Was anyone else really bummed out with how inFamous: Second Son turned out? It was a step down from inFamous 2 in almost every single way. I personally absolutely love (loved?) the inFamous franchise. inFamous 2 is one of my favorite games of the last generation. That said Second Son is easily the weakest game in the franchise.

Let me start with the positives

• The game looks beautiful. It is easily the nicest looking inFamous game to date.
• The graffiti mini games were neat.

Now for the parts where Second Son shat the bed

Enemies. There was no variety to them whatsoever. It is the same damn concrete soldiers over and over again with like three variations and they are all shooting at you with guns. The first inFamous game had you fighting three different groups including Reapers, the First Sons, and homeless garbage people. inFamous 2 upped the anti and had you fighting red necks, swamp monsters and ice monsters. And these swamp and ice monsters came in several varieties including huge almost boss like giants that would appear in combat scenarios. Even the downloadable Festival of Blood had you fighting different kinds of vampires.

Boss Fights. inFamous 2 to had you fighting Godzilla sized monsters. The best thing Second Son has is a fairly small rock scorpion.

Story. Or lack there of. This games story is really really short. Like ridiculously short. It felt like it was in a rush to get to the end for whatever reason. Festival of Blood had a more interesting story and Bloody Mary was more fleshed out than anyone in Second Son. inFamous 2 also had a fantastic story that took its time and allowed you to see the group of friends you make all interacting as you all planed your next move. They even took the time to add in a scene of Zeke and Cole just chilling on the couch which is arguably one of the best parts of the series.

Side Missions: There was no variety to them whatsoever. It is literally the same five or so things done over and over again in each part of the city. What happened to the variety in inFamous 2? At least there they were having fun with it and you got goofy stuff like defeat this angry mob of street performers. The only thing close to the side missions of the old games in Second Son was the Cole's Legacy DLC missions.

Pacing. I strongly disliked how every side mission was available at the start of the game. You were also given the location of all the blast shards in the area as soon as you take down the DUP truck. inFamous 2 would give you a few side missions every time you completed one of the story missions so that there was always a small break between story missions. You also did not get the location of every blast shard on your map until after you completed all the side quests, which was near the end of the game.

Dodge/Roll/Cover. Why the fuck was this removed? This was a key ability that made it possible to leap into the middle of a combat situation and be able to survive. You would roll from enemy to enemy and if shit got too bad you would hide behind cover and shoot at enemies. Instead in Second Son you have the dash button that is only good for running far away and then running back. They easily could have had both. Festival of Blood gave you the ability to fly and you could still role and take cover behind objects.

Powers. It is pretty funny that they gave this game the"enjoy your powers" tagline when it has the worst powers in the series. Yes you have access to four different powers. On paper that sounds great. Unfortunately, all the powers are limited to slight variations of a pea shooter, a missile, an immobilizing grenade, a dash and a screen clearing finisher. Whats more you can only use one power type at a time. inFamous 2 allowed you to mix and match your powers at will by simply allowing you to select which attacks you wanted to assign to each button. You could throw an electric grenade followed immediately by an ice missile if that is what your heart desired. Also what happened to the Star Wars like force push? It was one of my favorite powers and it allowed you to throw grenades and rockets back at enemies.

Traversal. Getting around with smoke powers through vents and getting pushed up was pretty neat. However, with the neon and video powers you just zip around the buildings to the point where traversal ceases to be fun and just becomes a chore. Grinding lines and hovering to get around in the other inFamous games was great and the smoke power gets close to recreating that but unfortunately the location is just not as interesting.

Location. The world is really really bland. Maybe that is just because Seattle is a boring place but the environment is incredibly stale. Empire City looked like a place where shit was fucked up. New Marais had the vibrant city on half the map and the hurricane struck flooded city on the other half.

UGC. Also known as user generated content. Was it clunky in inFamous 2 and Festival of Blood? Yes. But I still would have loved to see them try to iterate on it. There is absolutely 0 post game content in Second Son and that sucks.

In Conclusion

I am extremely disappointed with Sucker Punch. It is mind boggling how much of a drop in quality Second Son was. It really seems like their heart wasn't in it this time. If this is the kind of quality we can expect to see from their inFamous games then I would rather they work on a new IP and leave the inFamous franchise to someone who actually gives a shit.

I am really curious to hear what you duders thought of this game. Do you agree with my sentiments or do you feel like this was just as good or better than the old inFamous games? Had you ever played an inFamous game before or was Second Son the first one you played?