Infamous: Second Son Review

Enjoy your power.

Game review by Isaac Handelman

Though it’s divergent in theme, tone and style from its predecessors, Infamous: Second Son is effectively the culmination of Sucker Punch’s experience working on the Infamous franchise. Featuring exhilarating super powers, engaging characters, and a beautiful open-world to explore, Second Son is a huge, enormously entertaining adventure that shines as an early highlight of the PlayStation 4's library.

Second Son takes place in an alternate reality where special people called conduits are endowed with superhuman abilities. The public fear of these individuals has led to the creation of the Department of Unified Protection, a government agency dedicated to capturing and imprisoning conduits in order to keep them from wreaking havoc on society. The game’s vision of a paranoid near-future rife with government surveillance and hypocrisy isn’t exactly subtle in its exploration of discrimination-related themes, but it’s engaging and well-crafted nonetheless.

This time around, gravely-voiced Cole MacGrath has been thrown out in favor of spunky, street-smart graffiti artist Delsin Rowe, a Native American living alongside his tribe on the outskirts of Seattle. After a wonderfully orchestrated opening sequence, a military convoy transporting a group of conduits crashes near Delsin’s home, and its prisoners escape. While he and his brother Reggie tussle with one of the escapees, Delsin discovers he is a conduit possessing the ability to absorb the powers of other conduits. Here, the story reaches its most ridiculous stretch, as Delsin undergoes a comically fast acceptance of his new-found abilities. Within a span of about a minute, he goes from desperately begging his brother Reggie to help him find a cure to making smug wise-cracks about his powers and using them without hesitation. Despite this initial character development flaw, Delsin is a far more likable, dynamic protagonist than Cole “always grouchy” MacGrath ever was. Delsin actually seems to be having as much fun using his powers as the player is, and his one-liners manage not to become grating, but rather endearing and indicative of his tendency to live large and have fun.

Delsin’s brother Reggie is a great addition to the character roster, and showcases an impressive depth of personality considering that he’s often present only through radio chatter. His comical, brotherly banter with Delsin feels believable; Sucker Punch succeeds in convincing the viewer that these characters have had a bond long before the events depicted in the game, which goes a long way towards selling the sincerity of both characters during the game’s emotional climaxes. In a medium not exactly renowned for the strength of its supporting characters, Reggie bucks expectations and proves to be just as entertaining a presence as his brother.

The villain this time around is DUP leader Brooke Augustine. She’s a fairly generic, malicious presence for a large majority of the game (and oddly enough has a rather sub-par character model in comparison to the rest of the cast), but the finale puts her motivations and actions into perspective, and succeeds in making players question their own actions over the course of the game. Why the writers at Sucker Punch didn’t choose to include such a twist earlier in the proceedings as to make it relevant to a larger portion of the narrative is a tad confounding.

Unfortunately, Delsin’s fellow conduits fail to make much of a splash. Though each is immediately interesting upon their introductions, Delsin’s relationships with them usually jump from “I’m hunting you to absorb your powers” to “let’s be buddies and crack jokes together” at an alarmingly fast rate. Each of these conduits quickly fades into the background after Delsin has completed his few character-specific quests with them, only to come arbitrarily surging back for the finale. Stranger yet, these characters seem to be developing true bonds with Delsin at the points when they are unceremoniously swept out of the narrative. It seems that Sucker Punch simply ran out of time to flesh out their arcs. As far as characters go, these one-dimensional superhumans are the game’s weakest link.

For the most part, the story that these distinct faces are intertwined in is an entertaining yarn, though it falls short in providing the sort of “realistic look” at being a superhuman that Sucker Punch promised. The tale hits several cliche story beats, including one particularly contrived revenge thread, and a by-the-books (though visually stunning) final boss encounter, that feel entirely predictable and occasionally melodramatic. Thankfully, the strength of the characters on hand livens up these pitfalls to an extent. As a whole, though, Second Son's story is certainly in the upper echelon of game narratives, and does well in keeping players invested from start to finish.

