Infamous 2 represents a solid step forward for the series, but it certainly has its flaws.
Graphically, the game ranges from good to excellent. The environments generally look great and a lot of attention has been paid to the small details that really make a game environment believable, a hallmark of good design. The city of New Orleans-oh, sorry, I meant New Marais-is a much more colorful and lively area than the Empire City of the first Infamous. Neon signs glow beautifully in the French Quarter area, Flood Town looks appropriately ravaged after a major hurricane (probably called Katarina) decimated the area, and the gas works area combines ugly industrial buildings with brilliant ice platforms and some interestingly out of place snowy regions. It all looks fantastic, and when you add Cole's flashy and sometimes downright impressive powers to the mix the screen really blows up with color. Cole's animations are also nicely done; he leaps and spins and slides his way across New Marais looking as authentic as an electric super hero can, and the graceful athleticism that Sucker Punch was obviously trying for comes across well. The enemies look nice, and the smaller ones offer some satisfyingly brutal death animations that involve being electrocuted to death in a pool of water (which shows their skeletons flashing beneath their clothing in a welcome dash of cartoony flare), being thrown limply from the roof of a tall building, or being bludgeoned by Cole's gigantic tuning fork-esque melee weapon. The larger enemies generally look great as well, although their small number of animations eventually begins to wear thin as the game nears completion. Still, watching a massive swamp creature rampage through semi-destructable city environment never really gets old and is truly a spectacle to behold.
In terms of sound, Infamous 2 does pretty well, though it isn't always as good as it could be. Cole's powers generally sound acceptably intimidating, but throughout the game I couldn't help feeling as if a little additional audio mixing at Sucker Punch could have made them seem even more powerful. The same is true of the game's explosions, of which there are many. Most sound pretty good, but a little extra oomph could have pushed them from satisfying to epic. Even the bosses and mini-bosses seem to suffer from a slight lack of power in their sound effects, which does somewhat diminish their impact psychologically on the player. The soundtrack, however, is very well done. The music is eclectic and doesn't really fit any particular genre because it changes so often, but it always seems to fit well with the given the scenario, giving the player slow but ominous melodies that still portray the old happiness of New Marais when nothing is going on and faster, high-tempo tracks when battles occur. It enhanced the experience for me, and that's exactly what a soundtrack should do. The voice acting is passable, and most of the main cast comes across relatively believably even if they are occasionally handicapped by Infamous 2's sometimes questionable writing. The smaller characters, and most notably Laroche, tend to come across as overly scripted and false with their sub-par southern drawls and overly stereotypical colloquialisms. I would also have liked to have heard a few more enemy sound clips as most fights result in them yelling the same three or four things at you over and over again.
The story of Infamous 2 is simultaneously one of the game's greatest successes and one of its greatest failures. This is because it attempts to force two perfectly acceptable independent stories to work together. The main focus of the game in the beginning is the arrival of the The Beast mentioned in the first Infamous, and Cole spends his first few minutes attempting to stop the creature from destroying Empire City. He is forced to flee to New Marais after failing, and this is where the story breaks down to some extent. New Marais has its own problems involving a wealthy businessman turned crazed militia leader named Bertrand who is imposing xenophobic policies against any conduits or "freaks" in the city and generally oppressing the people in the name of security-an overly obvious political statement that I won't get into here. This splits the story into two different paths: stopping Bertrand and finding enough Blast Cores to allow Cole to use the RFI, a super weapon meant to defeat The Beast. The problem is that Sucker Punch can't seem to find the proper balance between the two arcs. Bertrand and his evil plans take center stage for most of the game, with The Beast relegated to a small orange dot on the pause menu map that moves slightly closer to New Marais every time a major mission is completed. Some effort is made to create a sense of foreboding and tension about the looming encounter with a few lines of dialogue or a news report here or there, but the game frequently forgets all about The Beast and there are large sections in which he seems more like an afterthought than the main antagonist. Even after The Beast arrives in New Marais, the expected climax is slow to happen. One scene after his arrival sees Cole and Zeke falling asleep on the couch as The Beast presumably plots his next move or ravages the city, which is a pretty accurate representation of how I felt about him by that point as well. The whole Beast story arc is generally poorly handled, and to some extent this winds up deflating the final encounter when it finally does happen.
