is caught within the cloud it leaves them stunned allowing you to subdue or execute them the smoke variation of the chain is sufficient for a lot of grunts but won't do you well when it comes to the beefier enemies and bosses finally the orbital drop is the devastating super move that I've mentioned earlier and it absolutely decimates an area I don't have much to say about it other than it's a great emergency move from when you're in tight spot need to clear out an area fast smoke as far as Powers go is easily my favorite of the bunch as it is in my opinion the most stylish way to take out your enemies and while it might not be the most efficient in the aspects of damage or traversal it is just a really neat power say you want a little more precision and speed to your attacks neon might be a little better suited for you the color of the neon powers are more blue or red depending on your karmic rank but either color scheme has a nice fluorescent pink to it the neon Dash is fast and stylish enough that it makes it easily the best power for traversal being able to run through the streets and up buildings at the same time at the speed of a car is always fun though I wish you could move a little bit faster I understand that increasing the speed might make combat a little too chaotic and since dashing away from enemies is a common strategy for neon making it too fast might negatively affect the gameplay but maybe you can have a system where after sprinting for a second or something a little burst effect would take place and you would receive a boost I'm sure another reason why the dash isn't super fast is because there could be an issue with Delson moving into parts of the world so fast that the game can't properly load it in and this isn't really a nitpick or a criticism against the game it's just something I've always wanted to talk about getting back on track though the neon Dash is a great power even if it is a little automated the reason I say it's automated is because when traversing with neon there isn't much complexity to the movement you just sort of hold Circle and point yourself in the direction you want to go with smoke it's a little more complicated it's getting to where you need to be takes a combination of vent dashing smoke dashing thrusters and even then it's not like traversal is some sort of puzzle in itself moving on though the basic neon shot is a quick and accurate bolt of neon that works great for targeting weak points which is an upgrade that you'll get eventually when aiming in you can either Target an enemy's head to make them explode into a miniature light show or you could aim for their leg which will automatically subdue them with more upgrades you can go into a focus mode when aiming in where for a short amount of time the game slows down and you can very quickly Target the weak points with Precision if you want a little more power without sacrificing too much accuracy then the charge neon bolt will do the job well as it does a good amount of damage and works well on targeting single enemies next up is the stasis bubble which can work well for dispatching large compact groups of enemies as everyone caught on these explosion is trapped in a bubble where time is slowed making them easy to take down I unfortunately didn't really use this move very much as I felt it was easier to just shoot the enemies because most of the time the enemies will just stand still when shooting at you however when in the stasis bubble they're being thrown back by the explosion making them kind of harder to hit because it's a moving Target even when it comes to earning Karma it was easier to just use a sulfur bomb to quickly subdue a large group of enemies finally for those who want a little more aggression you might want to try the third power at delson's disposal video the video Power is definitely the most aggressive of the bunch as it takes inspiration from the fictional video game Heaven's Hellfire which means a few of the video attacks involve summoning demons and angels depending on your karma as for traversal you do get some digital wings that can be used to scale buildings and essentially Fly for a short amount of time making this a great power for moving from the rooftops of the huge skyscrapers in downtown I would say that this Dash is definitely my least favorite though as it lacks a sense of style that the other two have but that by no means makes it a bad Dash as it is still pretty useful for not only getting around but quickly getting out of a sticky situation in combat speaking of combat your main way to attack is the BitTorrent which is a rapid fire stream of whatever this is and it does a great amount of damage and it really feels like you're just pummeling the enemy with the power of being a gamer another move you can do with this power is summon bloodthirsty blades that follow the path that you set it on which can be applied to the enemies and even helicopters this attack is easily the best in the game as it's more powerful than the cinder missiles and arguably more accurate than the charge neon shot next up is the variation of your chain which is now a massive sword that feels so powerful as Delson really throws his entire weight into it however if you have evil karma then he'll use the claws like I mentioned earlier the attacks are the slowest of the chain variations but are definitely the most powerful and look really cool next up is definitely one of the cooler and more useful Powers you'll get in the game which is the shroud of invisibility when pressing L1 you can go completely invisible allowing you to stealthily kill or subdue your enemy thankfully you can't just Spam it too much as it uses a significant amount of your power and after doing any other attack it cancels the invisibility including the sneak attack on an enemy the way that they handle this potentially overpowered move is really well done as it's always a viable option but not always the best option as you can't go invisible when an enemy is too close to you so long story short they do a very good job of not letting this be an easy win option for you eventually with upgrades you can summon some angels and demons that fight for you when you turn invisible so overall this move is just really cool one thing I didn't mention when talking about the different powers is the different variations of the thrusters as they don't really change that is except for the video thrusters with a certain upgrade you can gain more speed when gliding forward with video and then pull back with the right stick to swoop up which makes the traversal with video so much fun the ground pound in the game however works the same no matter what powers you're using the powers in the game really are center stage and it's good that they are all somewhat varied however they do border on being repetitive what I'm trying to say is that all the powers follow a specific structure with small changes however these small changes make a big difference in the grand scheme of things as when you're rushing to your next objective it would be more efficient to quickly run over to a neon sign and then Dash over to your objective or it might be a good idea to switch to smoke when you see a group of enemies all within close proximity as a cinder Miss would easily wipe them out and the way the game places its Smoke Stacks neon signs and TV screens within the world are well crafted as there's always a power source nearby but they're spread out enough that mid fight you might be better off to switch to a new power and adapt rather than look for another neon sign a common complaint with the powers is that they all feel like smoke with a different cone of paint and while I can totally see where you're coming from and I definitely think that there is room to make these power sets more unique I think what we have is still really good and the powers are different enough that they have their uses also having things such as a strong missile type attack mapped to R1 for all the powers allows the powers to all feel familiar I'm curious what your guys's favorite Power was please let me know in the comments as mentioned before mine is definitely smoke you can upgrade these Powers through the use of blast shards hidden around the map within security drones and scanning stations of course the game could use an experienced system but I like how they handled the blast shards as they show up on the map and there are enough scattered around that you'll have a majority of upgrades by the end of the game by just picking them up as you see them they also aren't hidden in any strange spots which is nice gameplay has a a very basic Loop to it go to an objective fry some dupes maybe have a boss battle or a mini boss and that's it the missions in the game do put some twists on this such as one where you have to take out some enemies on the Space Needle and in order to do so you scale the Space Needle and do an orbital drop at the top of it in order to take out the dup's communications another sees you taking pictures of a crime scene and sending it to your brother Reggie while also clearing the area of anyone interfering another mission involves you clearing out a dock full of drug dealers with Fetch and tagging the drug houses so that fetch can blow them up boss fights in the game however are few and far between there are a few mini bosses with beefed up dup agents but there are only three boss fights in the game the beginning one with Hank doesn't really count because it lasts all of 10 seconds but anyways the boss fight with fetch is a very cool one as you end up in an abandoned theater with a bunch of neon signs everywhere you can attack fetch but when you do she'll just heal herself from the neon signs so your first objective is to drain all of them for yourself while avoiding her attacks then after that you have to take her out with your own neon beams the boss fight is pretty basic but I think that's okay because it's with a brand new power and is still reasonably early in the game so I won't fault it too much for being basic the next boss battle is against he who dwells which is really quick such a cool boss name good job guys this boss fight is way cooler because he's massive and he has such a large enough health bar to make the fight feel like a real David and Goliath battle but not such a large health bar that it feels like a damaged sponge you initiate the fight by walking towards a TV where you get sucked into it and after doing some damage to the boss you get thrown out back into the warehouse where you then have to find another TV to jump back in eventually when you do enough damage to the boss he'll split into a bunch of angels and fly to another portion of the map shooting these angels will allow you to get some easy damage in eventually the boss will also have angels that Shield him adding an extra layer to the fight the fight in itself aside from being eye candy is still pretty basic I wish there was a little more to it but for what we have it's pretty good there are a ton of side activities in the game and while they're not necessarily super gameplay heavy they are a decent distraction and some of them contain some really juicy bits of lore the game's map is split up into multiple different districts and each district has a certain level of dup occupancy in order to lower this occupancy you can do some side activities such as finding audio logs from a rogue dup informant or seeking out undercover dup agents or shooting out the cameras lettered around the map you could also destroy the conduit scanning stations around the map and even do some graffiti of course these side activities can't be initiated until you take out the district's mobile command center these are really cool this is basically just a bunch of dupes in an area and you just have to go in and clean house and once you're finished you blow up the command center and you can start your push against the dup the scanning stations around Seattle are one of the ways you can push the dup out and the scanners are powered by blast shards so that's a plus two these are pretty easy to do as you just drop a cinder missile on the scanner and head on out but the next side mission is the hidden cameras hidden around Seattle which can be taken out at any point but on top of the big cameras hidden around there are also really tiny ones that you can take out too by tapping into the camera through your phone these camera puzzles are easy and as far as puzzles go not very challenging but as far as side quests go they were never annoying up next are the secret agents around Seattle go into an area and look for an undercover dup agent and using the picture on screen and take them out the task is basic but semi-entertaining and honestly it doesn't really do much the last of the bunch and definitely the most fun out of the bunch is the stencil art head up to a blank wall and start spray painting it with either a positive or negative piece of art the individual pieces of art are really well done and unique however some of the quote-unquote negative or evil spray paints don't really convey a negative feeling I would assume that the point of having a good piece of graffiti is one that inflicts a sense of Joy or positivity and the evil one is meant to be some sort of social mockery but most of the time the evil and good stencil Arts can be interchangeable for example we have one here in uptown where the evil version of the art is a guy catching the fish and making sushi however the good one is a cat catching the fish it would be very easy to see the guy making sushi as the Good Karma one just as much as it was the cat maybe I'm just not getting it and maybe there's a much deeper layer of social commentary than I'm missing here it