henke on 25/5/2014 at 09:54
Playing this right now. I'd heard criticisms that the gameplay was samey and the story was weak but I'm not finding that to be the case at all. The action gameplay strikes just the right balance between making you feel like a superhero with amazing powers and still being challenging enough that you need to think about how you apply those powers. The Neon Power's slo-mo precision aiming and heavy laser blast works well against boss characters, the Smoke Power's missiles and smoke nades work great against crowds and the smoke dash is a necessity if you're gonna get up close and personal with the heavier baddies, and the Video Power's flight mode lets you get around the map the fastest, and it's stealth mode is a good way to thin the herd early on in big fights. The story meanwhile is perhaps a bit cliched, but it does a good job of getting you invested in the fates of the lead characters right away. All the characters are sterotypes, the protagonist especially, but the script does a good job of playing them against eachother in interesting ways, and the villain is pretty damn great.
The game looks great, it looks next-gen. Not sure if it
feels next-gen in any significant way though. It plays mostly like the Infamouses and Prototypes of last-gen. The only time it's really surpassed my expectations in what you could do was when I had to shoot down some satellite dishes, and instead of getting close to it, I took aim and fired of a missile from a far away rooftop. The missile soared through the air for a good while before hitting the receiver which blew up and scattered physics pieces across it's roof far away in the distance. I feel like in the last-gen that missile would've exploded in mid-air before reaching it's target simply because having physics objects that can be interacted with that far away from the player would've been too taxing. The other instance that felt fresh and unique - and perhaps a tad gimmicky - was the graffiti minigame, which TURNS YOUR GAMEPAD INTO A SPRAYCAN! You hold the dualshock sideways, you aim by just moving it thanks to the built-in motion-control, and then you press the right trigger to spray paint, in other words you're hold it and using it just like a regular spraycan. Best of all, the dualshock's built-in speaker rattles like a spraycan being shaken when you shake the controller. It is ridiculous and awesome.
Think I'm at about 50% completion right now. Will post final verdict when I'm done with it.
Here's some screenies I snapped with the PS4's Share function.
Inline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/90297811/Games/Infamous%20Second%20Son/inFAMOUS_Second_Son_20140524211918.jpgInline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/90297811/Games/Infamous%20Second%20Son/inFAMOUS_Second_Son_20140523075123.jpgInline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/90297811/Games/Infamous%20Second%20Son/inFAMOUS_Second_Son_20140523223521.jpgInline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/90297811/Games/Infamous%20Second%20Son/inFAMOUS_Second_Son_20140522230650.jpgInline Image:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/90297811/Games/Infamous%20Second%20Son/inFAMOUS_Second_Son_20140523181340.jpgClick on images for full size versions. The first 3 are taken with the built-in Photo Mode, which lets you freeze the game at any moment and adjust rotation, tilt, position, FOV, DOF, Color Grading, etc. to get the nicest screenies possible. Every game should have that mode. :)
henke on 25/5/2014 at 17:14
...aaaaand I'm done. That turned out to be shorter than I expected.
Final verdict: yup, pretty much what I said up there. Fun, pretty, well told. The ending doesn't disappoint storywise nor gameplaywise. Bossfights are just right; epic but not frustratingly hard. The villain stays great right up to till the end. The Metacritic average for both critics and users is 8/10, and I'm gonna have to agree with that. It's extremely well made and a joy to play but it does not surprise or do anything significantly new in any way. It's so 8/10 it hurts.
Oh and it turns out that Troy Baker voiced the main character. That guy is in everything!
Thirith on 27/5/2014 at 07:29
He's the new Nolan North.
How is the game in terms of evoking an interesting environment? I enjoyed the first two games well enough, but I always thought that the actual environments lacked personality. Yes, the second one especially is nice to begin with, but within a part of New Marais everything looks pretty much the same. No comparison to the open environments of Rockstar's games in the last ten years or so, where I can't remember anything looking cookie-cutter.
henke on 27/5/2014 at 08:10
Everything is distinct enough that you can tell where you are by looking around, and the world works great as a playground for your superpowers. I usually zoom through them and up on a rooftop so fast I barely notice them, but are a few nice environments in there. The park up north, a cobblestone walkway with a fountain, the small hobovillage of tents and campfires under a highway, the big square with the huge TV screens all around.
You won't feel the same immersion as you'd get in a GTA game though, but that's mostly because you're not a regular guy but a superhero. Down in the streets the NPCs walk around and have conversations, they sit at cafes or by campfires in the park, they cheer and take photos when I show up. But I feel completely detached from these people. I'm just looking for airvents, neonsigns, power shards, enemy positions. The NPCs can't impact me in any way and so they become insignificant. Like ants.
Thirith on 27/5/2014 at 09:25
That might actually be quite a nice thing for a game to do, if done well: make us get to know a place - and the people in this place - as normal people and then slowly turn us into superhumans. Does the player feel protective towards those he was originally a part of? Does he feel disconnected? Both?
Mr.Duck on 30/5/2014 at 09:47
I had fun with inFAMOUS 2, so I'm looking forward for Second Son when I get a PS4. Though I'm more than eager for new IPs from Sony. w00t w00t!
henke on 30/8/2014 at 11:51
[video=youtube;W9ZJ5dn3-Eg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9ZJ5dn3-Eg[/video]
Done with First Light.
As far as standalone DLC's go, this one was really good. I'd almost rank it up there with Blood Dragon. The mission design is a bit weak, a lot of repetition, but the story is good, the villain is pretty great, and the protagonist is much more interesting than Second Son's Sk8rboi Whatshisname. The playable area is half of what was in Second Son, plus a few new areas. The new minigames are pretty good. Fetch's powers are a lot of fun and more complex than the neon powers in the vanilla game. It's perhaps a bit on the easy side. I played on Normal and didn't die once. I didn't mind it being easy though. Been playing a lot of Dark Souls 2 lately, so feeling like an overpowered superhero was a nice break. :)
I'd recommend it for anyone who's finished Second Son and wants more.
I'd recommend it even more to anyone who hasn't played any of the InFamous games but is interested in the series. 15 euros is a bargain for the amount of game here. Plus this is really a title that gets the most out of the PS4. Next to MGS GZ, Second Son/First Light is the best looking game I've played on the system.
