InFamous: Second Son (PS4) Review

 InFamous Second Son (PS4) 7.5/10

Hello everyone. I’m back with another game review. Today, I’ll be reviewing InFamous: Second Son. Second Son was released on March 21, 2014 as a PS4 exclusive. This game was developed by Sucker Punch Studios and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Second Son is a strange game for me. Standalone, it’s a fine, if not great game. But connected to the previous two entries, it’s a bit of a mess. Now, with this review, this will be my fourth playthrough of the game, so I know it very well. This time around, I did a Hero playthrough. One more thing. I will not be going over InFamous First Light in this review. I’ll be saving that for later. Now, let’s begin.

Our story takes place seven years after the events of InFamous 2. Retconning 2’s ending and certain details, not all conduits were killed. After Conduits were made aware to the public eye, the US government created The Department of Unified Protection (DUP). The DUP started rounding up every and all conduits and locking them up at a special prison called Curdun Cay. Founder and Head of the DUP Brooke Augustine is a Prime Conduit with the ability to manipulate concrete. Enter Delsin Rowe, a small town delinquent of Salmon Bay, Washington. After tagging a billboard and having a run-in with his brother Reggie, who is a cop, the two of them witness an APC crash. Delsin goes to help any survivors when he meets a convict named Henry Daughtry. Turns out, Delsin is a Conduit whose ability is to copy other Prime Conduit’s powers. Delsin gains smoke abilities from Hank. After chasing him back to the cannery, Hank and Delsin have a fight. Leading back outside, the DUP and Augustine ambush the two. Augustine kills Hank and interrogates Delsin. Now, this is where the first karmic moment occurs. Delsin can either confess that he’s a Conduit or keep quiet and let the town take the fall to Augustine’s interrogation. Either way, Augustine will attack the town. After waking up and discovering that everyone now has concrete shards in them, Delsin now makes it his priority to get Augustine’s power to save his people. To do this, he and his brother Reggie will travel to Seattle, which is now under complete control of the DUP and under martial law. On his journey, Delsin will also meet the two other Conduits that were on the bus, Abigail (Fetch) and Eugene, and gain their powers as well.

Okay. I have a couple of issues with the story. First off, it disregards how Conduits work. In the previous games, Conduits can only come about through Ray Sphere testing (or if you have a special bloodline like Alden). In this game, there is no Ray Sphere or anything like that. Another thing, The fact that this game exists puts me in a bad spot. Story wise, it makes no sense. At the end of inFamous 2, ALL THE CONDUITS WERE KILLED! If you had the Conduit gene, you were killed by the RFI. This is proven in the final cutscene when Zeke says that people from all over the world were killing over, not knowing they had the gene. Delsin, Augustine, Fetch, Eugene, the entire DUP, should be dead. The only way this game can exist is if they put this game in the next generation of people, many many years after the events of InFamous 2. Wouldn’t be too far out for the Conduit gene to be a recessive trait. So the game disregards both Ray Sphere testing (although the government could’ve gotten their hands on the First Sons research) and the whole thing with InFamous 2’s ending. I’m guessing that they retconned the fact that the RFI killed everyone and would’ve only affected people in a certain radius, but if that’s the case, the plague would still be around. Again, this game makes no sense since it’s connected to the previous entries. Back to the first issue. Delsin should not have been able to draw power from Hank. His gene wasn’t unlocked. Now, I am willing to look past this simply because Delsin and everyone else on that bus are Prime Conduits like Alden, but with this line of thinking, it kind of diminishes Alden’s specialty with having an entire cast of characters just like him, which rubs me the wrong way. Ultimately, the idea of Prime and non-Prime Conduits weren’t fully explored, leaving this side of the lore weak.

Outside of this crumbling foundation, the actual story is pretty good. I like Delsin’s drive to obtain Augustine’s power, which eventually led to her downfall. I like how, depending on your karmic decisions, you can either redeem Fetch and Eugene or corrupt them. Honestly the game has a great cast of characters. I love Delsin. He’s a great protagonist. Very charismatic and I love his chemistry with Reggie. The two bounce off each other very well and it feels like they are actual brothers. Fetch and Eugene are great too, but I wish they had more screen time. Instead we only get their initial missions and then their final appearance at the end (plus some phone calls in between). 

Augustine is a great villain too. Nowhere near as good as Bertrand or Kessler, but she did have her reasons why she was being tyrannical. I do hate how she straight up killed one of the cast members for basically no reason. Now that I think about it, why did she kill him (I’m keeping this vague because I didn’t put a spoiler warning). There was no reason to kill this person but the plot needed it to happen.