really doesn't matter but I do wish that there was a clear difference between the good and bad stencil art apart from the change in color nonetheless the entertainment does come from seeing the works of art at the end regardless of what end of the morality Spectrum it falls on finally once a number of these tasks are done you can initiate a district Showdown where you tag a local billboard and call the dup helpline to taunt the dup the annoyance of the dup receptionist increases as you tag more Billboards and delson's cheeky comments get better and better too I do however have a few issues with these showdowns the biggest issue is that they are generally pretty underwhelming the mobile command center is usually more difficult and more dense with enemies which confuses me considering that as far as gameplay Goes The Showdown is meant to be the dup's final stand in a district yet they only send like five troops or in some cases a single helicopter at you these should be huge blowouts where there's five helicopters in the sky and a ton of soldiers with rocket launchers and it's a perfect opportunity for the game to have a full on but also the wall Showdown but it just doesn't take the opportunity I also don't know why delson's dialogue is the same regardless of his karmic rank I would assume true hero Dawson would have different less aggressive dialogue than the infamous Delson but no the dialogue is the same no matter what a bioterrorist incident to report you will not believe Mr Roe you will not believe Mr Rowe knock it off the karma system is something I've been putting off for a little bit now because it directly ties into the story and its characters so why don't we move on to it as nearly everything you do in the game revolves around this very system that is in my opinion pretty good if not linear and in some cases a little flawed as fans may know the infamous series revolves around Good and Bad Karma Good Karma can be gained by subduing enemies with non-lethal tactics and making heroic decisions Bad Karma on the other hand as you might expect is earned by making evil villainous decisions using your powers against civilians and being as lethal as possible the system works great during gameplay as it changes the way you interact with the world and it changes the way you approach the tasks in front of you for example on a good playthrough you would be a little more slow and methodical with your approach as to not hurt civilians or to properly subdue your targets rather than just kill them with Bad Karma however you will likely find yourself flying by the seat of your pants as it doesn't really matter how many Innocents are hurt during your Rampage the amount of karma that you have is reflected on your karmic rank with the Good Karma ranks consisting of protector Guardian Champion Paragon and the penultimate true hero and the Bad Karma ranks consist of Thug criminal bioterrorist most wanted and Infamous with the neutral rank at the beginning of the game being Vandal there's a myriad of tasks and little things you can do to increase your karma and I think it's best we start with the activities that earn you good karma in order to earn Good Karma you can subdue enemies through the use of your powers healing injured civilians and stopping drug busts other things can be done such as saving suspected conduits are being lynched and freeing suspected conduits from imprisonment you can earn evil karma by executing injured civilians denying an enemy's submission destroying suspected conduits in the prisons holding them or killing sign spinners and street performers now up to this point if you are new to the series and you might think that your karmic rank only affects your clothes however that is not the only thing affected by your karma some of the dialogue in the story itself will change depending on your karmic rank but we can talk about that later for now let's talk about the new powers you get with your karmic rank as you collect more upgrade points and obtain new powers you'll see that certain powers are locked behind a karmic Rank and this encourages you to continue with your heroic or villainous Deeds an upgrade received for the invisibilities of the wingmen this upgrade gives you an Angelic minion that'll help you while you're invisible and does some damage to enemies while also drawing aggro the minion stays around until it's killed even after you become visible again the Good Karma upgrade allows you to subdue two enemies before becoming visible again and enhances the duration of the ability an evil playthrough however would allow you to summon two demons instead of one Angel and eventually the Unholy Trinity which encourages a more aggressive approach these upgrades complement the playstyle associated with the different Karma ranks as on an evil playthrough you would receive more aggressive upgrades such as the Unholy Trinity or getting a larger Boost from smoke vents or being able to fire lasers more rapidly with neon or having the cinderblast completely disintegrate the enemies caught within it I could go on but I could at least leave some surprises for you guys and discussing further points would just be sort of redundant the biggest issue with the karma system is its linearity even if it's your first time playing the game it's clear that the gameplay doesn't dictate the karma the karma dictates the gameplay even if it might be easier to be more Reckless and just kill the enemies the desire for a certain ending will constrain you to be the goody two shoes the way the karma system presents itself is mind-numbing as it's very clear with the morally correct answer is in any situation and that's not even considering the way the game highlights the morally correct decision in blue and the morally incorrect decision in red I wonder why they don't give you more choices than just good or bad why not have four options with them being good bad kinda good kind of bad and make these decisions fall into a moral gray area one of the first decisions in the game goes like this we as Delson have just realized that we are a conduit and are tasked with chasing an escape convict who is also a conduit upon leaving a building we see that the convict gets killed and we get interrogated by Brooke Augustine and she says that we have to talk and if we don't she'll put the rest of the tribe through a lot of pain and fatally wound them your decision is to either come clean what I said I'm a conduit all right I caught it a second ago from from that guy oh you caught it very funny [Music] or tell her off yes then I have no further use for you hope you're not as stubborn as that one are you ready when looking at the decisions they flat out tell you that the good decision is the first step to becoming a hero and that the bad decision is the first step to becoming Infamous from the very first decision you are deciding what ending you want the heroic ending or the villainous ending a way that they could improve on this would be making the decisions gray literally and avoid highlighting the decisions with the corresponding Karma color another Improvement would be the description of the decision don't flat out say that this is the first step to becoming a hero but instead have a description that furthers the intensity of the decision we already saw that Augustine is okay with killing so have the description clarify that if we come clean we will die and if we sell out the tribe there's a good chance that we will still die and that the tribe might sell us out no matter what decision you make Dawson gets knocked out and then we wake up and we see the entire tribe is in critical condition and this sets up our motivation for the game I understand that previous games in the series may have done this better but like I said this video isn't a comparison this problem of choice is not having much of an impact on the story is an issue that shows up throughout the entire game to further illustrate this point I'm going to give a brief summary of the story highly lighting the major decisions within the game The Story begins with Delson and his brother Reggie seeing a dup truck crash in the middle of the street and upon touching the conduit's hand Dolson gains their power after Chase ensues they meet with Augustine and the decision I just mentioned happens with the goal in sight of needing Augustine's concrete power to save the tribe they head to Seattle to power up and once there they find a conduit named fetch who has the power of neon after catching her and getting her power we have the decision of her fate and whether we should corrupt or redeem her after that decision we eventually head downtown and confront the next conduit Eugene this decision is a bit of deja vu as we have the option of either redeeming or corrupting him directly after this decision we run into the smoke conduit named Hank from the start of the game Who explains that Augustine didn't kill him and instead locked him up in her Tower and after trusting that he'll show us the way in he betrays us which ends up with the death of Reggie after escaping Augustine's grasp we track down Hank and are given the option to spare him or kill him after that we go straight to Augustine decide to either kill or expose Augustine and after that the game ends I'll go into these decisions a bit more but first let's talk about the lack of change in the overall story it's clear that no matter what decision you make the story only briefly branches off and no matter what the key story points are always there if your actions are properly affected by the story then the point where a decision is made would allow the story to Branch off permanently rather than just branching off for a short period when making a decision to redeem or corrupt one of the conduits you then play two missions with them as a sidekick and your decision to corrupt them for example plays out in dialogue as for fetch you guys would discuss making more evil decisions but outside of those two missions her dialogue is the exact same as no different than if you were to redeem them and convince them to use their powers for good another aspect that shows the lack of impact on the story is Reggie he is a cop and as such has a pretty clear moral code and spoiler alert he's killed just before the climax of the game if you were a hero throughout the story then Reggie's last words are I'm so proud of you always have been no come on this is very touching and it makes the death hit so much harder what doesn't make sense is that if you've been a villain the entire game and you've corrupted multiple conduits and killed thousands of dupes and have blatantly assaulted innocence then he says the exact same thing and the entire level on boss fight that ensues after is the exact same except your hoodie color is different always have been no problem this criticism can be applied to any major story Point such as when you choose to either corrupt or spare fetch if you choose to corrupt her then you and Reggie get into a very clear scrap but no matter what he just sort of gets over and then the story continues what huh a bio Terrace with a body count I love you rich don't make me break that handsome nose of yours bye father tomorrow but mother the day after that you're the one that I'm not that down man trying to stay alive if you won't do it for me then do it for the tribe fine fine thank you I initially planned to go over every decision in detail but it's so clear to me that there's no point in going over them as they don't really change anything and only one decision has a long lasting effect and even then the effect is barely anything of note the decision I'm mentioning involves the ending the good ending of the game sees Delson exposing Augustine for the corrupted villain she is and sees Dawson freeing all the captive conduits from the dup prison Curtin K he then goes back home and rescues the tribe take the evil route however and you'll kill Augustine and publicly humiliate her before starting a corrupt conduit Uprising and you'll still open the gates to curtain K however when you go to save the tribe you're disowned by the tribe's leader Betty you are a Commish no longer and upon her closing the door on your face you decide to kill the tribe in spectacular fashion mind you both these endings are pretty good and it's cool to see the way Delson talks about the tribe in each ending in the good ending he claims he has a promise to keep now I had a promise to keep but in the bad ending he says he has a promise to take care of but first I had a promise to take care of what about how in the evil ending he sees the tribe as just sort of a loose end a thorn in his side just a chore something interesting about these endings is that there's a slightly altered evil ending if you decide to spare Hank if you spare Hank but continue on your evil playthrough after being disowned by the tribe the game just ends no orbital dropped just the credits now I know this isn't a huge change but it's at least something as the only time the game does something like this so I figured I'd at least mention it at this point we've covered pretty much everything in the game aside from the characters and funny enough it's one of the most controversial points of the game let's start with the most controversial of all of them Delson people's biggest complaint with Dawson is his douchiness I know it's not the most formal way to describe how people see him but I feel it's the most accurate and I want to say that I agree to an extent no matter what Karma playthrough you go through Delson is a bit of a jackass who jokes around too much is a little full of himself and makes mistakes which in my opinion is what makes him such a good character for some reason a lot of people prefer a