Gameplay Today - Because You're Always Gaming

I think Sucker Punch has done something pretty interesting with the sequel to their beloved sandbox superhero game. Despite many players working their way through the first inFamous game on the PS3 and successfully saving Empire City (New York) from the Beast, within a couple minutes of booting up inFamous 2, we find the city gets destroyed. So was there a point to the story in the first game? That’s how videogames go though. You save a world and you watch it get destroyed. Empire City isn’t the only thing that gets wrecked in this sequel though. Sucker Punch took their hit franchise and sent the sophomore release racing down the highway of ambition without a seatbelt.

inFamous 2 faces a few issues, but ironically, the biggest issue this game faces is trying to do too much in the game and failing. There are more storylines going on here than in those soap operas your grandma stays glued to all afternoon. Cole MacGrath is back and he’s facing everything the developer could throw at him. The game is larger than the original in just about every conceivable manner and that’s important because you need some place to stick dictators, plagues, monsters, confusion, friends, foes and friends that might be foes. Can I get a large fry with that? Cole didn’t get any French fries, but he’ll still fry your ass with his electrical powers; many of which are “new and improved”.

One of the cool things about inFamous 2 is that all those dedicated Sucker Punch fans that finished the first game get a little something extra in the form of importing inFamous 1 data to the sequel. Trophies, collectibles and karma from the original can all be used to get bonus XP for Cole’s new adventure. You’ll need the help too because you’re not just trying to save New York…., I mean Empire City. You’re trying to save New Orleans…., I mean New Marais. This contains different sections of town that range from Mardi gras style streets full of liquor and lights to the sad and water-logged “Flood City” which still sits partially under water.

Controls and navigation are pretty nice at first and feel intuitive. They don’t become “unintuitive” later on exactly, but they don’t fit the gameplay. That is to say that the game’s design goes a little off track and never really finds its way back later on. The controls and level design really say a lot about the mindset that Sucker Punch had while designing the entire game. By that I mean that they just seemed to get more and more confused while simultaneously getting even more ambitious. So by the time you get to the last third of the game, level designs just don’t make any sense. Cole can’t use powers due to certain environments or level designs (better yet, lack of level design). It’s really a shame considering the potential this game has.

The level design is huge. Sucker Punch created a massive world to explore and play in. The problem is that after only a short while of “playing around”, there’s not much else to do outside of the core game. One of the major identifying qualities of a sandbox title is the ability to do what you want and get outside the box of campaigns and story-based missions. Now while you can do that, there isn’t any real incentive to as the game progresses. This is where inFamous 2 fails to satisfy. The first game offered so much that it set a lot of high expectations for the sequel. inFamous 2 has tried to exceed those expectations, but instead of flying high thanks to the use of static flight, it just kind of hovers in place. This isn’t to say that the new game is bad, but Sucker Punch has failed to wow with this follow up.

The addition of user-generated content might increase the value of this game in the future and make the later wide open worlds a little more playable, but like many older gamers, I’d like to get an enjoyable and feature packed game right out of the box from the designer instead of waiting for other customers to supplement content the developer failed to provide. In time, inFamous 2 might turn out to be a solid game with lots of extra things to do. Until then, inFamous 2 stands as a game that tries to do too much and comes up short.