By Austin Norville ’15
THE ROUNDUP
8.5 out of 10
“Infamous Second Son” for the Playstation 4 is the first game to fully utilize the visual capabilities of the next gen consoles.
The game starts up with a photo realistic view of Seattle and from there cut scenes and gameplay look the same. It is truly amazing to look at the future of graphics.
But graphics do not make the game.
In the third installment of Sucker Punch’s “Infamous” series we take control of Delsin Rowe, a Native American from upstate Washington. He is a member of the Akomish tribe, and he enters Seattle with his brother to save their tribe from death.
Delsin is a regular young adult who is having difficulty finding his own in the world and often gets in trouble with the law where his brother, Reggie, is the sheriff. One day a D.U.P (Department of Unified Protection) truck crashes near Delsin’s home.
Inside the truck three “bioterrorists” make their escape. Bioterrorist, or conduits, are people who have a super power such as lightning and the public fear them, so they are taken in by the D.U.P and locked up.
Delsin pursues one of the escapees only to touch the escapee’s hand and absorb his power of smoke. It is here where we meet the antagonist and head of the D.U.P, Augustine.
She uses her powers of concrete to torture Delsin in to either telling her what the conduit shared with him, or else she would kill the whole tribe.
This is where morality comes into play. In the “Infamous” games you are given a choice to become good and a hero to the people or to become evil and destroy everything that gets in the way of your goal.
So the choice is either to tell the truth and turn yourself in or stay quiet and let Augustine attack your whole tribe.
I took the good path and admitted that the conduit had made me a conduit, but she did not believe me. Augustine proceeded to knock Delsin out and attack the tribe anyway.
Delsin wakes up two weeks later and finds that his village is dying and that the only way to save them is to go in to Seattle, in to the heart of the D.U.P and absorb Augustine’s concrete power to remove the concrete chunks from the members of the tribe.
Reggie and Delsin enter a Seattle under control of by the D.U.P who are searching for those escaped conduits and protecting the city from any new ones. This is where the game begins.
The camera is in third person and the game acts like a shooter. You can aim and shoot out whatever power you have from your hands.
In addition to firing out powers from your hand, Delsin can also float and speed around the city.
The weakest part of the game is the story. The two previous games had complex story lines with many twist and turns, but this story is predictable and the morality choices throughout are straight forward.
None of the choices stop and make you think; they are literally colored blue and red.
The city is enormous and it takes full advantage of the open world feel. You can do all the side missions before you even complete the main story, or you could just play around with your powers.
Your powers don’t last forever and eventually you must absorb a source such as a chimney for smoke ability. There are total of four powers you get throughout the main story.
The gameplay is fun and there is much replay value especially with the free DLC (Downloadable Content) that has been updated weekly, and the visuals are true next gen. However Sucker Punch has not achieved anything that hasn’t been done before, and with a weak story and poor use of the morality choice system it is not my favorite in the series.
That said, the four powers are fun to use and I found hours of enjoyment clearing the city of D.U.P. rule. This is a game that reaches a little low, but “Infamous Second Son” is still an exclusive everyone should have for their PlayStation 4.
