Having had exclusive launch titles that fell far below the quality of those released on the XBOX One, the PS4’s reputation as being “for the players” was in many people’s minds put into doubt. That’s not to say the games weren’t good, they just weren’t great and it seemed they couldn’t deliver the quality of game some people expected of the new console. Now we have yet another exclusive to the PS4 that has had a lot of success in the past, but have Sucker Punch Productions been able to redeem the PS4 in the battle for exclusive titles or is it again a title that falls slightly short in the expectations of gamers around the world?
Now I’ve never played any of the inFAMOUS games before so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I now know it has made it much more difficult to answer one of two questions and a lot easier to answer the other. These questions are ones I think we’ve all been asked at some point in time; “if you could have any superhero power what would it be?” the most common answers probably being to have the power of flight or of turning invisible. Then comes the question “what would you do with your powers?” would you use them for good and help those less fortunate or would the power go to your head making you hurt others for your own personal gain. I really couldn’t say what power I’d choose but I’m just an indecisive idiot like that, however I can safely say I don’t have the heart to go killing innocent people and causing chaos for personal gain. Second Son allows you to make your own decisions in regards to these questions as you’ll find yourself using powers you’d never imagined while being allowed to choose your own path of good or evil.
The story of the latest game in the inFAMOUS series doesn’t follow strongly from any of the previous games, so if like me you’ve not played before you’ll be easily able to follow the story and slip into the game. You play the part of Delsin Rowe, a graffiti artist and also the brother of local sheriff Reggie, not a good combination when you’re always being caught in the act of vandalism. Anyway during your latest capture you see an armoured bus swerving all over the road before crashing and rolling over. Advised to stay behind while Reggie checks it out and goes after the two escapees you see running off, you ignore his wishes and find someone trapped. You help them up but in return are taken hostage as Reggie returns, which is when you find out this is no ordinary person they’re a “bio-terrorist” or conduit as they are also known. In an effort to escape you grab his arm and somehow manage to absorb his power, kind of like Rogue from XMEN. Struggling to understand what happened you chase down this conduit to get an explanation of what’s happening to you.
Unfortunately you don’t really get much of an explanation but do get to see into the mind of the conduit you have tracked down, seeing what he has been through in the last few years while in a DUP (Department of Unified Protection) detention centre. He warns you of a “red-headed bitch” called Augustine that works for the DUP who wants to capture them all and lock them away. He then gets outside and you see the woman he fears so much, and she really is a bitch. After covering the conduit in concrete, she turns her attention to you and begins placing concrete shards in your legs in order to find out what you know. It is here that you are forced to make your first decision that affects your Karma; you can admit you are a conduit or you can handover your tribe to be tortured. Either way she doesn’t believe what you say if you tell the truth, and ends up torturing your tribe anyway. You then soon wake up in a makeshift hospital, fully healed unlike the others around you. This is where your mission begins, to track down Augustine in Seattle to save your tribe. How you go about it is down to you, follow the path of good and you’ll be seen as a hero, join the dark side and you’ll be seen as a tyrant, never forgiven for the crimes you commit.
Karma is something that will play a big part in the game, affecting everything from missions available to your powers to the way the story develops. The story and the missions go hand in hand really, if you choose to allow darkness to envelop your heart, the missions available to you will be aimed at causing more chaos and killing those who oppose you. Choose to help people in trouble and your missions will reflect this to, doing all you can to free the people from DUP control. As for your powers, there will be some you can use whether good or bad, but others will require you to have a certain level of good or bad karma before you can unlock their special abilities. Some moves even allow you to earn more good and bad points, such as your ability to slow down and identify weak points on your enemies with your neon power. This shows head shots glowing red which will kill the enemy and boost your bad karma, and highlights their feet in blue which when shot just incapacitates enemies leaving them alive, boosting the good karma. You’ll find much more throughout the game as well which can help boost your karma either way.