character with no flaws but I just can't agree with that because a good character is a character you can relate to and a character that goes through a change with a complete Arc Delson starts the game Lost he's in a limbo where he I presume doesn't have a job and spends his days just killing time without a purpose spray painting Billboards it's actually kind of sad when you think about it it's clear from the first cutscene that he's a delinquent within his community but he's good at heart and slightly suffered a loss before the events of the game Illustrated through this moment in the beginning of the game right when Reggie mentions their parents Delson rears his head back and puts an offended expression on as if making his parents proud is something so important to him and that is not a good talking point between them because he knows as much as Reggie does that he probably isn't making them proud I think the situation that Delson is in is a relatable one I think we've all been in a place at one point or another in our lives where we were just lost like he was we're just doing things in the day and going through the motions but we're just complacent just sitting there pissing the days away because we feel like we don't really have a purpose sure his confidence in quick wit is still a core part of his personality and he still has desires and goals but he's Frozen without any way to make himself feel special or any way to really do something this changes when he gains his powers at first he's scared oh my God oh my God make it stop Reds Reds I really need to he's already seen as an outsider with his own tribe with the only one not scolding him or just not caring at all being a pseudo mother figure Betty and being a conduit would be the final straw to push him to being an official social outcast and he's terrified the village and Reggie talk about being a conduit like it's a disease a sickness and Dawson feels this way too and this is shown through the way Dawson basically collapses into Reggie man I can't stop it man it's okay so you're okay let's breathe you're right you're right I'm one of them man I'm one of them nope nope she wasn't my brother all right you were my brother okay I've seen what you was gonna pass I promise we'll fix it right you with me you with me okay get out there once he sees that the only person who can save his tribe is himself he finds a purpose the way Dawson ax speaks a lot more than words do a line is often proposed to show why Delson is a bad character is during the interrogation with Augustine where dalson says this it's been my experience there are only two reasons for people to be nervous either they're cowards where they have something to hide well you know I also get nervous around pretty girls this line was cheeky and a little stupid and in case you didn't notice delson's aware of this he tried to talk himself out of a tough situation and immediately after saying something he drops and shakes his head as if to say you idiot why did you say that I don't think that's subtly calling out a bad joke for being bad alleviates it from being criticized however it's clear that the point of this line was to show that Dawson doesn't always think before he speaks and he's a little impulsive his rebellious side shows through these cutscenes too if not through his outfit and habit of graffiti the only real issue I have with Dawson and I know this might be a nitpick but whatever is the way he acts sometimes in the good playthrough he says a lot of things that just don't really make sense for his character overall in a good guy playthrough you end up redeeming Eugene and in the cutscene following that Delson seems like he's trying too hard to act like a cool guy and he talks about getting laid and here I'll just show you so what do you say Eugene you me a couple of conduits Hit the town you showed me some of your new video tricks I show you how to pick up some girls maybe rescue some of our marked Brethren I don't think so but I still feel safer in here come on man you keep staying down here and playing Angels and Demons you're never gonna get laid you see what I mean meanwhile in the cutscene following the choice to corrupt Eugene he's way more relaxed and nice about getting Eugene out there so Eugene my brother what do you say you and me a couple conduits we hit the town you teach me some of those video tricks I teach you how to pick up girls we take our power to the people well I'd like to find the Russians that were picking on the suspected conduits and kicking the [ __ ] out of them for a change dude it's a party with you the date then yeah I almost feel like these two scenes should have been swapped this was however the only time in which I found Dustin to be this way I don't want to propose that the story in Dawson has a character some deep dive into mental health but it's definitely a really good story about finding a purpose and from this point onward I need to talk about hero and villain Delson has two different characters because despite both starting out the same he really can't evolve into a kind-hearted bringer of Justice or a self-centered malicious Angel of Death unfortunately there isn't a massive change in Delson aside from the phone calls during the game for example when climbing the Space Needle is good Dawson we hear this hey there it's Betty where are you oh hi Betty I'm at the Space Needle I'll I'll try back later then bring me a postcard okay if the gift Shop's open bye Betty bye bye dear however as bad Dawson we hear this sorry Betty but uh don't tell me this is a bad time actually at the moment I'm kind of climbing up the outside of the Space Needle well call you back Betty slight differences another example is when Delson is trying to stop a conduit from jumping off a crane downtown here's what good Delson says no doubt oh this catch-wing man and here is what bad Dawson says oh God after I climbed up all this way bastard should have let him fall and maybe drain something off the Corpse the way the UI messages adjust to his karma is really cool too as when battling Augustine and kicking her notice that on the good playthrough it says Tyron wounded however on the evil playthrough it says Authority wounded these differences help with the overall aesthetic of each playthrough as when at the karmic rank of Infamous Dawson looks visibly restless and sick as if he really is corrupted and the symbol on his vest is an intimidating Bird's skull that symbolizes fear anguish and Rebellion however at the rank of true hero he looks healthy and the symbol on his back is a flying bird that symbolizes freedom and Harmony delson's biggest Ally is his brother Reggie who is a really great character Reggie has an indirect role in the conduit activities of his brother through showing him the locations of the core relays but despite this there's a disconnect as he still sees his brother's Powers as something to be fixed this is Illustrated when Dolson at one point in the story loses all of his powers he gets excited because this is what he wanted all along for things to just go back to normal much to delson's dismay he begs Reggie to help him get his powers back and Reggie almost doesn't do it but he realizes is that he's sort of In Too Deep at this point decides to do it for Delson and the tribe the disconnect from him and his brother is shown when we see the leftovers of Hank's Killing Spree later on in the story Delson has to take pictures of the bodies and send it to Reggie and the way he responds is great this is what it looks like avoided hey man they do the same thing to me he didn't quite realize how brutal the superpowers are and this one scene I think adds a lot to his character Reggie also goes through a change in his prejudice against conduits all right we're gonna fix this thing to find you a cure a cure shooting smoke out of your fingertips isn't exactly normal man just because it's not normal doesn't mean that it needs a cure definitely new and improved Chelsea this has not improved man we're trying to fix the problems you already have not add new ones no there's no way look just because you have the same Affliction not gift Affliction doesn't mean that we're gonna pick up every little piece of trash we find listen to me he took suspected conduits right off the street against their will that's kidnapping okay don't go anywhere first of all thank you for using the word conduit second of all why are you being such a dick right Drew what are you doing here look those are people over there they need our help not bioterrorists it's not conduits people well thank you a lot of comparisons can be drawn to the Prejudice of conduits to the real-life racism of our own world but unfortunately that is definitely not a topic I want to get into regardless Reggie eventually learns that just because someone is a conduit doesn't mean that they're a monster and as sales improves that through his heroic Deeds Reggie starts referring to Dawson's Powers as gifts rather than symptoms now of course we can't talk about Reggie without talking about his unfortunate death Reggie's death scene as I mentioned earlier hits pretty hard on the good playthrough his final words to Delson completes his Arc in a way as saying that he's proud of him implies that he's proud of what Dawson has done with his powers since he's used his powers for good this is also as I mentioned earlier entirely ruined by the fact that even on the evil playthrough he still says he's proud of him so I can't praise the game too much for this but while we're on the topic of this scene I do want to point out that this really is a great scene as when Dawson gets up he seems visibly both defeated and infuriated and his animations reflect this when doing an orbital drop he's showing so much anger that he drops in fists first fetching Eugene are unfortunately the weaker aspects of the game is they complete their arcs within two missions essentially and are pretty shallow in fetch's case she's super standoffish to Delsin however after what is essentially One Night in the form of a mission she either completely stops killing or doubles down on her killing of drug dealers and starts moving on to innocence Eugene goes through his Arc of leaving his Hideout and does so by either killing people or not killing people I don't really want to get into it though because no matter what they still act the same way during story segments outside of those two missions there's also a few setups for Delson and fetch having a relationship that is expanded upon the evil playthrough but it doesn't really go anywhere outside of these missions either Brooke Augustine however is a very interesting case as she is a really neat villain with a really cool boss fight that I'll talk more about later she has layers to her character and eventually by the end you understand that while she is definitely in the wrong you don't really blame her for making the decisions that she did in the beginning of the game you're under the impression that she is a killer because you saw her kill Hank but as Hank eventually explains what she did was just trap him and make him easy to transport you then see that after the events of Infamous 2 she and the little girl woke up with powers hers being concrete and the little girls being paper when the military threatened to shoot them Augustine gave the little girl to the military claiming that she was on their side and through that gained their trust I honestly might have done the same thing in that case I mean I don't know what else she could have done then with the military's trust she obtained funding for the dup and with it is able to make Curtin K where the conduits are kept not killed but kept she explains that it was the best way to protect her people you find out that she actually was doing too good of a job and that the government was starting to think that the dup wasn't needed anymore and so she intentionally trained fetch Eugene and Hank and let them Escape so that she could send out her dup to capture them and show the world that they still needed her you find out a lot of this through her boss fight which we might as well talk about now as it's the climax of the game after the death of Reggie we have our first match with Augustine where we're essentially launching Rockets into her until she falls over then we finish her with an awesome orbital drop once hitting her with another finishing move you take her entire fort down and you're washed up on shore this boss fights Arena was really cool overall and I wish I had more to say on it but I don't it's really just good the rematch however is a bit of a different story initially the fight starts off like the one before but after launching a Hellfire swarm on her she eventually gives in and decides to give you her power this of course was a strategic move because now Dolson is using concrete on concrete but Augustine's been training for seven years she then goes all out and transforms into a bunch of different concrete monsters which all look so awesome and Dawson having no powers at this point has to just survive as long as he can while he waits for Eugene to deliver more core relay so he can gain more concrete abilities this allows the battles tied to gradually turn and while some might argue that it would have been more satisfying to use the powers he gained up to that point I think the way this has played out worked well enough for me is I personally preferred the concrete on concrete Showdown it would make sense for Augustine to give Delsin concrete as it gives her a huge Advantage too unfortunately concrete is easily the worst Power in the game we might as well talk about it now concrete overall just feels very underwhelming as it is actually what the entire game has