The game still encourages you down one particular karmic route at the start of the game, and while it often presents the illusion of choice – whether you opt to listen to Nix’s bad advice, or Kuo’s good intentions – it still makes absolutely no sense to deviate from your alignment after committing to a particular path.
Much of the plot plays into the tales of Nix and Kuo, literal manifestations of Good and Evil in a battle for Cole’s soul/Trophies. One mutant nasty, menacingly titled The Devourer, can basically be knocked dead in less time than it takes the game to render the multi-storey behemoth. It takes all of 20 seconds to realise that you can stomp every major enemy in the game by simply throwing grenades at their face over and over again – hardly the kind of thrilling, apocalyptic battles the game primed us for. But this is the exception rather than the norm.īosses also hit a particularly sour note. Here, for a moment, the action feels unrestrained and free. On occasions the game takes off the training wheels and lets Cole cut loose through his foes with unlimited energy. Combat is a fairly dry affair, having you splash regular cannon fodder in streams of electric bolts as you retain your conservative energy supplies for bigger, badder enemies.
It’s simple, but it works.Īll would be exceptional if inFamous 2 were simply powers and parkour, but unfortunately the action game sandwiched in between does not fare nearly as well. It’s designed almost entirely to add some swanky melee finishers that make the camera do some nice dramatic whooshes, but also to provide Cole with a more effective combat solution at short range. Somewhere in the middle you have the Amp, a bespoke melee weapon (it’s a motorcycle fork) built to do something like harness Cole’s latent electrical abilities – I can’t remember exactly how the game attempts to describe it. The rest, well, those veer slightly into the realm of spoilers, but there are definitely some unexpected delights nestled within the package. Then there’s the fantastic Lightning Tether, introduced way too late in the game, which allows Cole to fling himself across the map. Over time he regains control of his rockets and powerful ionic attacks, allowing him to spew and fling massive whirlpools of electricity that consume entire blocks in whirling, fatal energy. He’s easily the best of all the open-world super-badasses.Īs you progress through the game your powers twist and warp based on your karmic alignment, and Cole discovers a range of basic electrical bolt attacks, various tweaks of standard grenades, and more exotic elemental powers from one of his two new sidekicks.
#INFAMOUS 2 POWERS MANUAL#
Navigation strikes a superb balance between empowering assistance and manual control, with Cole the perfect mix of tactile input and on-screen results. Sucker Punch has years of experience in making Sly Cooper an entertainingly lithe and acrobatic hero, and the studio’s talents are still being put to excellent use. Thanks to a bit of odd time-jiggery, The Beast is the very reason for Cole’s existence to begin with – didn’t I say not to worry about the story?īounding across rooftops and grinding across New Marais’ four distinct districts on tram lines and power cables is still a massively pleasant experience. But Cole starts the game stripped of most of his arsenal after a calamitous opening encounter with arch-villain The Beast, forcing him to flee to New Marais, inFamous’ take on New Orleans. Sucker Punch seems to be aware of this too, unlocking a greater cache of swanky powers with far more immediacy than last time around.
Traversal, energy, and freedom are the strong suits here, and it’s in these moments of bounding kinetic energy that the game hits its stride. inFamous’ enduring qualities are not derived from plot or character Cole has been completely redesigned, but somehow manages to be as equally forgettable as his original incarnation. Still, it’s worth gritting your teeth and sitting through it because everything gets better once the exposition is done. Two years later and the sequel doesn’t open with anywhere near that level of panache, instead delivering a weary animated cutscene to explain the hefty wedge of plot contrivances built up by the original.
InFamous had one of the best opening moments of this generation: you pressed the start button and Empire City exploded, a catastrophic accident which also gave protagonist Cole MacGrath his electrifying superpowers.
0 kommentar(er)
