Solid sequel. New locales, characters, and mechanics without forgetting what made the first game a hit.
In an effort to minimize spoilers from the first game, we'll just say that the original Infamous left Cole MacGrath in Empire City anticipating the impending arrival of The Beast, an entity that was to be somewhat of a doom-bringer. Infamous 2 wastes no time in hitting with big action, introducing The Beast at the onset, a gigantic being several stories tall that almost feels like something out of a God of War game. The fight ensues and Cole barely escapes with his life, heading south to New Marais to find a person named Dr. Wolfe, someone who may be able to help Cole become strong enough to battle The Beast.
Whereas Empire City was Sucker Punch's take on New York City, New Marais is influenced by New Orleans after it had been ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. It is familiar in look and feel to the city in the first game, but there are scattered swamp lands outside the city boundaries, and even a "Flood Town" section that has a lot more water in it than most cities should, for obvious reasons.
Cole's buddy Zeke is along for the ride again, and he seems a little more handy this time around, apparently pretty tech-savvy and able to do some undercover work while Cole is providing the muscle. There are also a couple of new female characters in Infamous 2: Kuo and Nix. You'll spend a decent amount of time with each one, depending on how you want to play the game.
Cole's appearance is slightly different than his dark-eyed, inhuman look in the first game. He's a bit cleaned up, now, but not enough to make him unfamiliar. His voice is also slightly less comic-book corny, but still has a similar gruff to it. These changes might be a little off-putting at first, but they pay off. Like he came down from his pedestal, Cole's character in Infamous 2 is much more human and feels less disconnected from everyone else around him. He'll chuckle at stupid jokes and relax on the couch with a beer. Some of the interactions between him and Zeke give off a more genuine impression of longtime friendship than anything from the first title. The use of motion capture also helps warm the interactions up a bit, abstaining from the stoic and robotic movements the characters portrayed in the first game
But true to the original, when you're not watching cut-scenes, there sure is a lot to do and a lot of ground to cover, and simply jumping around New Marais is a blast on its own. Thankfully, Sucker Punch opted to avoid the trite method of finding a way to strip the hero of all his powers in the beginning of the sequel, forcing him to start from scratch. Infamous 2 does manage to dial Cole back a bit at first, but it doesn't quite cripple him. The greatest benefit is that Cole can grind on power lines and glide through the air from the get-go, making traveling a bit more convenient right away. The melee combat is particularly effective and enjoyable, but the camera can also be a bit uncomfortably close in these exchanges.
The mission formula is borrowed straight from the first game, offering up white quest missions and yellow side missions peppered throughout the map, with a "moral decision" every now and then. But the moral formula of Infamous has not evolved, and is sure showing its age now. Whenever there is an option to decide to do something that will affect Cole's moral standing in the game, Infamous 2 literally stops and tells you: "Hey, if you want to be a hero, do this, and if you want to be an a**hole do this." Seriously, it actually has prompts that say things like, "Press L2 for Good, R2 for Evil."
But insults to the intelligence aside, there's really only one choice you ever really make. When you start playing, you have set in your mind to play the "Good" or "Evil" role. But to get access to the best powers, you need to be either completely Good, or completely Evil. So basically, the game penalizes you for wafting back and forth, and rewards you for staying the course. In that case, if you started Evil, you're going to pick Evil every time, and the same formula applies if you started Good. If a game is going to introduce moral decisions, there needs to be a grey area. Consequences should be presented for both sides, requiring the players to weigh the pros and cons of their potential choices. Infamous 2 gives you the option of being Good or Evil, and ultimately feigns choice for the rest of the game.
Luckily, the gameplay is a blast, so you'll probably forget about the… forgettable morality system. Cole can take a lot of punishment and dish out a whole lot more. Many powers are at your disposal, and are unlocked by performing particular stunts and earning experience points which can be spent on the powers themselves. There's enough to choose from that you'll actually find yourself taking a little time deciding on which power to spend your hard-earned experience on. Even if you play through every side mission en route to the completion of the game, you'll barely have enough experience to unlock every power. It makes the choice between which power to unlock and when carry a bit more weight.
A single play-through should easily take over 16 hours even if you don't get stuck on any missions. But the amount of time you'll actually spend on the game could be potentially much greater thanks to the introduction of user-generated content. The tools at your disposal to create your own missions are vast and intimidating at first, but quite powerful. You can work pretty much whatever you see in the game into whatever you'd like to create, and even some things that you didn't see in the game. And scattered about the white story missions and yellow side missions are green "UGC" missions. These are select user-generated missions that will pop up in the game world just as any other mission. Quite literally, the possibilities are endless.
All throughout, Infamous 2 is damn pretty. Character models, buildings, and enemies are all meticulously detailed. The environment boasts a rather long draw distance while making effective use of blur. Lighting and shadowing are employed deftly to accent the passage of day of night throughout the many story missions. Rendered cut-scenes offer meaningful interactions between the main characters of the game, while important plot points are portrayed through hand-drawn comic book-style panel sequences. The game manages to sport a realistic look while still retaining an unmistakable superhero feel. And the frame rate rarely suffers for it, stuttering only a few times during the most intense and cluttered moments of the game.
Infamous 2 shows that Sucker Punch is dedicated to keeping Infamous feeling like Infamous and not straying too far from the formula. As a result, if you're a fan of the first, you'll be a fan of this. But on the other hand, if the first game didn't capture you, there's probably not enough new here to change your mind. The open-world feel is intact, but the morality system is somewhat of a joke when compared to the more sophisticated systems found in other current-gen games, and is pretty unsatisfying. Regardless, there's a ton of content here and a fairly lengthy single player campaign with endless expandability via user-generated content. The enemies are bigger and the battles are more epic. The personalities are deeper and more believable. Infamous 2 is the kind of sequel that makes you even more excited to see what comes next.