been leading up to and the power itself just feels underdeveloped the biggest evidence of this is the fact that there isn't even a special move for the power while the other powers have the orbital drop radial burst and the Hellfire swarm concrete gets nothing it just feels very Bare Bones and I honestly never really used it because the other powers were more fun and I felt like concrete could have easily been expanded upon for example you could have a variation of the sulfur bomb where you throw a piece of concrete on the ground that bursts leaving your enemies stunned with concrete shrapnel in their legs similar to what Augustine does to you in the tribe at the beginning of the game as for a super move they could have an attack where Dawson lifts himself into the air collecting concrete from the ground which forms a giant concrete monster that does a body slam into the ground breaking the mold as it hits the abilities you do get just feel like reskins of previous moves such as the boulder dash which is just the neon Sprint but without the ability to run up walls however you can tank damage while in this Dash the bursts with concrete that can be fired from your hands just feel like a concrete version of the video tauren the concrete barrage to achieve you firing a line of concrete looks cool and does a ton of damage but it doesn't beat out any of the other powers necessarily there were a multitude of situations where I thought to myself I could definitely use Neon right now or hey maybe video would help me approach this battle better but I never had a thought of hey I should use concrete even though I had concrete I never really used it much to them post game despite having a bunch of side quests to do I think Augustine though is a really good villain and with all the characters talked about now I can certainly say that the characters are good I know I criticized Fetch and Eugene a lot but I do think there's still fun characters and they do have really neat designs the way the game presents its story and characters are well done and it has subtle details that enrich the characters the story has a lot of potential and while it does a lot right it does stumble a little bit I'm not feeling like the karma system in the game hinders and constrains the story more than it expands it and that kind of goes for gameplay too the karma system is something that I've criticized a lot in this video and while it's nowhere near perfect I don't think it ruins the game by any means the game is so good despite the many flaws it has and while I've talked about all the flaws in this game I really need to stress that what it does right it does so right and the game is still so much fun to play it's still my favorite game of all time despite its flaws and I think you guys if you haven't played the game to this point really you should just give it a try as it's a great time just don't go looking for a spectacular story or a complex morality system just jump in Seattle take out some dupes and enjoy your powers downloadable content is everywhere it ranges from extra songs to your favorite rhythm game to entire campaigns spanning tons of extra hours for your favorite RPG some DLC can give you new skins for your character and some DLC can be a new weapon in an online game giving you the edge over other players but what makes a good DLC my standards for what makes a good DLC are as follows a good DLC is a piece of content that supplements the game it is something that's being added onto the game and not something that should have been in the game from the start Metal Gear survive was guilty of this as they lock the ability to have multiple save files behind a paywall having various save files should be standard in any game let alone AAA release good DLC should expand the world and story of the original game along with the gameplay a fantastic example of the right way to handle DLC is Infamous First Light InFamous first light is a standalone expansion for Infamous Second Son if you want more context on inFamous Second Son you can watch my analysis of it on my channel which will be linked in the description I will however quickly State My overall thoughts on Second Sun I'd also like to mention that this entire video will be my opinion so if you don't like first light there's nothing wrong with that feel free to discuss why you liked or didn't like it in the comments below second son was an excellent game that improved on a lot of issues and answered a lot of requests that were present in the first two Infamous games however some aspects such as the karma system were as dull as ever and the story seemed to have taken a few steps back major criticisms included uninteresting characters powers that felt underdeveloped not enough diversity within those powers and a lack of fun side quests now these criticisms don't mean that the game isn't a spectacular game made with love and care but there were a few things that could have been done better since this DLC took me about 4 hours to complete I'll say it now if you haven't played InFamous first light and have played Second Son and enjoyed it by first light it's well worth your time as everything from the story to its characters to its powers have seen revisions and improvements that make it in my eyes the perfect DLC since this DLC is about two to three hours long I have to clarify that there will be spoilers alerted all over this video even the footage on screen so far should be considered spoiler territory as the gameplay is really where this game will be the most enjoyable however I must admit the story is also much better this time around so consider this your warning that there will be spoilers ahead now I'm going to do something similar to The Second Sun video where I'll split the video up into different parts which would in this case be presentation gameplay and story so why don't we start with the presentation as far as graphics and textures go everything is the same as the last time you saw it certain textures have been reworked such as the vents in Seattle and seconds on the vents in Seattle were red and had a yellow lights that they're easy to spot and I believe this was by Design but here they blend into the environment much more since like fetch you'll be sticking purely with neon Seattle itself is almost the same as it was in second sun however for this DLC the downtown districts are locked off I have a theory as to why fetch moves much faster in this game and I think because she moves so fast having the full open world and having aspects of that open world loading so quickly might negatively impact the frame rate which is more stable this time around I would also assume that reworking downtown would take a lot of resources and Sucker Punch may have just decided it wasn't worth it thankfully the story doesn't mention downtown and you never have a huge desire to go there you do however get to go to some new areas throughout the story which includes the dup facility alluded to in second sun Kurt and K here you'll be introduced to three different training facilities that feel similar while having their quirks the first is the alpha Arena which feels like a reconstructed city block with lots of square scaffolding allowing you to feel like you'd be training in Seattle this is enforced by the fact that all the enemies are generated here are drug dealers you may have noticed I said the enemies are generated that's right these guys are just Holograms which fun fact are conjured up by another conduit named Eugene who you would have met in Second Son if you know anything about fetch from Second Son then you'll know that she blames the death of her brother on drugs and drug dealers which allows the drug dealer Holograms to make more sense here as Augustine would use the drug dealer Holograms to motivate fetch to train not bad not great but you just started perhaps you'd like more relatable targets the second is the beta Arena which is much more like an arena as it has an octagonal layout and introduces some more challenging elements like turrets and harder dup enemies a few minibus enemies are thrown at you here too the third and final Arena called gamma arena is a similar design to the beta Arena but everything is more extensive and there's more space to move the enemy's conjured here can range from drones that shoot you to Hardy dup agents and minibus enemies will be commonplace these Arenas are all fun for different reasons but I'll talk about them more later while the world in the new stages are well designed and fun the first thing you probably notice about this DLC is the look of neon the neon Dash an ability you'll use for the entirety of your playthrough has a more fluorescent and particle heavy design than the lightspeed skeleton that we saw in second sun I think the neon Dash looks spectacular in this game and I believe the way fetch disappears into a type of cloud of neon looks much better than dalson's Dash where it seems like he's still keeping some form you may have also noticed that Dawson's Dash in Second Son didn't leave much of a trail compared to fetch rest assured the path you leave behind is much brighter and hangs around for much longer leading me to spend an absurd amount of time drawing questionable images with my neon Trail the overall colors of the Neon super moves look the same but that's expected the new moves feel like they blend in well with the Aesthetics of the powers that were established in second sun and taking down enemies is an all-inducing light show for those watching and a satisfying Symphony of lasers for those playing I want to mention that although your superpower is just a bright light I never felt like the lighting got too crazy unlike second sun it's clear based on how much light is on screen that the game adjusts its visuals however for some reason when using the neon power sometimes the lights on screen are so bright that it almost looks like an Ubisoft loading screen I'm not sure why it happens and this could be a problem only for me but bottom line it does happen I want to clarify that as far as I know and judging from the comments on the second sun video this lighting issue I had when using neon was only a problem for me so it could just be a quirk with my PlayStation where it bugs out when it comes to lighting if you think that's going to be an issue here or in second sun I can happily say that it won't be as far as UI and menus go it has a much more Jagged look to it the surveillance menu of second sun has been perfected in first light with things looking much cleaner and this applies to the heads-up display as well the icons on the map and the icons reflecting your power all look great and have a clean look to them one thing that doesn't have a clean look to them would be fetch herself and that's not to say the model looks bad but it's to say that it's clear that she's been on the streets for quite some time her appearance is very layered her boots have what look like large feet warming socks coming out of them which cover her torn leggings which are also under her shorts following up we see she has a sports bra tank top and jacket with a hood on it her clothing looks very warm which of course would be necessary Where she living on the cold precipitating streets of Seattle the designs of the supporting characters like Brent Shane who I initially thought was a young Reggie and Augustine looked excellent and also fit into the world thatch's animations look mostly good as her uses of powers such as the thrusters have a feminine look to them and she hits the ground leaving a cloud of dust she also drops to her knee which helps makes the drop feel more impactful the way she drains neon looks badass too as she uses both of her hands and puts her chest into it rather than dulcin who just used his hands the way her jacket moves while she's running and climbing looks excellent too her climbing animations look better also but her Running Animation looks a little off my biggest issue with the animations and overall presentation is that her belt moves with her legs I mean that for some reason when her leg moves her belt which is sagging down will distort with each leg movement there's no way the developers didn't see this and while I get that fixing it may have been much more complicated than it seems why not just remove the belt it threw off my focus whenever I'd see fetch run I also wish they had more options with the weather and daylight system once finishing the game you'll get the opportunity to change the weather and the different choices for weather are pretty low compared to Second Sun I'm left wondering why they didn't let you use all the weather options from Second Sun as the weather options in second sun and the weather options in first light are the same however you can't play on specific settings like the sunset candy setting from Second Sun finally and this is my last major criticism they give you the ability to change your outfit between the regular outfit that fetch wears during the game and the gear she is given at curtain K even after you beat the game you're not given the option to change your outfit during free roam which feels like a weird oversight on top of that I don't know why they didn't let you use fetch's outfit from Second Son I understand that these points could very well have been nitpicky but I think it says a lot about the DLC quality when my most significant criticisms are as minor as this that's pretty much all I have to say about the presentation so let's finally see how the gameplay was changed firstly let's look at the powers one of the biggest criticisms against second son is that the powers didn't feel fleshed out still that criticism is thankfully alleviated with this DLC as neon has finally gotten