One of those other ways also makes great use of the PS4 controller and its awesome features, something that hasn’t really been utilised by many other games on the PS4 as of yet. This is something you’ll discover as soon as you start the game, but which becomes more of a mini side mission during the game allowing you to diminish DUP control in districts around Seattle. What is it you ask? Well it’s using your controller as a spray paint can to do some of Delsin’s famous graffiti artwork. That’s right, turn your controller sideways gripping the middle of the controller, shaking the controller as you would a can of paint (the controller even makes the sound effects). Then using the R2 button to release the paint, you aim your remote at the stencil on the screen to spray paint your picture onto the chosen surfaces. Sounds cool right? Well it is, and some of the designs Delsin paints are incredible to, making the most of the environments around him. The game also makes a bit more use of the touch control pad than the likes of Killzone did, allowing you to use the touch pad to absorb powers, rip the wires out the back of auto-turrets and push/lift objects.
As for the gameplay it reminds me of the likes of Prototype, an open world game that allows you to run and jump everywhere your imagination can take you. The possibilities are endless as for where you can go, and your different abilities mean you can move around the cities in different ways, whether it is travelling through vents and chimneys using your smoke power or running up walls at super speed with your neon power. Where it differs though is that in terms of the main gameplay it doesn’t seem to be as smooth. As mentioned before you can get good karma for incapacitating enemies rather than killing them, you can also subdue them when they surrender or become dazed. Unfortunately though when in mid combat Delsin can often end up landing more blows than required which means an enemy can surrender but instead of subduing them you end up killing them by mistake and gaining some bad karma, which is something that happened a few times to me, and it wasn’t just down to me smashing my controller too many times.
The gameplay for side missions isn’t that great either compared to what I played in Prototype; they often seem a little more repetitive and too easy at times. Prototype turned each little side mission into a competition almost, allowing you to compete with people around the world by beating their times or scores they got for completing the missions, meaning there was an element of replayability to the game. But with inFAMOUS you don’t get that same feeling, there are no leader boards to compete on and missions are ridiculously easy. There is nothing stopping you spray painting walls, searching for audio logs presents no challenge and searching for undercover spies is over quickly as you only have to launch a cinder missile in their direction killing them before the mission has really begun. The only side mission that offers some challenge is the main one in each district that allows you to take control of an area away from the DUP, which differs from time to time but usually leaves you fighting a small army of DUP soldiers.
Graphically though I cannot fault the game. It really is a work of art, you walk down the streets and you can see your reflection in windows and the waters of Seattle Bay, stand from the rooftops and you will see a beautiful city skyline that would only be bettered by going to Seattle in person. The developers really have gone to the extremes to make sure they have put as much detail into the game as they possibly could and the whole place can change in the blink of an eye if you decide to destroy everything in sight turning it from this beautiful city to sociopath’s playground. The use of your powers really captures the imagination as well with turning into a puff of smoke through a vent looking like a trick you’d expect magician would perform in real life, while your neon powers unleash bright colours you’d only expect to see at somewhere like Blackpool or the Vegas Strip. The artwork as mentioned for Delsin’s graffiti is also really good, with each piece making fun of the DUP or making use of the environments around him to make for some clever pictures which you can tell a lot of though and effort have gone into.
So overall the game really is undisputedly the best exclusive to date on the PS4 and is a must buy for any gamer, whether I’d say it is better than exclusives on other systems is debateable as I much prefer Titanfall but they are completely different games, so to compare them wouldn’t really be fair. What is really good about Second Son apart from the amazing graphics is that finally the controllers features for the PS4 are actually being utilised, it’s been a long wait but someone has finally done it and they’ve been used in fun and innovative ways and hopefully other developers can build on what Sucker Punch Productions have done. The story is also a good one, although the whole Karma thing doesn’t affect it as much as I’d of liked, I mean although there are different cut scenes for the routes you take, and different endings they are still pretty much following the same conclusion and coming to almost the same outcome with a slight difference; it would’ve been a lot better if the outcomes were completely different. Saying that though it does still offer the chance to play the game again in a slightly different way with new powers to unlock which I guess is better than having no appeal to replay at all. Definitely a must buy for anyone with a PS4.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