The input that players have on the course of the plot is as black-and-white as it’s ever been in an Infamous game, almost always feeling entirely shallow and under-developed. At a handful of pre-determined narrative points, players choose between two extreme options that typically boil down to being either a super-saint or the devil incarnate, with no grey area whatsoever. And while said choices do extend the replayability of the game by encouraging a second playthrough, the fact that players are outwardly punished for not continuously choosing one side or the other in the form of losses of unlocks on the upgrade tree seems a bizarre and archaic choice on Sucker Punch’s part.

But for most of my time playing Second Son, I was far too busy wrecking Seattle to notice the karma system’s shortcomings. The game plays beautifully, with each of Delsin’s actions and movements feeling more streamlined and intuitive than anything that has been seen in the series before. The single exception to this rule is the finicky traversal system, which is hampered by floaty jumps and seemingly nonexistent rules for what Delsin can and cannot grab onto. I sometimes found myself continually mashing the climb button only to have Delsin finally grab the ledge I was aiming for after several jumps. In a post-Assassin’s Creed gaming world, Second Son’s traversal system feels dated.

Luckily, players will be wasting precious little time with this aspect of the game thanks to the glorious mix of powers at Delsin’s disposal. Once the three major power sets have been unlocked (with the fourth coming as a sort of bonus after the game has been completed), traversing the city is a breeze; whether I was gliding over skyscrapers, sprinting up the sides of buildings or shooting up smoke vents, I found myself constantly enthralled by the thrilling sense of mobility granted by the game’s power sets. Getting around Seattle is almost as much fun as tearing it to shreds.

Almost. Being a superhero is all about feeling like an unstoppable force of nature, and Sucker Punch absolutely nails this aspect of Second Son. Each of the power sets -- though conforming to the same basic outline for the most part -- is distinct and empowering enough to warrant an equal devotion of time between them. Sucker Punch rarely forces players to adopt one set or the other, which is good, because once players get a taste for the thrill and refreshment of switching between sets on the fly, few will ever want to go back to the days of having a single set of abilities. Expending the last of my smoke bar by blasting apart a DUP convoy with a cinder missile before rushing up a smoke vent, absorbing a neon sign, and then leaping back into the fray with a shockwave is among the most exciting, liberating gaming moments I’ve ever experienced in some time-- and situations like these are commonplace in the world of Second Son. The game also integrates fantastic "super-moves" that transition seamlessly between gameplay and cutscene to produce mesmerizing cinematic moments that still grant a reasonable amount of player control.

Sucker Punch has even gone so far as to refine the oft-criticized melee combat of past entries into a perfectly viable option in any battle. Melee attacks have been integrated more fluidly into Delsin’s ability sets with elements such as the dash punch; whacking foes not only feels weighty and satisfying, but looks flashy to boot, thanks in large part to Second Son’s mind-blowingly beautiful particle effects.

These effects are not the only visual portion of Second Son that shines. The game boasts beautiful lighting effects, highly impressive character models, and a gorgeously-rendered Seattle that is peppered with an exorbitant amount of detail and distinctive personality. Character models are equally impressive, with realistic wrinkles and eyes that actually look alive, a rarity in even the most graphically robust of games. All in all, Second Son is the most visually impressive console game I have ever seen. Despite all the visual splendor, the game manages to run at an impressively constant framerate, though it does drop below the locked 30FPS on occasion when things get particularly hectic.

Luckily, Second Son provides players with plenty to do in this beautiful world, with no shortage of highly interesting ways to use Delsin’s powers coating the map. Though many of these activities are simplistic and repetitive in nature, their brevity ends up working to the game’s advantage. One-hundred-percenting Second Son actually feels like an attainable feat; despite the relative shallowness of the game’s side activities, I found myself inexplicably drawn back to see everything it had to offer, which speaks to the success of Sucker Punch in creating a living, breathing world that begs to be explored.

Infamous: Second Son is a big, beautiful, brilliantly fun game that shows off the capabilities of the PlayStation 4 in a myriad of creative ways. Even its most gimmicky features, which incorporate the gyroscope sensor, touchpad and microphone on the DualShock 4 controller, are wonderfully integrated into the game world. Though it still trips over its hackneyed morality system and a handful of character and narrative missteps, Second Son is the closest Sucker Punch has yet come to crafting a pristine superhero game. And if this the closest the studio gets to that vision, so be it; despite its shortcomings, Second Son is a pure joy to play from start to finish, and should be a mandatory purchase for all current PlayStation 4 owners.