the love and attention it deserves and it shows basic neon shots have basic upgrades such as a rapid fire upgrade and shooting more neon bolts in a single burst fetch's neon capacity can also be upgraded to hold not only more neon but to drain the neon faster when it comes to light speed dashing there's a vast difference that a lot of fans of the series including myself have been asking for eventually when you're about 30 minutes into the story these neon clouds will appear around the map and running through these clouds using the lightspeed Dash will allow you to move much faster these neon clouds are scattered everywhere and you'll eventually get an upgrade that will enable you to retain the Boost from the clouds for longer meaning you can quickly get from one end of the city to the other at the speed of light or at the speed of neon I guess you can eventually upgrade your dash with an ability that lets you perform a jump out of it and you'll also get up to two mid-air dashes which allow you to get that extra boost When jumping from building to building one power that is significantly different compared to Second Sun is your melee attacks while in seconds on your attacks are not only base around your chain they also didn't have much depth while the melee attacks in first light don't revolutionize the way you fight it does give you a reason to use melee attacks in second sun you had no reason to use the melee attacks because they were often too slow and weak compared to all of your other Moves In First Light your melee attack is just your fist and these attacks while still being weak are much faster and have a significant change finisher moves when defeating an enemy with melee you gain a finisher indicated by the triangles in the bottom left of your HUD and this is much like all the neon powers super quick and flashy the attack can eventually be upgraded to cause an explosion that damages the target more and damages nearby enemies this made melee a much more viable option as when I would play I would melee a few Grunts and once I had a few finishers stockpiled I would save them until I was in a tight situation and to get out I would use a few melee finishers leading to a few enemies being defeated and the rest at least being stunned I have to admit that there could have been more death to the system such as an even more powerful attack that you could perform should you save three finishers but it's still a substantial improvement over the melee and Second Son the laser focus functions the same way it did in second sun where you have to Target an enemy's weak point except this time the weak point is random it could be on his head arm or leg and I like this as it makes the laser focus deeper than it was in Second Son and second son on a good playthrough for example you would only aim for the legs but in first light you're shooting all over the body I have to admit that it's not a huge challenge to quickly move your reticle from someone's arm to their head but it at least helps things feel somewhat fresh eventually an upgrade allows you to instead of killing your enemy through hitting their weak point you can make them fight for you much like the other powers further upgrades just increase damage or in this case allow time to be slowed for much longer when focusing the stasis blast is essentially the stasis bubble but better it sent the enemy back floating in stasis and I think it was masterfully designed my biggest complaint about the stasis bubble in second sun was the fact that the bubble sent the enemy flying on both the X and Y axis making them in a way harder to hit than when they were on the ground the stasis blast in first light is a blast that sends the enemy flying back so wherever you send them they will always be moving on only one axis based on your perspective this made the blast much more enjoyable and more practical with further upgrades just increasing range and damage next and trust me we're almost there is the Homing missiles they function like you would expect where you fire about five neon grenades that home in on enemies and upgrades can increase the damage these grenades do and the number of missiles fired finally your super move is a neon Singularity and I'm glad they changed the super move as they easily could have reused the radiant sweep the neon Singularity creates a black hole and by the end of the story you'll have an upgraded version that sucks in heavy objects like cars I think the powers you get are intuitive as I feel familiar enough for those who played Second Son to be within their comfort zone however I wish they had more meaningful upgrades there were 35 upgrades in the game and only 7 of them changed how you use to power the others were just your typical damage boost or increasing your neon capacity or adding more missiles certain upgrades like the finisher moves make melee completely different and adding a mid-air Dash and a powered up jump in a light speed Dash changes the way you use these powers and allows you to do more with them the largest tree that is tied with melee is the Homing missiles and every upgrade just makes the Rockets do more damage not going to be farther back and allow you to shoot more of them they don't inherently change the way you use the powers the same way the laser focus does with its upgrades having the upgrade for laser focus which makes hitting a weak point refill your focus meter changes the way you use the power even if it is situational you now want to chain these weak point hits together to keep your focus rolling maybe have skills play into each other such as having an upgrade for the missiles so that they now Target enemy weak points and if you were to then also get the enslave upgrade you could fire out 11 of these grenades that turn an entire group of enemies into allies thankfully one way in which first light massively improved on second sun is through its missions second Sun's missions can be boiled down to just combat sometimes it was combat with a different setting such as on Augustine's Fort but it was always combat the missions in first light are a little more exciting and I feel like it ends up being more effective in keeping gameplay interesting some missions do see you just beating down some thugs but one Mission saw me hooking myself up to a neon Source making my neon shots feel like they are sniper shots using fetch as a neon turret others see you protecting a truck while trying to take out other cars which makes the level more complicated as you have to keep track of the health of the truck as well as your own health now these missions are by no means revolutionary and are still a little Bland but it's certainly an upgrade from second side 1. as far as missions went in second sun the side missions were easily the worst aspect of the game there were specific improvements I had wished for such as time trials and more complex boss shards first like fix these issues by taking out the boring missions from second sun and reworking things like the blast shards instead of upgrading their powers through the blast shards you use neon lumens which are these stick clouds of neon around the map and while they're never brain racking they at least give you some sort of challenge for example I found one that was in the middle of the air and it was too high for me to jump up and get what I had to do was go to a building down the street run through a cloud to get the Boost and then quickly run up a chimney to get some extra height so I could jump off of it and catch the Lumen these lumens give you skill points but you also get skill points from the many challenges challenges include getting specific scores in the arena saving a certain amount of hostages and so on they encourage you to experiment with the different powers and help you to use them differently such as using the stasis blast to send an enemy flying off a roof the races see you chasing after a lumen and you have to use these boost clouds to catch up to it graffiti art returns and this time is made with neon rather than spray paint and it works spectacularly they usually perfect Brent and fetch's relationship and some graffiti is tied to the story segments where you have to tag a drug dealer's vans in order to send a powerful fluorescent message I think the graffiti while being less abundant is more profound as it seems to have more thought put into it like this one here in most neon graffitis that depict Bren fetch we see Brent being represented by the color blue and fetched by the color pink seeing this graffiti here makes me feel like the woman with the wings is fetch who's being kept in check by the webs are representative of Brent he keeps her grounded and prevents her from fully spreading her conduit-shaped wings while also keeping her out of trouble not all of the Arts are as deep as this but they all have either a deeper meaning or just inflict the player with a wholesome warm feeling inside while also making you more sympathetic for fetch as you know that her older brother will tragically die in each district there is a police drone with a camera that you can hack into which serves as a decent puzzle and after that that's all the side quests in the game they're entertaining enough and there's not a lot of them so they don't get stale as far as Mission design goes I think the missions were fun with the last mission in particular being fun however setting a mission in the middle of a blizzard which has a lot of white wasn't too kind on the eyes as having it mixed with your power of Bright Lights you'll find your eyes straining quite frequently and I often found myself saying what is happening I can't see you may notice that there isn't a Karma system in this game and this helps to make the gameplay feel Freer and it's nice not having certain powers locked behind your karmic rank finally one of the most significant changes to the gameplay first light is the arena mode this mode is a godsend for a game like this and I found myself playing more of this Arena than I did all the other side quests and main story combined bonus points for letting you play is delicin if you have Second Son the Arenas have two game modes the first is hostage where a hostage will show up along with some enemies and you have to defeat the enemies before they kill the set hostage allow five hostages to die or die yourself and the game is over say you want a more traditional experience you can do the good old survival mode which just has wave after wave of enemies being thrown at you I don't have much to say for the arena other than I think it's a spectacular addition as it gives you a safe place to test out new abilities and techniques for some closing thoughts on the gameplay I think it's similar enough to Second Son for it to feel familiar but first light makes enough changes for it to feel like a new experience variants I just wish that there were boss battles like the ones we saw in second sun a rival conduit to fetch would have been helpful however I understand that the idea could create some problems with the Lauren continuity of the game it's not just neon that gets some new development here as historian specifically fetch as a character is expanded upon to give a summary we're shown fetch in her cell occurred in K where she recounts the events before her capture two years earlier one more job it's all loaded up let's just go no this one's the payday how much left to rent a decent place yeah yeah not for a short-tailed Burmese cat the plan happens to go sideways and a local gang captures Brent a guy named Shane sees you and helps you out after you supply him with a bunch of guns he reveals that he has Brent and that he won't give Brent back until fetch does some more missions for him eventually Fetch deviates and ruins his whole operation realizing that he wouldn't kill Brent in which he walks into the old theater where her boss fight was in Second Son Shane drugs her and when fetch loses control she ends up accidentally killing Brent this drug trip scene was done well and I don't have much else to say on it I just thought it was neat as it shows all of fetch's biggest fears and her most repressed Memories the stories being told through fetches who describes it to Augustine after a major story point and a breakdown from Fetch were sent back to the present day for a while and by the end of the game after killing Brent fetch in tears and clearly on the verge of another breakdown is given the opportunity to kill Shane being so emotionally overwhelmed she unleashes a powerful attack that blows a hole in the walls of curtain K she struggles to find a source of neon and when she sees one she absorbs it and blasts through a small army of dup soldiers she catches up with Shane and she eat I like the development fetch gets here and her story feels grounded while still being Supernatural fetch has anxiety or at least that's what it seems like but fetch's mental health is handled well as it doesn't Define her character as it does in some other games I like that they never flat out say fetch has anxiety or make it some romanticized Mini-Game her anxieties does not play a role in the story however when she has a panic attack she develops a new power as a coping mechanism it's not outright stated but it's implied that she first got her powers during one of her episodes I like that her condition isn't trivialized and even the way she describes her instance feels realistic those breaks from reality changed me I'd wake up with new powers it was like my body decided to fight but my mind just gave up you've been very forthcoming Miss Walker she says that she doesn't have Brent she can freak out and never uses the word anxiety or panic attack and I don't know man I just really felt like this aspect of