The Beast's progress is tied to your own progress through the story, so there's no actual timer ticking down, but this still creates a foreboding backdrop behind your local troubles, which are many. New Marais is where Cole believes he can seek the origin of the ray sphere technology that started all this mess, and thus amplify his powers to the degree necessary to take on the Beast and stop its wanton rampage across the Eastern seaboard.Įvery time you start the game and load your save, there's a great framing device that tells you how many miles the Beast has left to travel before it reaches and obliterates New Marais. Now that he's a full-fledged hero, Infamous 2 is inherently a little less exciting, sending Cole south to the New Orleans-esque New Marais to escape the Beast, the towering dervish of destruction foretold in the vision that ended the first game. Origin stories are probably the easiest sort of superhero tale to write, and sure enough, Cole's first tentative steps into his new power and responsibility did a great job of buoying and driving the story in the first game. Like the combat, it's another case where the central idea is so good that you wish the implementation was a bit more refined. The magnetic way that Cole gravitates to things he can cling to or climb on is still much appreciated, but there are the few frustrating instances where he ends up sticking to the wrong grapple point, which ultimately makes it take longer to get where you're going. Likewise, new electrified vertical rails on most buildings will send you flying skyward as soon as you touch them. The "static thrusters" that let you make like a flying squirrel will now get you some extra lift, and there's an ice jump-the single best incentive to play a good character, second to satisfying your own conscience-that shoots you straight upward at the touch of a button. Sucker Punch has made Cole even more mobile in this sequel, through both new abilities and new environmental features.
In most games, getting from place to place is just a means to an end, so it says a lot about the first Infamous that simply traversing the urban sprawl was an enjoyable end in itself. On the whole it's still a blast to lay waste to hordes of enemies in this game, but you do start to wish the enemy design and placement were as refined as the controls and abilities. Liberal checkpoints aren't much consolation when things like that happen two or three times in a row. It's just not much fun when you get surrounded by elite soldiers who can slide right up behind you, knock you down with a shotgun, then keep damaging you while you're waiting to climb out of a stun animation and regain control. You become so overly powerful in the second half, the game responds by ramping up the number and ferocity of the enemies, but there are a few too many cases where the combat feels cheap. Unfortunately, Infamous 2 shares its predecessor's predilection for overwhelming you with enemies from all sides. The powers are once again split across both sides of the moral coin, and while it felt like the first Infamous taunted my pure-hearted boy scout with a bunch of more entertaining, destructive-looking powers available only to an evil character, this time the game does a better job of assigning some desirable abilities to the good side too. The expanded lineup of powers is certainly robust enough, and the flow of combat is further streamlined by a handy pop-up menu that lets you cycle through available types of abilities on the fly. You can even choose between ice- and fire-related variants on these powers later in the game (by making what feels like a contrived, button-prompted moral decision) that further broadens your arsenal. There's also a generous list of new variations on the game's stable of weapon-like electric powers, which still fall into familiar categories like grenade, rocket, and pea shooter.
The controls remain apparently unchanged, again allowing superhero Cole MacGrath to aim and dodge with the ease and mobility that a superhero should. Specifically, it was the fluidly responsive controls and the laundry list of explosive powers that made the first game such a joy. It's only because the core gameplay is still so much fun in Infamous 2 that these rough patches stand out as much as they do.
But it also exhibits a surprising lack of polish in several areas, some more integral to the experience than others. Two years later, Infamous 2 improves in some pleasing, meaningful ways on what I thought was already one of the most playable games ever made in this genre. With Infamous, Sucker Punch delivered a deeply satisfying and (pardon the pun) downright electric open-world action game.
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