The Bertrand story arc, however, is excellent. You will slowly uncover his dark secrets during your time in New Marais, and the story becomes genuinely interesting about halfway through. It stays interesting, as well, and it all builds to a mostly satisfying conclusion by the end of the game. I actually think that Bertrand and the militia would have made for a fine story all on their own, but they unfortunately get tripped up regularly by what feel like "oh-no-we-forgot-The-Beast" sections that break the story down for a couple of missions before you are allowed to see what happens next. Even with the interruptions, though, Bertrand's bigotry and his stereotypical redneck army are the real stars of the show here, and the story is well done enough that it is worth a run through if only to find out what happens to them. Of course, to see both ways the story can go you'll have to go through twice, once on each side of the moral fence. This isn't too hard, as Infamous 2 once again makes use of the save the babies or eat the babies moral system from Infamous 1 and there's never any confusion over which solution is the good or bad option. Still, it's worth doing both good and evil playthroughs to see the missions you missed the first time or Cole's other powers.
Story successes and failures aside, the gameplay itself is what makes Infamous unique in the open world genre, and it largely succeeds in Infamous 2. Cole is once again gifted with powerful electric capabilities, and all of the unlockable main abilities from the first Infamous are available right off the bat in Infamous 2. Cole's powers range from firing single blots of electricity from his hands to summoning massive ionic storms that engulf everything in their path. Nearly all of his attack powers feel underwhelming when the game kicks off, but the player slowly unlocks ever more powerful attacks as the game progresses and certain task are completed. Your single bolt of electricity will eventually become a solid stream of electric projectiles or massively destructive missiles. You'll also eventually unlock some other elemental powers (ice or fire) depending on your karmic decisions throughout the game, and this combined with the fact that the unlock tree for Cole's powers varies greatly given his moral choices adds quite a bit of depth to the power system. The improvement tree really makes you feel as if you are actually growing in power rather than simply being told that you are, and it is satisfying to take Cole from a relatively weak character to a near god over the course of the story.
There are a few issues with the power unlocks, however. Although the game allows you to change your play style by switching powers on the fly, some of the powers seem useless compared to others. For example, the artillery bolt never really felt appreciably different or more useful than my other bolt powers, so I seldom used it. The same is true of powers like the car jump, which allows for super high jumps from vehicles. It felt as if it was added just for the sake of being there, and there was little fun or practicality to be found in it. Also, some powers that seem as if they should be used in tandem with one another are frustratingly assigned to the same button and must be switched out manually in frequently tense situations. The electric leash, for instance, serves as an incredibly useful way to pull oneself towards new positions or useful objects and is assigned to the R2 button. The gravitational lift ability is also extremely useful since it allows you to remove obstructions or throw objects to cause massive damage to groups of enemies, but it is also assigned to the R2 button. That means that if on an escort mission you wish to leash your way to a car on the road, then pick it up and throw it at the group of enemies barreling towards you, you will need to use the leash first and then manually switch to the gravitational ability mid-action. I understand that there are a limited number of buttons on a controller, but it feels as if the power controls could have been slightly better thought out. Finally, most powers force you to complete an arbitrary task to actually unlock them for purchase once you've discovered them. These actions range from hitting an enemy in the head to activating an ultra combo during melee combat, and they frequently have almost nothing to do with the power in question. As a result, they often feel as if they are little more than an irritating roadblock between you and your new, shiny abilities.
