Why You Should Play Infamous: Second Son on Expert

A superhero is nothing without a proper villain. Imagine if you had the strength of a titan, the speed of a runaway bus, and the gliding prowess of a flying squirrel. The world would be your playground, and the normals who populated the streets would be nothing more than pawns in whatever game you devised. What would you do? Maybe your heart is pure. You spend nights rounding up drug dealers to bring peace to run-down neighborhoods. Or maybe you're a colossal jerk who thinks there's nothing more exciting than overflowing toilets. However you get your jollies, dealing with ordinary weaklings would be interesting for only so long. You need a foil.

In Infamous: Second Son, you play as Delsin Rowe, who is ostensibly a god--an unkillable, unaccountable, unlikable, and unfashionable god, but a god all the same. No matter which moral path you choose, Delsin need only flex his muscles to vanquish the scamps who populate the mean streets of Seattle. He's a bully, and he differs from middle school punks only in how flashy his fighting style is. I took great pleasure in carving my way through this world without restraint, but my conquests felt hollow. As one feckless enemy after another fell to my prodigious might, I yearned for a showdown that would really test me, something that could push me to realize the untapped talents that still lay dormant inside me.

My first playthrough of Second Son was on medium difficulty. The world was so new, so beautiful, and so enthralling that I smiled as I breezed through every obstacle that stood before me. Troops would storm the streets, cordoning off a few blocks of the gorgeous metropolis as they attempted to capture me. And I would laugh at their feeble efforts. All of their helicopters and missile launchers were no match against my near invincibility. I would fill the screen with rockets and systematically pick off stragglers desperate to escape. I was so confident in my inevitable victory that I would begin to make up challenges of my own. Could I defeat every enemy by using only melee attacks? What if I shelved my area-of-effect attack? Or never left street level?

When I died, it was because of my own ego rather than the game's cunning. Instead of scampering away from the fray to regenerate my health, I would instead push forward. Why not? Even if I did succumb, there's little punishment for failure. I would just reappear nearby and rush once more into battle. On medium difficulty, Second Son is so deliciously fast and explosively fun that I scoured the landscape in search of every side mission to complete. But my palms never sweated. My heart never raced. I felt like a professional basketball player dunking on third graders. Sure, a windmill jam is impressive no matter who's on the other side, but embarrassing children isn't going to win you much respect.

On my second time through, I set out on expert difficulty. I was scared at what I might find. I love challenge in games, but it's rare to find one that can kick my butt without being frustrating. There's a delicate balance between success and failure that's so compelling when done right, and so maddening when botched. What I found wasn't nearly as intimidating as I feared. Instead, expert felt like what I expected from medium.

Death is not omnipresent on expert. In fact, much like on medium, Delsin died only when I became too confident, too relaxed. So ramping up the difficulty does not turn Second Son into an open-world, superhero take on Dark Souls. Instead, it forces you to play more thoughtfully. Enemies are no longer pushovers, no longer succumbing after one or two strikes or surrendering when the going gets tough. No, they fight to win, and though their strength is nowhere near your own, they still present a worthy match.

The beauty of ramping up the difficulty is how it forces you to use your full repertoire. On medium, I could rely on the same basic tactic for most battles, and though I loved my slow-down-time, purple-prison approach, it certainly didn't show off all that Delsin is capable of. When I graduated to expert, enemies were too aggressive for me to vanquish them in such a predictable manner. Instead of running along walls because it's fun, I did so to survive, and used ground strikes only when I was sure I wasn't trapping myself. I held on to my high-powered attacks until a stronger foe would materialize because I was scared of being unprepared if such a situation suddenly arose.

More importantly, I could no longer rely on just one of my myriad powers. Delsin gains access to abilities beyond the smoke you start out with, and on my medium playthrough, I found a favorite and stuck with it. But doing that on expert would be foolish. There are only so many energy sources in Seattle to refill your power, and beggars can't be choosers in the heat of battle. So I sucked up whatever I could, and continued to fight without worrying if I had my ideal power or something else. And this gave me an appreciation for every power you earn. On medium, I thought each power had weaknesses that limited their effectiveness during certain encounters. But I realized on expert how wrong I was. I just needed to be more imaginative.

Playing on expert gave me new appreciation for Second Son's combat. I knew that it felt incredibly smooth to move, and there was serious weight behind every strike. But it wasn't until I evened the odds that I realized how flexible and dynamic combat really is. I got so much more out of the game when I had to put serious thought into my actions. Not everyone seeks challenge in their games, but Second Son doesn't reveal just how special it is until you crank up the difficulty a tad. I'm glad that I gave expert a chance because now I'm just itching to scope out Seattle one more time.