Infamous second son secret agents4/19/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() I’m personally pretty tired of games asking me to confirm whether to kill or spare someone. You probably don’t need me to tell you that these are not well implemented. Nevertheless, Second Son carries the same system, and within the first 20 minutes of the game you’ll be making your inaugural good/bad, red/blue choice that more or less decides how you’ll play the game, and eventually, what ending you’ll get. Those sorts of things were incredibly in vogue back in 2009, but today binary decisions can look pretty dated. It’s weird to think that when the first Infamous came out its moral choices were such a defining bullet point. Commentary on 21st century society? Maybe, but mostly it just looks cool. It has the delirious effect of digital disturbance intersecting with the game’s version of real life. Your moves will throw scan lines all over your screen, and the default pea-shooter coats your enemies in glitches and screen-tears. The most memorable imagery comes when you unlock the ability to tap into video signals. Your powers are all super distinct, from the way your body dissolves into smoke or gets plated with concrete. Weirdly enough, I think the thing I’ll remember most about Infamous: Second Son is the particle effects. She has that infuriating essence of a villain where you always feel like you’re falling into her trap, no matter what you do. Perhaps best of all is your antagonist, Augustine, a woman of absolutely no remorse who makes it quite clear from the beginning of the game that she doesn’t care about anyone’s petty morality. There’s something delightfully cyberpunk-y about a group of wayward kids with happenstance abilities working together to take down the authority. The other conduits you meet are all messed-up young adults in their own right. His brother Reggie is a lawful-good cop that serves as Delsin’s foil, as well as his closest partner. Sucker Punch nails Delsin’s devil-may-care charms, as well as his precarious balance of self-importance and duty. Those earlier games were always a little too big for their britches, and the meaninglessness of Second Son’s openness feels disappointingly last-gen.īut still, the narrative remains very strong. If you’re familiar with the previous Infamous games this shouldn’t come as a surprise. In fact the only side-quests that have any meaningful story hook come from tracking down audio logs. These are all generic, and strewn through the world in a failed effort to make it look lived in. The way you do that is through blowing up security cameras, destroying surveillance trucks, and tracking down secret agents. (the occupying military police) and it will be unlocked for fast travelling purposes. Free a district of the city from the D.U.P. The side-quests are repetitive, simple and fairly inconsequential. The streets are fairly uncluttered with people or cars, and you’ll be unable to walk into any buildings. It’s an environment built for combat and mobility - immersion comes second. They’ve given you a bigger open world and more toys to play with. In this sense Sucker Punch have iterated on the Infamous franchise in the most obvious way possible. Without giving too much away, you’ll quickly find yourself running at light speed and wielding the rupturing power of video torrents. These are unlocked over the course of the story, and add up to a pretty diverse arsenal of pain. It’s a large, beautiful open world, decked out in trademark local signifiers (I saw a neon Sub Pop sign.) Delsin is something of a superpower sponge - by merely grabbing the hand of a fellow conduit (essentially the game’s term for X-Men,) he’ll black out for a few moments and gain whatever specific power they might’ve been carrying. A personal tragedy draws you and your brother to Seattle for vengeance, and also to acquire a very specific power that can help save the people of your hometown. Structurally Second Son is similar to the previous Infamous games. Delsin made me angry, but he also made me laugh, and that’s the point. While those mysteries certainly still persist, this is a game about a man and his family, a man and his place in the world, a man and his struggle to transcend the lumberjack flannel under his patched-up vest. Why him? Because he’s foolish enough to embrace the burden? Because he’s relatable in his aimlessness? Because Cole, from the earlier Infamous games, was far too boring? All are valid answers, and all add up to the same conclusion - Second Son isn’t about any huge inter-connected conspiracies. So there’s something distinctly Peter Parker-ian when he suddenly finds himself able to smoke-dash through vents and fling fiery chains. There’s no one you’d trust less with a sudden surge of responsibility, much less super powers. ![]() ![]() 24 and jobless, a punk without a scene, buoyed only by his anger and his exasperated older brother. Catch him graffiti-bombing old billboards in his microscopic hometown. ![]()
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