As an open world game, Infamous 2 gets a lot right. It has a unique sense of place with plenty of activities to keep you busy until the end of the story (and beyond). However, as an overall experience, it's weighted down by some serious problems. The insipid storytelling sucks up too much air, the too-serious characters are just too overbearing, and the mostly repetitive battles are too forgettable to keep you coming back. It's a disappointing open world game that feels like something you might consider renting on a slow weekend.
The setting is New Orleans. Well, "New Orleans". Here it's called New Marais, despite being displayed on an obvious map of the US that identifies Washington D.C. by name. The city looks and plays great, with a vibrant French Quarter, a colorfully seedy red light district, a brooding above-ground cemetery, moss-draped swampland, and grand European edifices such as a cathedral and a fortress. Developer Sucker Punch uses the cultural melange of New Orleans as an excuse for the same creative whimsy and charm that drove their Sly Cooper games, but without the cartoon vibe. When the action moves to Floodtown, an obvious nod to post-Katrina New Orleans, there's a certain somberness to the flooded streets, sagging houses, leaning telephone poles, and slackened power lines. Well done, Sucker Punch!
Credit: Naughty Dog/SCEA/SCEIBut for some reason, Infamous 2 winds up in an uninteresting industrial area. At least Sucker Punch knows enough to shift their finale out of this boring location and back into the French Quarter. The game also deserves special mention for disappointing audio design. There's plenty of booming and banging and crackling during battle. But between battles, this is a weirdly quiet city. Even the menus are quiet. And how could the soundtrack miss the opportunity for a little jazz? Who goes to New Orleans without grooving on the local music?
As a gun-free and driving-free combat sandbox, Infamous 2 accomplishes pretty much exactly what Infamous 1 accomplished: lots of clambering around interspersed with elemental superheroic shenanigans against hapless enemies. The level traversal -- that's the fancy word for getting to your next waypoint -- is a mix of gliding, power-line grinding, grapple hooking, and awkward climbing that consists of repeatedly mashing a button while whatever animation feels like happening just happens. Assassin's Creed this ain't. But it gets you where you're going and it gives you plenty of opportunity to admire the artwork and the draw distance.
And then there are the battles. Yeah, sure, they look nice and they're plenty busy. You can zap, crackle, pop, explode, and burn or freeze bad guys with impunity, at least until one of the tedious sub-bosses shows up, at which point you might want to look into using the dodge button. A couple of set pieces featuring four-story-tall bad guys turn into disappointing exercises in shooting the glowing weak point. But Infamous 2 does as good a job as you'd expect with a lightning-themed superhero. Kick up sand in this combat sandbox, killing more guys and doing more quests to get more powers with which you'll kill more guys and do more quests. Lively, sure. But ultimately forgettable. With the exception of a few cool abilities used by some of the late-game enemies, Infamous 2 doesn't do much to mix up the action. The later-game fire or ice powers are just minor variations on the usual zapping, and the usual zapping escalates by the numbers. Whereas the design of New Marais has a sense of enthusiasm and craft, the same can't be said for the combat and its rote "here we go again" quality.
Credit: Naughty Dog/SCEA/SCEIIn terms of progressing across the world, Infamous 2 streamlines the first game's cool concept of powering up unpowered neighborhoods. You don't have to play through mini-dungeons anymore, but neither do you get a sense for breathing life back into the city one chunk at a time. Instead, each of the four regions has a transitional mission involving guided missiles interspersed with horde defense sequences. Between missions, the city is populated with dynamic mini-activities and side quests that shut down enemy activity in an area. UGC missions -- that stands for "User Generated Content", which is about as uninspired a name as you could give a feature -- are great idea in theory. Players make missions, and you download them into your world as you play. But in practice, they're only as good as the core combat and traversal gameplay, which is what you're doing anyway. The UGC mission editor is easy to use, and it's even easier to find the kinds of missions you want to play. Feel like a big battle? How about a race? Some sort of puzzle? Just use the filter and pluck something player-made from the internet. An Infamous 2 play-through is relatively short, but this is a game that will never leave you wanting for activities.
But will you want to do these things? Infamous 2 gives you a great place to go, but it spoils the trip by sending you there with loathsome company. Have you ever had to take a road trip with people you can't stand? Early on, a couple of characters introduce the story and the gameplay progression by giving each other glowing doo-dads. Literally. Here's a glowing doo-dad for you. And here's one for you. That's an indication of the level of coherence and dramatic tension that will drive Infamous 2. And it just goes downhill, with sidekick Zeke as pointless as ever, a toughened Cole now gravelly voice like a Martin Sheen who won't take any guff, and the heavy-handed morality choices based on whether you prefer Nixx, the fiery-tempered black voodoo chick, or Kuo, the mopey Asian CIA agent turned ice mage. What more could a protagonist want than two stereotypically badly written female characters literally fighting over him? Infamous 2's cloying attempts to make you care about the action backfire massively.
Contrast this to Just Cause 2, another open-world game with its own borderline inept storytelling. There's something endearing about the clumsy presentation of characters like rebel leader Bolo Santosi, ugly American agent Sheldon, and ridiculous dictator Baby Panay. Of course, Just Cause doesn't take itself seriously. It wallows in a sense of gleeful absurdity, in both storyline and gameplay. But there is no glee in Infamous 2. There is only earnest gravity, all too heavily invested and comic book inspired and drawn out over tedious cutscenes and utterly oblivious to its own bad writing.
Credit: Naughty Dog/SCEA/SCEIAt one point, the two main characters in Infamous 2 sit down to silently watch TV and have a couple of beers. In a game where the main characters aren't so grating, this scene would be great. In fact, imagine Rico and Bolo Santosi chilling out and watching TV! But in Infamous 2, the scene is like fingernails on a chalk board. I can't think of two people I'd less rather watch watching TV. In Sucker Punch's excellent Sly Cooper games, you can excuse the embarrassingly bad characters and cutscenes by telling yourself that part is for kids. But the narrative black hole of watching Cole and Zeke gaze silently has no such loophole. Here is Sucker Punch, quietly and insistently forcing you into a Moment. For their next game, I hope the writers at Sucker Punch take the Hippocratic Oath: "first, do no harm". Because going to New Marais to bliss out shooting lightning from my fingertips sounds like a grand time, until I realize I have to do it with these people rubbing my face in this aggressively bad story. I hear Panau is lovely this time of year.
