Infamous: Second Son takes place seven years after the previous game. Conduits are now considered bio-terrorists and the newly formed Department of Unified Protection (DUP) is now in charge of searching and capturing Conduits.

If you liked the previous Infamous games than you are in for some good news, Infamous: Second Son is just as good if not better than the previous titles. As Infamous: Second Son continues with the series moral choice system and great looking powers.

In Infamous: Second Son you play as Delsin Rowe a delinquent living in an Akomish reservation with his brother Reggie, who happens to be the villages Sheriff. However one day a DUP prisoner transport truck crashes in their village and Delsin who goes to help becomes a Conduit after absorbing the powers of one of the Conduits in the truck. Shortly after Augustine, the leader of the DUP shows up and learns that Delsin has become a Conduit, but those who live in the village will not let her and the DUP take him away. So in retribution she uses her concrete conduit powers to seriously injure everyone in the village. Now, struck for a need for revenge and to save his fellow Akomish, Delsin decides to head to Seattle, confront Augustine, steal her powers and save his people.

While Delsin’s plan is straight forward is takes a while for him to execute as you have to gain more powers and allies to be able to take on Augustine. So as you progress through the game you befriend other Conduits and absorb there power. Than when you cleaned up enough of Seattle you and your new friend attempt to take down Augustine and free Seattle from the repressive DUP.

What I like most about Infamous: Second Son is the fact the game makes you feel powerful. Unlike in previous Infamous games you only had one set of powers Infamous: Second Son gives you several sets of powers that you unlock as you play through the game. While each power seems similar on paper each offers a different way to approach a situation. For example if you are looking for all out power you have your Smoke powers, but if you want precision you have your Neon powers. This choice when fighting is great as it allows you to be somewhat tactical, which for some side-objective isn’t a bad thing to have. Changing powers is done rather simply, all you need to do is absorb something that corresponds to the power you want. For example if you want to use your Neon powers you absorb neon lights. Also, each power has their own upgrade table that unlocks new abilities and makes certain abilities more powerful.

Honestly no matter what power you have you feel like a badass, as you are basically a god living in the realm of man. You can fly, run up buildings, become smoke and throw bombs from your hands. Honestly if you want a game where you really want to feel like a superhero without worrying about morality this game is definitely for you.

Apart from the powers making you feel as powerful as you look the characters are another positive for the game. Each character is humanised they have their strengths, their weaknesses and most importantly internal struggle. This is especially apparent with the main character Delsin Rowe who at the start of the game is shown to be hot headed hooligan who runs out vandalising property and being up to general no good, but as we go through the game we see that Delsin begins to grow out of some of these and create new parts of his character such as a willingness to trust strangers and help those in need (these can be different if you go the dark side route). While some established personality traits help him others hurt him in ways I will leave for you to discover for yourself.

I won’t go into detail about the other characters, but watching them grow and change drew me into the game, especially how characters react to what’s happening around them.

Combat in Infamous: Second Son is for the most part is pretty easy. I only found myself getting into trouble when I was overwhelmed with enemies in a small semi-enclosed location or when fighting high level DUP soldiers. To survive combat I would just throw down a stun and then defeat them when they couldn’t shoot back. Also, when fighting multiple enemies on the streets or when injured I found you could easily regain enough health by simply running away for a while. With all that said what I said earlier still applies, you feel like an all powerful badass. The only thing I disliked about combat was the melee, because while melee attacks were powerful getting up close to enemies usually ended badly as I usually took heavy damage from others attacking me at range.

As I mentioned earlier the game has side- objectives. These objectives are important as completing each objective reduces the DUP control over a section of Seattle, and if you complete all the objectives the section will become free and the people living in that area will like you. The objectives in each area are to destroy the DUP mobile command, scanning stations, cameras, tracker drones and jammers, other objective include finding secret agents, locating audio logs and making either good or evil stencil art. After you complete these objectives you than have a district showdown and free the city. These objectives really help the game come alive, as it gives you something to do when not doing missions, although early missions basically tell you that you have to do these objectives. The objective also offer rewards in the form of shards. Shards are used to upgrade you powers and can be gained by destroying DUP mobile commands and tracker drones.

As I mentioned above one side objective is stencil art. This objective has you draw a light side or dark side piece of art that is very much similar to the art done by Banksy. I won’t spoil how you go around making the art, but I will say the process is a great little escape from the running around blowing up DUP property.

As I mentioned a few times earlier in the article there is a moral choice system – Light side and Dark side. This system is affected by your actions on the street for example the choice whether to kill a surrendering DUP agent or just subdue him. There is of course obvious examples of the how the system works with some light and dark side missions and situations where you have to make a choice for example: kill a person or let him go. The choices you make will determine what ending you get as the game has a dark side ending and a light side ending.

The major issue I have with the moral choice system is the fact that some powers are locked depending on which route you took. This isn’t a game destroying issue as the number of powers locked behind your moral choice is limited, but it is disappointing to see this happen. While it is obvious what Sucker Punch was trying to do with how moral choice affects your powers I think the fact that the powers look a slightly different colour would have worked for me.

Graphically Infamous: Second Son is stunning, especially when you realize the game has next to no loading screens apart from loading the game for the first time. The game also has a massive draw distance that allows you to see all the explorable and unexplorable locations in the world. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that there was no noticeable frame rate drops even when looking down and around from the highest locations in the game. In my opinion Infamous: Second Son really has shown off of the early graphical capability of the PS4.

The game didn’t have many issues that stood out to me. However the most prominent issue was that the characters seem to be on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. This is most apparent with Reggie as this character has scenes where he just looks like he staring into space without blinking which did feel unsettling.

Conclusion

Should you buy Infamous: Second Son? Yes

If you are looking for a reason to buy a PS4 you can stop your search right now, because while Infamous: Second Son has some flaws it is an incredibly enjoyable open world super power filled adventure.

Pros/Cons

+ Super powers makes you feel like you can do anything
+ Well developed characters
+ Plenty of side objectives

– Moral choice system
– Combat feels too easy