In case you hadn’t noticed from my Monday gaming diaries, I loved inFamous 2. I’ve rarely ever played a game through completion TWICE, so playing it twice back-to-back is rather unprecedented–I didn’t even play renegade Mass Effect right after I finished my paragon playthrough of ME2. Granted, by the time I got near the end of my evil playthrough of inFamous 2, I was more than tired of the gameplay and of the swamp monsters, especially.
However, I had to see how being evil changed things immediately. I wanted to know far more badly than I did Mass Effect. (It also helped that I knew I could burn through the story quickly, but that’s a different matter.) That says volumes about a game as someone who is never looking for replay value in a game.
As for the gameplay, when I said I was tired of it by the end, I really meant that I was tired of playing these missions again. Zapping people with lightning really never gets old, but there were some boss fights and mini-boss fights that I really didn’t want to relive. However, I think we can all say that about games. I personally loved the gameplay, aside from how “sticky” Cole would seem to get. In other words, Cole would gravitate toward things to climb up or grab all the time. While you’re trying to make a weird jump or float to a grindwire, this is awesome. But when you’re just running down the street, you don’t want to suddenly grab onto a pipe to climb, particularly when you’re getting shot at from all directions. This is, though, my only complaint so hey, if that’s all I found wrong with it, then there’s really not much a problem.
Many complained that the game provided just more of the same from the game, with no real improvements on powers or newness to Cole’s abilities. I think this is another case of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” I personally like that it kept the same premise and power ideas from the first game, especially since it let me float around from the get go. If the game deviated too much or tacked on even more, I think there would have been plenty of complaints that it wasn’t like the first game. After everyone bemoaned Cole’s new look, did anyone really think SuckerPunch was going to change up Cole’s powers?
So yes, inFamous 2 is basically more of inFamous, but that is exactly what this gamer wanted. If you’re a fan of the first, you’re definitely going to like the second. Just, uh, be prepared for the unusual endings.