her character was well done we also see the amount of care she has for Brent and how grateful she is for him as she so easily manipulated by Shane that shouts to hide her powers when she's with Brent and keep a low profile still when she uses her powers she regards as being so much fun and missing it I miss this it almost sounds like she just relapsed and gets an adrenaline high from speeding around which plays well into her addiction and Drug riddled past Shane as a character does a great job of being such a hateable douche and his constant attempts to Swoon fetch felt hilarious but also made me hate the character even more but in the right way I mean I think you're supposed to hate the guy the way he manipulates fetch felt good because it's not like fetch was being incompetent in the situation in fact she shows that she's smarter than the average bear in a lot of scenes Augustine also gets some love in this DLC is when we're not in the flashbacks we get to see the insides of curtain K and we understand that Augustine does really care for her so-called inmates and the fact that she brings Shane to fetch shows up beneath her concrete shell is some semblance of a heart I wish Brent had more to do with the story though we don't see much of him but I wish we had more time at the beginning of the game to play a few missions with him and get attached to him his death does still have some impact due to how clear the game is with how much he means to fetch but it could have had more impact if he meant a lot to the player as well the story itself on not being perfect was a significant step up from Second Son my only major gripe was that when Shane shows up in the end fetch loses it so hard and does so much damage that she blows out a wall in this Maximum Security Prison and multiple people within the radius of her attack people which might I add are wearing armor meant to protect them from conduits are knocked out the guy in the basic jumpsuit not only survives but is capable of stealing a truck and eventually running away while fetch is barely able to walk it just felt a little weird you do however get to vaporize the guy which felt amazing given he was such an ass the entire game I like that they ditched the karma system as like I mentioned in second sun it heavily hindered the story and doesn't as a character Dustin in his neutral state was relatively deep but once he had to start branching off into a hero or villain it felt like two half-written characters without the morality system first light opens itself up to tell a better more fleshed out story with a more in-depth character that isn't restricted by a black and white morality system InFamous first light is by my definition a perfect DLC as it supplements the story told in Second Son Well while also having its own identity in quirks the power saw an overhaul that while not incredibly drastic or revolutionary was just enough considering this is a DLC the arena and racist should be a staple in future games as I lost more hours to the arena than I did to any other aspect of the game the story did an excellent job of fleshing out the world in the story of Second Son and turned one of my least favorite characters from Second Son into possibly my favorite in the entire franchise it is hard however to recommend first light over second son due to both games costing 20 dollars I think seconds on edges out in being a better bang for your buck and I hope that sucker punch releases a 30 bundle that features both Second Son and first light the flashy visuals and satisfying gameplay are everything you would expect from an Infamous game and the lack of a Karma system allowed the story to flesh out his characters more and make them more complicated than his predecessor despite being a short DLC it is a fluorescent light show that is worth every penny over the past year or so I have replayed to near completion every Infamous game and after reflecting on those playthroughs I had a difficult question in front of me which Infamous game is the best it seems like it may be an easy question to answer but now that I have also within the last year so critique the entire series I can't help but feel that each of the games more or less has interesting and notable qualities about them which not only weren't a playthrough but also justify its top spot on anyone's list this is the second ranking video that I've done and the first ranking video I did was on the Batman Arkham games but that video was structured in a more finite and list-like manner here I'd like to analyze a series as a whole from its different facets regarding gameplay story presentation and so on I think by determining which games do what the best we can come to a better understanding of which I feel is the best and which is my favorite I make that distinction between the best and favorite because I actually have two different answers for both I won't reveal those answers yet because another flaw with the other ranking videos that I told you what my list was before I gave context and justification which allowed enough people to be baffled enough with what was in my eyes relatively acceptable opinions to not even hear the context another way around this context problem is just by referring you to my other critiques if you're curious about my super in-depth thoughts on all these games and you have a solid chunk of time on your hands I recommend you watch those videos first first that way this video doesn't have to be three and a half hours long of course spoilers are ahead and with that out of the way let's talk about the infamous series and try to answer the question of which Infamous game is the best so just to make sure we're all on the same page here let's talk about what's at the top of the priority list for an Infamous game firstly I think the powers are an obvious number one above all else the powers are what make Infamous such an interesting and consistently fun experience I value them based on variety complexity and general fun Factor below that I would put presentation I know that putting this above things like the open world and story may seem like a poor choice but I do it because it's near integral to your enjoyment of the powers smoke is a really cool ability but it would be far less satisfying to dash through fence as Vents and anything else if the particular effects were not turned up to 11 electricity would not nearly be as fun if you couldn't hear the sounds of the militia being cooked alive the comic-like cutscenes also add to the comic book charm of these games too after that we'll have level design this includes main quests side quests World design and boss fights which to me are essential to enjoying your powers I can have fun farting around in an open world but being able to take down monolithic kaijus are just some of the best moments of the series finally the story and Karma choices are but give us an excuse to continue the game and they allow us to feel like we are making an impact just because I think the stories are the least important out of what I've listed does not mean that I think the stories are unimportant or unnecessary the infamous stories are some of my favorites and are really memorable but that is not necessarily what I am there for and my enjoyment and replayability of the games do not rely on it now that we have established what I believe are the most important facets let's get into analyzing all the games through that lens and Define which games do what best in my opinion starting of course with the powers now what exactly makes the powers of one game better than the others I believe that the complexity and depth of the powers are what make them the most fun Infamous Second Son is a good example of a game with a wide range of powers smoke neon and video and of course concrete but those different powers have intersecting abilities and lack the same depth as something like electricity does so while I think that smoke is my favorite Power aesthetically I feel like electricity has a greater repertoire and I really feel like Electric City reached its proper conclusion as far as the variety of the powers go as mentioned before smoke neon and video have their varied abilities which is great but a lot of them are just remixes of the dash with an exception to Neon or they're a remix of a power already seen in a previous Infamous game for example the torrent Bolt from second sun is just a remix of the rapid Bolt from Infamous 2. I don't think that inherently makes it bad though I think the only real competitors here are Infamous 2 and Infamous Second Son Infamous 1 is just a more or less limited move set compared to Infamous 2. and Festival of Blood has a super limited Infamous 2 move set with minimal additions FirstLight did expand upon neon but I don't feel like it comes close to Second Sun by sheer variety alone we are essentially left with a battle between quality or quantity electricity is flashy powerful and has a ton of variety being able to change the type of basic bolts you fire to even being able to summon a tornado instead of a lightning storm offers a lot of replayability and an excuse to change up tactics the traversal abilities didn't offer a ton of flow but I think with enough practice getting around can be a ton of fun and who can forget the lightning tether which turn this into a borderline Spider-Man game for me another unique ability in Infamous 2 is the amp and while I don't think the concept is as good as the gigawatt blades from the first game the finishes here are as stylish as it gets and I also can't forget to mention the Napalm and cryo Powers which unlike second sun seamlessly fit into the electric move set combining freeze grenades with tripwire Rockets is a ton of fun and leaves me enjoying each playthrough when it comes to Second Sun we have a more shallow move set but ultimately a wider range of Aesthetics and play Styles starting with smoke I believe it's the best looking power in the entire series as it's just an insane mess of particles and using it to Skyrocket through events only to chain another Dash into event is my favorite way of traversing the city the smoke shots feel like you are hitting enemies with muffins but the rockets and specifically the grenades feel like you are hitting enemies with Napalm infused mustard gas of course you can't talk about delson's Arsenal without mentioning the chain which in my opinion is such an amazing weapon for its different variations across the powers but also for its snug fit within the game's aesthetic and overall rebellious tone we also can't leave the karma bomb out of the discussion question as the orbital drop is near iconic at this point and is just devastating I think smoke overall is such a good power that it could have assuming the move set was expanded upon occupied an entire game to itself much like another Power which actually did get that opportunity neon neon is a lot of people's favorite because it prioritizes Speed and Agility over everything else zipping around the city at top speed was always fun and while it definitely looks cool and feels cool I couldn't help but feel as though the ways in which you Traverse the city with neon lacked a ton of input from the player with smoke you had to time your dashes properly to get from one vent to another if you wanted to keep your momentum but that wasn't ever a problem with neon if I didn't have the most fun traversing with neon I certainly had a good time with the combat as the neon gameplay rewarded precision and obviously speed its karma bomb was a light show that is great for crowd control and clearing a 180 degree radius of anything living it was definitely the weakest of the powers when it came to the combat as aside from the bolts taking down enemies took a lot more effort and if you wanted to cruise down the Easy Street then you could just swap to video video is a power that focuses on Brute force and strength as the aggressive video torrent pummels enemies to bits with bits and the wings are as close as we get to actual flight in a Mainline game the mass of swords that destroy your enemies are also indicative of the intense power that comes with this variation which is also shown off in the karma bomb which sees you sending an entire Army towards whatever enemy is in front of you this is personally my least favorite variation of the main three but only because the flashy nature of neon and the iconic smoke just beats it out fortunately video almost never comes in last place because of the final power concrete concrete is another Powerhouse like video but with fewer abilities while it is at the top of its class in the DPS department in the variety Department it's scraping the bottom of the barrel not only is it in concept A little Bland due to how all of your moves are just different Shades of Gray but in gameplay it just felt unfinished due to how a lot of the abilities just seem like they were pulled from other variants and had a concrete coat paved on top of it I don't want it to seem like concrete is that bad it was clear that it was meant to be a post game Power that was added for fun but is ultimately the weakest of the bunch when comparing the two I think infamous second son has a wider variety of powers but each power feels slightly underdeveloped when compared to how fleshed out electricity was in Infamous 2 which felt like it was taken to its proper conclusion so much so that two other powers supplemented and held up the electric powers I think it's honestly a toss-up between the two if I had to pick I personally prefer infamous second son's Powers barely over the powers and Infamous 2. another area where it seems that Infamous Second Son edges ahead of its predecessors is in the Fidelity but what about the other facets of