Brake For Frogger!

So we’re heavily into the summer lull, E3 has announced a plethora of exciting new titles for us to save our shiny pennies for come the winter, but at the moment we should be outside, in the sunshine…so they say. See; now I’ve tried this and all I ended up with was sunburn and the lingering smell of tramp, they can smell fear dontcha know? I assumed the summer would be spent hiding my pastey skin from Apollo’s Lantern, waiting for the leaves to change when, like the bus you’ve waited too long for, along came two games at once. One has you playing the peoples hero, one has you playing the villain your mother always hoped you wouldn’t become (But always secretly knew you would – it was what you did to that frog see…You should be ashamed), it just happens to be that both of them are on the same disk.

I’m referring, quite vaguely, to Infamous 2. The follow up to Sucker Punch’s original 2009 PS3 exclusive which followed the story of Cole MacGrath, a bicycle courier who one day was given a normal looking package to deliver that had some, quite frankly, shocking contents (Sorry). What the package included was a device called the Ray Sphere which, if detonated around a conduit (a person susceptible to such things), would give that person super hero like powers…not completely cool however as it kills anyone else who isn’t. Lucky for Cole that he was susceptible…or was it luck? (You’ll just have to play to find out.)

He wakes up in the middle of a crater with some gnarly superhero like electric powers and an entire city of really pissed off people. He looks like a terrorist that just killed a whopping chunk of the population, so understandably he isn’t Empire Cities golden boy at that moment. This is where you come in – do you go out of your way to prove the inhabitants wrong by being the bestest superhero you can be by tearing the nasties that have been created in the blast a new one? Or do you use your new found abilities to show them that not only are you a bastard, but you’re a bastard that they will all bow down to or die.

Now, if you’ve made your choice in the first game you can, upon starting Infamous 2, chose to follow on that decision or start afresh. But either way starts with you battling an enormous, city destroying beast called…uh, ‘the beast’ – talk about hitting the ground running. This monstrosity was hinted at in the first outing but now its right in your face from the very first moments and the rest of the game follows Cole trying his best to become powerful enough in the new city of ‘New Marias’ by absorbing blast cores to be able to take The Beast on and win.

To pigeonhole Infamous would be to call it sandbox, its open world, theres missions dotted about and you progress by completing these missions and opening up more of the map. So, similar to GTA I hear you ask. Well, no, not in the style, or the content – Cole is slightly more athletic than our Nico – cars are not the name of the game. For his travelling needs Cole shares more with Ubisoft’s hooded menace Ezio – its parkour, but easier. Now this was one of the first minor faults I found with the first game. Assassins creed (even the flawed original outing) was a joy to run around in, both assassins had weight and momentum and flowed like mercury around their respective locales. Cole on the other hand was showy, but just a bit naff. Thankfully this has been addressed and then some in the newest outing, and though it still doesn’t have the greased up, cat like, fluidity that I would like when it comes to the scaling of buildings, it certainly feels far more enjoyable than before.

And that’s the biggest thing that Infamous 2 needed – a fun factor. Let’s face it, any geek/nerd/whatever has at some point thought about how cool it would be to become a superhero, whether it was twenty years ago or last Thursday we’ve had those ideas – and at no point was it a boring slog. Whether you wanted to dish out the vengeance on those that had wronged you (let it go, you’ll feel better) or just wanted the perks that came with invisibility (We all know why you wanted those. Again, you should be ashamed), it was always a riot and that’s what Infamous needed to feel like – and it does. The improved static thrusters (read, flight), the explosive thunder drop, summoning tornadoes of simply biblical proportions, it’s all an absolute pleasure. You feel powerful, even the recharge ability, actioned by draining lamp posts/electric generators/cars etc. of their power is fantastic. Suckerpunch have even found quite a believable way of opening these powers up even more by allowing you to share other conduits abilities while in their presence. I’m not going to spoil this too much but suddenly having access to ice based tricks instantly rekindles all the excitement felt when first finding out what Cole is capable of. Even when these companions aren’t around Cole is still constantly evolving his own powers through experience gained so there’s never a chance to get completely bored with what you’ve got.