The game looks great though. Easily one of the best looking games on the console. Seattle oozes with that famous northern-western landscape that we all love, and just the overall vibe of Seattle is so cool. The game clearly takes place right before autumn and the devs clearly captured that well. I also love how they inserted select real-life business to make it seem more realistic. (also shout out to MacGrath’s electronics with the Sly Cooper logo lol). Graphically the game looks amazing with stellar animations with mocap and facial animations. Also shout out to the actors. Troy Baker (Delsin), Travis Willingham (Reggie), Christine Dunford (Augustine), and Laura Bailey (Abigail (Fetch) Walker).

The game’s music is just awesome. Easily one of the best soundtracks on the PS4. A lot of the same artists from InFamous 2 return alongside some new faces and it all just sounds so good. Best tracks go to “Second Son”, “Smoke and Mirrors”, “Freedom and Security”, “Cumulonimbus”, “Scraping the Sky”, “Double Crossed”, “Enemy Territory”, and Dead Sara’s cover of Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box” for the end credits.

Onto gameplay. Just like the previous two entries, Second Son is an open world superhero fantasy game where you’ll be able to fully explore Seattle and free it from DUP occupation. To do this, you’ll need to knock out DUP communications and every camera, tracker drone, and other stuff. As you play, you’ll also gain powers for Delsin to manipulate. To increase your powers, you’ll need Blast Shards. Blast Shards are used in Tracker Drones and Checkpoints. Unlike the previous games, there is no Exp system and THERE’S NO SIDE MISSIONS! How do you have an open world game and no side missions? The first two games had side missions, so why didn’t this game have any? And no, I don’t count kicking the DUP out of Seattle as side missions. I mean like actual side missions where you interact with bystanders in quest lines and shit.

Another issue I have with the game: The game is way too short. The main story is only 20 missions long. InFamous 1 was 40 missions and 2 was 36. Why did the devs cut the main story so short? They could’ve easily done more character development for the main cast. No side missions and a fairly short main story is very disappointing.

The DUP is thankfully a decent challenge to deal with as opposed to the Ice Soldiers from InFamous 2. Although, they brought back the fucking linebackers and now they control concrete instead of ice. These guys are easier to deal with because of Delsin’s powers, but still annoying. The difficulty scaling for the DUP is great too. No random difficulty spikes.

Deslin’s powers are very fun to use. He’ll have four different powers by the end of the game: Smoke, Neon, Video, and Concrete. My favorite power to use is Neon, although if you use all of his powers in specific ways, each one will be overpowered. Neon is made for snipers, which was perfect for me. Being able to one shot enemies is a blessing. I will say, Concrete is the most overpowered thing and I can see why the devs saved that for post game. You know those linebackers I was talking about earlier? Dealt with them with absolute ease with Concrete. Didn’t even take any damage. One thing I do hate is that they lock out certain powers based on your karmic state. Understandable, but some of these powers would be so much better for both sides. How do you have vent healing exclusive to good karma? That’s such a pivotal upgrade. Fuck evil karma players I guess.

            The bosses for the game are pretty cool. My favorite boss has to be Eugene's or "He Who Dwells". It's all Warcraftian and it's really fun. Fetch's boss fight was cool too. It's like this sniper battle in an enclosed space. I will say I probably had the most trouble with her fight out of all the others. Augustine has two fights. Her first fight is after she killed a certain someone. This fight was cool. Delsin is full of anger and rage and it feels emotional. Her second fight is at the giant tower. After breaking in and fighting her first phase, she gives you her concrete powers. Her second phase sucks. She turns into this giant Bionicle looking concrete monster and all of her moves are very predictable. The whole fight just feels like a tutorial for your concrete powers, which sucks cause this is the last fight of the game. This is honestly one of the worst final bosses I've ever fought. Up there with Just Cause 3's.

So with the game comes with the free DLC “Paper Trail”. Paper Trail is one of the most unique DLCs ever. You have to use your internet browser and connect it with your game and complete puzzles that tie into the game. Both the internet browser and the game will go hand in hand and you’ll need both to complete the quest line. Now here’s the problem: several years ago, Sucker Punch took down the website to do the DLC properly. You are still able to complete the quest line, but no fun investigation puzzles. I was able to do this back when I first played this many years ago, but now it’s impossible to do this properly, which sucks because that was fun and interesting. There’s also the DLC “Cole’s Legacy” which supposedly goes deeper into Cole MacGrath’s sacrifice and how things ended up the way they were, but I can not access this for whatever reason, even when the devs made this dlc accessible to everyone.

Overall, the game is a disappointment. If you haven’t played the first two games, you will enjoy this a lot more, but for someone like me who is a huge fan of the series and has played these games religiously, this game pisses me off. I enjoyed my time with the game. I really did, but I can’t just look over these issues. If you want to give this game a try, go for it. This is a good game, but it could’ve been so much better. Personally, I’m not going to touch this game again in the future. If you have nothing better to play, I can recommend this. The game is a solid 20+ hours long.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.