presentation animation quality cutscene Quality Art Style soundtrack and sound effects I think Infamous one is obviously the weakest in this category and unfortunately this is just a product of the time in which this game was released luckily Infamous 1 is the only game to have black lightning which satisfies my inner Palpatine I think the best soundtrack goes to Infamous 2 but I won't go too in depth with that opinion because music is so subjective and I have no background in music to justify it I think the sounds of the different powers are the best in Infamous Second Son as especially with smoke it feels like you can hear every bit of Ash being sucked into delson's body the loud crackling of electricity especially in Infamous 2 which sounds like someone is smashing in infinite amount of Fine China against a concrete floor always makes you feel the raw power associated with it first light turned the neon particle effects up to 11 and continued to nail the aesthetic that Second Son established I think that when it comes to presentation as a whole there's little competition I know that I didn't go very in depth with this but I mean you can see it on the screen right now second sun is the best looking game in my opinion and I think it's clear to see why as far as level design goes it's another easy pick for me the Infamous games in my opinion have never been the Pinnacle of game design with a lot of the story missions in second sun being boiled down to just arriving at an area and pummeling whatever enemies were in front of you sure there were a variety of enemies but it was minimal compared to the likes of Infamous 2 which had heavy variants of regular gun using enemies cryogenic conduits or Tran monsters not to mention the mini boss-like enemies that each class had it's no competition when it comes to the boss fights all of the games suffer from just having you wail on a large conduit while the boss fighting Festival of Blood was pretty lame I can at least say that Infamous 1 had a fighting chance here the fight against Kessler for example was an epic showdown that capped the game off really well the fight against Sasha but was that her name was it Sasha I don't know it was pretty good but ultimately wasn't much compared to the Kaiju size Alden who actually had some offensive abilities which satisfied my craving for a David and Goliath battle which I should mention is something I also value here I have always loved seeing two super-powered individuals have a Titanic clash and it's especially fun when one is far bigger than the other I think Infamous 1 doesn't satisfy that too much but to be fair that could be a technical limitation because let's be honest that game was hanging on to its double-digit frame rate by a [ __ ] hair but Second Son definitely had a few larger battles such as those against he who dwells and Augustine and they both look great with all the particle effects present but there isn't really any large-scale boss fight better than Cole in the beast battle that spans the entire map and ends in what is essentially a stalemate where the only thing that can really end it is the RFI that's also if we ignore the fight against a literal Kaiju which is Bertrand which sees you shooting weak points and baiting him into larger explosives even with how basic they are mechanically Infamous 2 in my eyes has the best boss fights since I saw you dabbling in both strategically taking down weak points and just pummeling them with large barrages of lightning I do think that the final fight against Augustine which sees you charging your karmic meter is really fun but I think Infamous 2 just beats it by a mile with this wider range and better quality of bosses boss fights aren't everything though as the actual missions matter as well and I'd argue they matter more unfortunately as much as I love second son this is yet another category where it's just no competition Infamous 1 and 2 offer a wide variety of ways to use your powers whether that's powering up generators in Infamous 1 or charging a Bus full of explosives to Ram it into a facility to blow the thing Sky High in Infamous 2. unfortunately even with the variety being so good the missions themselves weren't always powering up a portion of the map in Infamous 2 was often boring and while powering up flood town was a good way to ice the player after swapping powers and give the cast a good chance to voice their opinions on the ensuing events powering up the other areas was pretty boring to me and going back to flood Town some of the worst missions in the game were here like the Dunbar beam which saw you using a spotlight to kill enemies instead of you know your superpowers and the mission where you have to put a cap on different pipes was just far too long but I'd rather have a solid variety with a few Duds in the same Mission over and over again with some new environments or a new ability or two I understand that much like the tagline of second sun States the goal is just to enjoy your powers but I don't think taking out endless clones of soldiers is the only way to do that that kind of stuff should be saved for the end game which Speaking of most of the series generally lacked the Sai content in second sun for example is actually quite strange because it didn't let you use your powers much at all finding the audio logs was a matter of holding your phone up which could not be done whilst also using other powers the cameras were just a matter of finding it and shooting it and the spies were much the same it was pretty disappointing as far as endgame stuff goes and I don't think I made that clear in my Second Son video Infamous 2 side content while not in any way a master class was still generally enjoyable and the fact that it actually required you to use some of your powers makes it better than second sun alone and the same goes for Infamous 1 although it's more limited moveset doesn't allow it to beat out too in my opinion the main levels in Infamous 1 also have some variety but the low points for that game game like the mission when entering the historic district stick out in my mind to some of the lowest points of the series you'll notice that the Standalone DLCs like Festival of Blood and first light haven't been mentioned too much and that's because both of these DLCs follow the same structure as their parent game when it comes to powers and the abilities are often a more limited version of their predecessors I can at least commit first light for having the arena which offers endless replayability and I think if we do by the grace of God get another Infamous game then I think this feature is a must-have as a final Point here I think the level design of the DLCs are good and in fact I'd say the level design in first light sees you doing more with your powers than you ever did in second sun and in the case of Festival of Blood it's a matter of the level design being the same but Infamous 2 essentially wins that battle by quantity alone ultimately I think when it comes to the level design Infamous 2 is easily the best when it comes to the open worlds I think it's a closer tie between Infamous 2 and second sun Seattle is truly a joy to roam around in and is notably far more vertical than both Empire City and more notably new Murray comparing these two locations is a tough thing and rather than valuing things like variety and vertical reality I think I'd rather look at how well these locations mesh with your powers I specifically noted in my Infamous 2 video that numere felt built for your powers just as much as your powers were built for it numerate was a very horizontal map which on the surface may seem like a bad thing but when paired with Cole's horizontal ability seeing him dashing forward grinding on power rails and yet his vertical abilities consisted of a large jump be that through a car or an ice Shard and a vertical power rail your vertical abilities were there for the main purpose of just getting you to the rooftop level where a majority of the platforming and traversal takes place I think second son's abilities have a lot of potential for great traversal but there isn't always room to make use of it smoke for example in my mind is perfect for the first island as it's all low rooftops are on the same level kinda like new Murray the abundance events fences and low platforms allows your dash to take you anywhere and chaining them together is endlessly fun as proven by the countless hours I've spent just running around dashing around the same can't be said for neon sharersal because it's primarily just holding Circle and running forward a similar sentiment is shared for video and is gliding mechanic and like the other powers it's not as good as electricity but I think it has more variety so again we land on a decision between quality or quantity and I feel like I'm starting to sound like a broken record here so let's move on to the karma and how it works in the gameplay and the story the karma choices are easily some of the coolest parts of the series and while I will be praising the different games for how they handled them I need to clarify that across the board a lot of the game struggled with creating proper moral dilemmas and justifying both sides especially the evil one I think when framing a moral decision your choice of words is integral for example nobody in their right mind would pick the option with the title corrupt Eugene unless in a position where they want to be the bad guy because it's a video game and they aren't held accountable for their actions or because they are a completionist obviously I'm giving away my thoughts a little early here so let's start from the bottom up beginning with second sun obviously Festival blood and first light won't be considered here due to their lack of a Karma system second son's Karma choices in gameplay just felt like a watered-down version of Infamous 2's which already felt like a watered down version of Infamous ones your karma choices and gameplay were some World activities where you take down some drug dealers rescue some conduits and on the other end of that you just kill them and everybody else within gameplay you could restrain or execute enemies but there was a little benefit to executing enemies aside from the karmic streak this was how you used her karmic abilities and I'd like that I encouraged you to play a certain way the issue is that it's all they did they encouraged and benefited you I think the karma system works best when they cause you to actively think in gameplay and make sacrifices which is an integral part of doing the right thing I kind of want to put a pin in this point however because it can quickly turn into a tension about the actual philosophies of morality and what makes something a truly good and selfless act but for the sake of this video not being an hour long let's just usually generally agreed upon requirements of a good action being an element of sacrifice be that time or health and something that isn't beneficial to the player and it helps either an individual or the general populace as a whole the reason the karma system in second sun didn't do it for me was because it often wasn't very hard to be the good guy I'm not saying the game needs to be extremely difficult or even actively punish the player for doing the right thing but well actually yeah they kind of should take a look at Infamous one where you're given the choice to either turn the valves for yourself or get someone else to do it for you if you do it yourself your health takes a hit and you are visually impaired this is the exact kind of sacrifice that makes superheroes so good as they are actively making their jobs harder in order to benefit their General Society going back to Second Son you have the choice to either restrain or execute an enemy and either option doesn't do much and the only difference is the button you press in Infamous 1 and 2 you have the option to bio leech enemies and more importantly civilians in both games the overlapping moral choice is to kill or not to kill sure you can justify killing an enemy in second son because they shot at you with the intent to kill but Infamous 1 and 2 the option to bioleach an enemy is an added gameplay mechanic that allows you to trade valuable vulnerable time in a fight for health and power but what if an enemy isn't within your vicinity do you sacrifice a civilian who otherwise did nothing wrong aside from being in the wrong place at the wrong time is that a justifiable action if you think so you'll be heading down the path of infamy and if you decide to spare the civilians you get nothing not even a bonus for not doing it you just keep your good karma in Infamous 2 there were less of these but notably the first karmic instance did allow you to either not fight any enemies but at the cost of the civilian's present Infamous 2 actually serves as a great middle ground between Second Son which had mostly poor karmic decisions and Infamous one which had good karma choices for the most part the gameplay Karma decisions were relatively good but the story decisions had some of the best in the series with the final decision being the first to come to mind and yet it also had some of the worst with the decision to not track down the main antagonist and instead create a family of monsters which while not as directly black and white as choosing between corrupting the youth and like not doing that justifying the evil action is still a tough battle that I don't think Infamous 2 won all the time fortunately this wasn't the case for the ending Choice as mentioned it's important for a choice such as this one that caps off the story across two games and potentially results in a character's death to be done well I think the only issue I have with this