Playing with special abilities is part of many games and almost never gets boring. A few years ago Prototype and InFamous appeared within a short time of each other. In both games, the player took charge of a main character who had special powers and could, to put it bluntly, help the whole world to smithereens. That you ultimately used the powers mainly to save the world is also true, but the feeling of power is the key to success; not the fact that you saved the world in a game for the thousandth time.
Where Prototype now seems to have died a silent death, or otherwise ended up damn deep in the fridge, InFamous is back in the foreground with Infamous: Second Son. Since the introduction period of the console, it is the first game to appear as an exclusive for the PlayStation 4, which makes the project interesting in advance. Sony is only too happy to see the game as a showcase for what the PS4 can do. Whether that is a smart move, of course, depends on the game itself. At the end of March, everyone will be able to answer that question themselves.
InFamous: Second Son primarily offers a new main character, namely Delsin Rowe. Delsin comes into contact with special powers by chance, and soon part of the underlying story in the game becomes clear. Delsin is the younger of two brothers, and moreover a typical ‘little brother’. Older brother Reggie is responsible itself, as witnessed by his job as a police officer, but Delsin is more of a jump-in-the-field, someone who sees the fun in life and wants to enjoy it.
Not that Delsin is really waiting for the powers he suddenly possesses when he comes into contact with Abigail ‘Fetch’ Walker, a Conduit. Conduits possess the special powers you may have seen in action in the early InFamous games, and after meeting Fetch, Delsin proves to have an aptitude for using such powers as well. We got to see two examples of that in our short play session, but eventually there will be many more. Still, ‘Smoke’ and ‘Neon’ provided enough fun.
The mission we played started with a choice around Fetch. Reggie tries to arrest her, but Delsin tries to make it clear to him that she only targets murderers, so she is doing a good job. Delsin then has to make the choice in which context he wants to free Fetch. Do you convince her of her “work” and allow her to loosen up even more, or do you try to teach her that there is a more honorable way to use the Conduit powers? Such choices keep coming back and the player is free to determine a path for himself.
The nice thing is that the game changes based on those choices. For example, in this play session we could only play one mission within the story, but depending on the choice it turned out in two different ways, resulting in two different missions. In one mission you have to find the leader of a group of Protestants, while in the other a few boats used to smuggle drugs are targeted. In both cases, however, you will encounter a good number of soldiers to let off steam.
Delsin can absorb smoke or neon in the environment, and then use that power. If you opt for smoke, you can perform special smoke attacks and move yourself through grates, allowing you to quickly move from the street to a roof, for example. You can’t do that with neon, but then you have a super speed with which you can run up walls, and with this you can also reach the top quickly. Moreover, you can make gigantic jumps with neon, which suddenly makes the game a lot more dynamic and faster. As far as we were concerned, smoke was preferable in direct confrontations with soldiers, but neon generally makes the game a bit more fun.
Of course there is much more to tell about InFamous: Second Son, but based on approximately 45 minutes of playing time, it is of course not possible to draw too many conclusions. However, the action game will be in stores in about a month, and then we will of course take a closer look at it.