Despite some hiccups with the powers, however, the combat works fantastically when dealing with smaller enemies like militia members and ice soldiers. The melee system has been upgraded from an afterthought to a wonderfully animated and brutal way of dispatching foes, and the use of different powers can lead to some very interesting and fun combinations of ways to take down your foes. Would you like to blast the enemy into the air and then hit him with a rocket, or would you rather stun him with a bolt and then crush him with a melee attack? These are the kinds of questions Infamous 2 asks the player, and it results in a dynamic and customizable combat system that lets you play with Cole's superhuman abilities as you see fit most of the time. This is good, as the enemies in Infamous 2 are far more varied than the cookie-cutter cannon fodder of the first Infamous and different approaches are frequently necessary for different enemy types. The larger mini-bosses, for example, usually require spamming certain powers or abilities at the correct times to defeat. Unfortunately, each mini-boss of a given type-giant swamp creature, mutated ice soldier, colossus, etc.-plays identically to every other mini-boss of that type, and the fun of defeating a massive ice colossus quickly wears off the third or fourth time you go through the motions of defeating him only to be rewarded with the same death animation offered by the others. The same is true for most true boss battles, which generally devolve into shooting the weak spot (usually glowing so you are sure not to miss it) and rinse-and-repeat tactics. It isn't necessarily that these battles are bad, they just aren't nearly as inspired or open ended as the person-on-person combat in the game and thus tend to get pretty boring towards the end of the story.
Disappointingly, the usually excellent combat is backed by some pretty contrived mission types and set-ups. Some of the mission design is excellent, including a boat ride into the swamp that involves hopping out onto multiple islands to dispatch enemies before they sink the ship or another that has you assaulting a heavily guarded fort complete with mortars and turrets, but much of it winds up feeling pretty lazy. For example, one mission has you plugging burning oil wells by throwing a plug cap from one well to the next across Flood Town. This usually involves being electrocuted by the water whenever the cap lands in it (which is pretty often given that most of Flood Town is, you know, flooded), and each time you reach a new well you are greeted with the obligatory group of angry enemies. It felt like a cheap tech demo for the gravitational ability, and it just wasn 't very enjoyable. The irritatingly repetitive generator starting missions make a return here as well, and although they are different than their awful incarnation in the first Infamous, they are no less uninspired. Now, you must fire missiles of electricity from one generator to the next and then guard each one as it charges and you are attacked. These missions take place in different areas, but they all feel roughly identical. Some of the smaller story missions feel the same, too, although there is enough good and unique design mixed in to keep the game moving along and, as I said before, there are some truly great missions thrown in from time to time.
The user generated content also adds a great deal to the experience, somewhat making up for the occasionally lazy mission design. While much of the UGC is as awful as one might expect, some of it is actually quite good. One mission made me invincible and allowed me to trounce hordes of enemies with impunity while another had me scale a gravity-defying platform section to save some civilians in a floating nightclub. These were actually quite fun and if players continue using and improving with the tools Sucker Punch has provided, we could very well see some extremely creative and fun extensions of the game's disc content. If nothing else, the UGC manages to offer enough different experiences to break up the similar feeling mission structure of the main game, and that alone makes it worth enabling the feature in the menu when you start the game up. Overall, though, it's fortunate that Infamous 2 includes such a robust UGC system and has such strong combat and gameplay; otherwise it would have been in danger of falling into mediocrity due to its lackluster developer made mission design.
While it is a significant step forward from the original, Infamous 2 is game that succeeds in many areas while falling short in many others. The combat is frantic, fun, and dynamic, but the mission design often hampers the experience to some degree despite the inclusion of excellent user generated content tools. The powers are satisfying and fun to use, but are sometimes limited by some questionable control design and frequently arbitrary unlock requirements. The story is mostly good, but some aspects are so grossly mishandled that they lose their impact. Still, if you can get past all the "buts" and simply enjoy Infamous 2's excellent gameplay, environment, and characters, you're in for an extremely entertaining ride. It may not revolutionize the open world genre or do anything overly incredible, but it is a great game that any PS3 owner ought to play and it offers plenty of replay value through the karma system to justify its $60 asking price. I recommend a purchase despite the game's shortcomings. Enjoy!