Another vast improvement is the melee combat, previously Cole relied very heavily on his more ranged attacked (little bolts of lighting, electric grenades, shock push etc), but when it got up close and personal it was a little lacklustre. This time you have the addition of ‘The Amp’, a large, electric based, tuning fork looking device that Cole swings like a club as well as some more acrobatic kicks and strikes – its all a little bit ‘Arkham Asylum’ in its execution with special moves becoming available after successful chained attacks – its another improvement that definitely adds to the experience, however, whomever developed the camera position for these special moves, and even the normal melee attacks for that matter, needs their head read. I have, once or twice, actually had the camera pass through Cole as he was pulling off a, probably, very impressive backflip kick thing…I wouldn’t know, I missed it! A small thing as the majority of the combat is still ranged, and it happening at all is rare, but still an annoyance.

But for me, the single biggest, and most important factor that has changed between this game and the first is that I now give a damn about Cole, or any one else in the story for that matter. Cole is a perfect example of insta-protagonist, he’s white, tattooed, American, shaven headed and reasonably buff…now there’s original – but what made it worse was that Dark Knight Bale voice – theres gravelly, but this was like Cole had chewed his way out through the rubble he’d found himself in. And this poor character development wasn’t just limited to Cole, his ‘best friend’ Zeke was a hillbilly idiot by numbers and his girlfriend Trish was a heartless bitch (and that was even when your karma was good!). I had no attachment to any of them. But from the moment Cole stepped off the boat in New Marias he seemed like a changed man, not only had the voice vastly improved (its still gruff but to a far more acceptable standard, owing to the developers choice to change voice talent), but by golly, within minutes he’d even quipped…and had made me laugh! That an arrow straight to my heart right there. The new love interests, Lucy Kuo and Nix, are a million times more likeable than Trish, with just the right amount of witty sarcasm and frailty that made me want to protect them. Even Zeke was far less of a dick in this outing. It actually feels like the whole team have been introduced to, and spent an awful lot of time with, Nathan Drake and Co. (There’s actually a nod to the Naughty Dog series on a XXX theatre in the seedy part of town, along with a few other gaming references, so maybe there has been some leaf taking), however they’ve done it doesn’t matter, it works.

The whole thing is vastly more polished too, the enemies are more varied, the boss battles are inventive, the side missions aren’t all ‘scale this building and shoot off microphones’, it actually seems like an awful lot of thought has gone into making them varied and original – I wasn’t just doing them because I had to, I was doing them because I wanted to.

So am I going to tell you to drop what you’re doing and run out to buy this now? Well yes, yes I am. But wait just a moment, because one thing I have to touch on is quite disappointing. I don’t want to because I felt this was a fantastic leap forwards for a franchise but, even the box is lying to you. The accompanying line to Infamous 2 is ‘you decide’ – a reference to you choosing whether to play the hero, or the villain. Now this is accomplished by rewarding you for heroic actions or punishing you for villainous ones, the resulting points having an effect on your karma and therefore the powers that you have access to. There are even karma specific missions where you can approach a task like a hero or blow everything up. What is a gargantuan let down however is that it doesn’t matter which you chose, it will follow a very similar path. It alters the journey, but not the destination and that’s really upsetting. Negative Karma does affect Cole’s appearance and some of the dialogue between him and other characters but it could have offered a totally different adventure and it doesn’t, which is a real shame. Don’t get me wrong, the choices you make towards the games conclusion will give you totally different ending, both of which are excellent in their own way, it’s just a shame that the start of the game is so similar whichever way you decide to go – it makes restarting the game to see the alternate version a bit of an uphill struggle.

So, in conclusion, is infamous 2 worth it? Oh yes, most definitely, easy one. Not since Assassins Creed do I feel a franchise has improved so much between the original and its follow on. I think it would have made a great game a brilliant game had there been a little more responsibility in your actions early on, but even that can’t tarnish just how much I enjoyed playing this. Ok, maybe you don’t get two games on one disk – but you do get one fantastic game. Going back to my earlier comparison (We’re supposed to do that see, gives a sense of closure), it really doesn’t matter that both of those buses turned up at once, neither does it matter that they will travel almost exactly the same route, what matters is what awaits you at your journeys end and whichever bus you get on, I promise you, it’ll be electrifying.