The beast is coming. A being of immense power has obliterated Empire City. As powerful as Infamous’ protagonist Cole MacGrath is, he is unable to stop it. The only such hope of stopping this creature lies in the New Orleans inspired city of New Marais – an experimental device, when properly supplied with a sufficient amount of energy, can drain the beast of it’s power. This device however will in the process also terminate all superhuman individuals (or conduits) such as Cole himself. As Cole you must make your decision, possibly the biggest decision ever presented in an Infamous title; save the conduits and doom humanity, or destroy the beast dooming yourself and all like you. Either way, the fact remains…..the beast is coming.
Infamous 2 makes technical leaps and bounds over it’s predecessor. Color palettes are warmer, motion capture is smoother, and character models are tremendously improved. Cole is new and improved with more emotive dialogue in comparison to the original Infamous’ flat vocal performance. Another improvement is in the more focused melee combat with the addition of Cole;s new “amp” weapon, which gathers Cole’s lightning power and unleashes deadly combos when in close quarters or if Cole runs out of juice. Cole can gain new and different elemental powers as well (such as freezing powers) depending on which of Infamous 2′s new female allies you side with, the evil karma based Nix or the good karma based Kuo.
Aside from these new additions and improvements (and the ability to create and share created missions), Infamous 2 remains almost identical to Infamous in every other way. The vibrance and warmth of New Marais is a definite improvement over Empire City’s smell of desperation and hopelessness, but the second half of Infamous 2 brings you to the flooded, disaster-ridden region of Louisiana which quickly becomes as depressing as Empire City. This is also when the game begins to feel a bit stale and run on a little longer than it should.
Infamous 2 may not be the best super hero title available today, but is markedly better than it’s predecessor. Infamous 2 is obviously recommended to fans of the original, but newcomers will feel a bit lost in the story not having played the first infamous title.
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