choice is that more time wasn't spent on it sure the threat of the Beast and the choice that was looming over our heads for most of the game is is there but the choice does not actually rear its head until the end of the game and by the time that question is posed the decision is made near immediately the problem with this I think is that the decision itself is not fleshed out enough especially on the evil side sacrificing yourself to save humanity is a noble thing to do but for how long at what point is another race fear created and more conduits are activated will we have the proper conduits or an RFI to stop the end of the world again do we instead take the evolutionary leap of faith I go more in depth with this in my Infamous 2 video but decisions like this appear in the first game too take the decision where Cole is tasked with deciding between destroying a second Ray sphere or not you either detonate it killing thousands but powering yourself up in the process or destroy it making your job harder while it is true that there is more to the evil side and it could be justified further by explaining that in order to protect the city Cole needs to be in Tip-Top shape but that extra justification isn't needed hence why I enjoy the choice more here I think when talking about the morality system in these games we have to actually tackle the question of what is and isn't moral and who decides it for example the decision at the end of Infamous 2 is really good because both sides are justifiable but regardless of how you slice it Cole is deciding the fate of a lot of people because keep in mind that using the RFI not only kills himself but millions of others ones that don't even know that they're conduits and it prevents an evolutionary jump in humans yet this is seen as the evil option I think this issue shows up when talking about any morality system in a game but it unfortunately reinforces his theme of not making moral decisions but rather choosing to be the unwavering Goody Two-Shoes or the unrelenting evildoer as I write this though maybe that's just not the point and perhaps I'm just asking for the games to do something they've never intended to do in the first place I'm starting to believe that maybe Infamous has never been about making hard decisions that make you question if you really are being a good guy I don't think Sucker Punch is trying to be judged jury and executioner immorality it's more likely that they just had a game with superpowers and thought huh wouldn't it be cool to have two routes one is a true hero one is a villain and maybe I'm just overthinking it go figure the guy you made hour long video on Infamous 2 might be overthinking some things regardless if we judge the games from the standpoint of Simply which games offered better moral dilemmas I think Infamous 1 barely scrapes past Infamous 2 and Infamous 2 takes a crown if we simply value which game had better evil and good routes while I'm regarding the karma in the series as a whole I may as well mention that for future entries if we are ever lucky enough to see them I'd want some greater branching off from the good and bad stories in most games you simply make a decision your path splits for a mission or two and then you're back at a neutral point in the story in games with in-depth stories like Infamous 2 this is far more excusable but in a game like second sun where a single playthrough is at most eight hours I don't know we may as well talk about the stories in these games as zakara plays such a large role and let's begin with the protagonists of these stories it's unfortunately again pretty clear who comes out on top Cole being the best character is a bit of an obvious pick since he had two games and a comic worth of development which by the way won't be counted because a lot of the general player base didn't read them and realistically it isn't integral to his character anyways but even discounting that two whole games is a lot of development and that's a great thing because cool feels fully fleshed out by the end of the game Cole goes from being a run-of-the-mill carrier to eventually gaining the power to control electricity and after making a selfish decision to avoid his greatest foe the Beast goes back in time to force his past self to not make the same mistakes going as far as to kill the pass version of the woman he loves and by the time his journey is complete he still fails he isn't strong enough he ends up in a stalemate with the Beast where even if both of them give everything they have they don't win it's a powerful story and ending no matter what side you end on and it's Unforgettable seeing Cole's Journey was well delivered and well written and while not every story Beat hit like it should the overall narrative here is fantastic despite the good ending of Infamous 2 stating that every Conduit on Earth died after the use of the RFI which by the way is Canon Infamous Second Son Stars Delson Rowe only four years after the numerate incident interestingly the conduits are back to square one of being hunted by the government and while that does make the otherwise powerful ending of Infamous 2 obsolete I'm going to try and not hold it against the game because it would be pretty lame to just stop the analysis here Delson is our newest conduit and takes a similar journey to Coal except Delson is far more of a loser this time around in Infamous one Cole was a guy you would just see and forget immediately he worked for himself kept to himself and would be by our standards a good functioning member of society Delson isn't he's a delinquent to vandal deadbeat I think that makes his rise to Glory all the more rewarding or damning if he takes the opposite route unfortunately that's kind of all there is to say about Delson sure he's a cool character and I really like him but what I just said about him is pretty much what you get he has no development outside of his karma and while that plays a pretty big role I feel that Delson hadn't gone through enough of a journey called by the end of both games had his views on the world changed and I don't think Delson needs to have a complete transformation but some change would have been nice I think one of the better stories in the series was actually fetches in first light she doesn't have any Karma decisions because the continuity didn't really allow for that but I think this actually worked in the character's favor learning about her pass and how she got her powers and most depressingly how her brother died while retconned was pretty engaging and while not long enough to give the other two entries here a run for their money was still pretty good and weren't some praise a similar sentiment is shared for Festival of Blood but that DLC is even shorter so its quality is also capped pretty hard when it comes to supporting characters second son is again looking like the weak link Reggie was one of the more memorable characters in service is a sidekick throughout most of the game and seemingly kept dowsing grounded however his death and more importantly the dialogue cheering his death felt anticlimactic given how the dialogue doesn't change across playthroughs fetch is also in the discussion again as her presence and second son was decent and the same goes for Eugene however it felt that they just had tiny arcs that lasted for like an hour or two and then that was it there wasn't a lot of room for improvement or growth with their characters and while you could excuse that by citing the game's overall length it isn't much compared to the likes of the cast of Infamous 2. characters like Trish certainly pissed me off at best but it's easy to forget about that when the constant entertainment of Zeke Jebediah Dunbar is on screen as his Ransom about beer boobs and mechanical bulls prompted just as much laughter as his ending monologue about his past best friend prompted tears something I wanted to see more of in Infamous one was how Cole dealt with his new powers emotionally and while it's okay that we didn't see that I liked seeing quo struggle with hers and her character as a whole was great the same can't be said for her more irrational counterpart who seemed included with the sole purpose of having an evil sidekick for Cole it didn't seem to to contribute much at all to the plot I think that the villains in two were miles better than Augustine who granted did have a good backstory and her motivations were understandable I doubt anyone in their right mind could agree with unlike Jon's motivations which while also understandable were also agreeable to an extent to be fair The Supporting Cast of Infamous 2 didn't change or grow too much throughout the story but Zeke's behavior and two is far different from one due to the events of that game and at least quo and nicks end up on opposite sides of the karma Spectrum by the end of the game for good reasons so as I'm sure you can gather Infamous 2 has the better characters better scale and is overall the best narrative in the series of course the fact that it is building upon the first game allows it to take the characters and everything else to new heights but I think it's fair to say that even if we count just Infamous 2 it would still outperform the other games it has a gripping story that has everything from a great foundation and build up to a legendary Climax and with that we've touched on just about every other aspect of the series and to give you a reminder the best powers are a tie between Infamous 2 and second son it's a battle between quality and quantity the presentation easily goes to Second Son which is is just a product of the game's release date The level design however is borderline no competition because Infamous 2 had the greatest variety of how to use your powers and while having some low points had a lot of highs like the great boss fights as far as karma goes I think it was really a battle between Infamous 1 and 2 but Infamous 1 really instilled the same kind of sacrifice that being a hero takes within its gameplay while also having interesting dilemmas throughout the story allowing it to get on the board for the story Infamous 2 is a clear winner with an expanded cast greater scale and greater Climax and of course the legendary ending So based on what we've seen here it's no wonder that Infamous 2 is widely seen as the best game in the series and obviously from a critical perspective I completely agree if I had to rank the games I think it would go Festival of Blood for its small scale and limited selection of powers Infamous one which is while fun at times in my opinion too janky to be enjoyed these days but its story is great so don't think that it's a game You Should Skip FirstLight told a great story and had a good main protagonist that wasn't Shackled by the karma system like Delson was in his game which would come up next the best would definitely be Infamous 2 with its excellent gameplay art style data it's a no-brainer so with this list I've tried to be as unbiased as possible and really look at what these games did right and wrong in my eyes but if any of you are interested you may notice I said in previous videos that my favorite of the series was Second Son and to explain that further my personal list is quite similar to the one I just presented except I would put second Son at the top I realize that this may seem ridiculous because let's be real I kind of dogged on the game a lot here and I think the criticisms I levied against the game were correct and fair but from a purely subjective perspective this game was made for me its gameplay was flashy fluid and fun and its world and art style is easily my favorite of the series while the story itself is pretty good I just found myself really identifying with Delson delson's kind of a loser and a delinquent and as a teenager who was also a juvenile [ __ ] at the time projecting myself onto a character like that was easy especially compared to someone like Cole who more or less had his [ __ ] together at least before the blast so that's why I'd say the best Infamous game is Infamous 2 but second son is by far my favorite so with that unfortunately that is essentially all I have to say about the infamous Series this series is one of my favorites of all time to the point where every time we see a Miles Morales related trailer from Insomniac I [ __ ] myself a little bit thinking that it might be an Infamous remaster or a new game entirely since playing Infamous 1 for free thanks to the Playstation hack and feeling like I found my new favorite game to the emotional swan song that was the ending of Infamous 2 to the pure awe of the visuals and relatability to the characters of Second Son sure the games aren't perfect but damn if they aren't good and in some cases pretty close to perfect and for evidence of this outside of the games themselves look at the fan base which is still enjoying creating things about And discussing these games and while if I'm honest I don't think I will I hope I can revisit the series on this channel sometime covering a new game or a remaster but until then thank you for watching me overthink and talk for way too long about this series and take care

Channel: That Boy Aqua

Views: 1,631,375

Keywords: infamous review, infamous critique, infamous analysis, infamous series critique, infamous retrospective, infamous series retrospective, all infamous games ranked, ranking the infamous games, which infamous game is the best, the best infamous game, new infamous game, infamous 2 review, infamous second son review, infamous first light review, infamous festival of blood review, i reviewed every infamous game, infamous ps5, infamous remastered

Id: jrkE15EttU0

Length: 216min 53sec (13013 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 15 2022