Infamous Second Son Review

Welcome to the review of Infamous Second Son. For your reference, this review has no spoilers.

The game was originally released in 2014 for PS4 and PS4 Pro but is also available for backwards compatibility on PS5.

It’s the 3rd game in the Infamous series but it’s a soft reboot. That means you don’t need to play Infamous 1 or Infamous 2 to know what’s going on, even though they’re both fantastic games (even here in 2022) that I recommend you check out and are available to play on PS Now.

The game should take you 10-14 hours to complete in a single run through. There is a small incentive to play it twice, once as a good guy and the other as a bad guy (I’ll elaborate on this more later).

Characters

Unfortunately, the main character is annoying. He has a great sense of humour which is great but he’s an absolute idiot, including his brother. Since Delsin is a no-good loser who breaks the law and his brother Reggie is a good guy sheriff, they fight quite often. Delsin makes stupid decisions and Reggie just yells and complains the entire game. It gets annoying fast.

The writing is sloppy and lazy. The two brothers aren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the shed and believe me, there are plenty of examples of this in the game. For instance, when Delsin first gets his powers, he can’t control them and almost teleports off a cliff. Reggie finds out about his powers and shows a deep level of concern for Delsin’s wellbeing but instead of telling his brother to go home and hide because Delsin would now be branded as a bio-terrorist, he tells Delsin to help him find the other escaped bio-terrorists… You know, the same bio-terrorists that the DUP is now most likely after, making it very easy for Delsin to potentially get caught, deemed a bio-terrorist. Oh, and don’t forget how Delsin’s new powers could get himself (or someone else) killed as he can’t control them (just a few seconds ago he almost teleported off a cliff).

Without spoilers, another example of their stupidity is a few seconds later. They arrive at the fisher warehouse where one of the bio-terrorists escapes to but can’t get past the fence. Instead of Reggie waving his badge to the people around to leave the area for their own safety, the complete opposite happens. Delsin and Reggie both agree that Delsin should teleport through the fence in front of the crowd, which causes everyone to deem Delsin a bio-terrorist and run for their lives. Then Reggie tries to calm the crowd down… After it’s too late.

Again, the writing is terrible and lazy and there are more examples throughout the game, but that would spoil the game for you. I have another post (and video) that goes over many more examples and that post contains heavy spoilers.

The funny thing about the character writing is that side characters have interesting backstories and are written quite well, unlike the 2 main characters. The side character’s backstories are short but rather deep and I wish they were a bit longer. One of them has their own prequel game called Infamous First Light.

Powers & Karma System

At the beginning of the game, Delsin is physically slow and has trouble beating enemies. As the game progresses and you upgrade abilities, he becomes faster and much more powerful. It’s a nice smooth transition from weak to powerful.

The karma system from the first and second Infamous games make a return. Do good deeds and knock out enemies instead of destroying them, you unlock powerful passive abilities to knock out enemies. Do evil deeds and destroy enemies and you unlock powers that cause more destruction.

There are also a few times in the game where you’re forced to make good or evil choices, but they seem almost pointless. For instance, when I played the good version, Delsin sees his first ever murdered body hanging from laser powers. Instead of being in shock and disgusted, he makes fun of the corpse. So, in this example he comes off as a sociopath, even though I choose to be a good guy.

There are other minor things that can influence being good or bad such as good street graffiti, choosing to save DUP prisoners or killing them and other minor side items.

The good and bad choices also don’t alter the story much, only a small portion of items are altered which is rather disappointing. It almost feels pointless in the grand scheme since most of the story doesn’t change if you decide to be good or evil (aside from the ending).

Delsin gains new abilities throughout the game but they’re pretty much the same across the board. He can shoot light projectiles, powerful projectiles, melee, stun grenades and dash. It’s still fun to run around as a one-man army but I wish that Delsin’s arsenal of powers would have had more versatility to them.

Environment & Graphics

The game takes place mostly in Seattle and the map is large. The more missions you complete, the more parts of the map you unlock which of course means more powerful enemies to encounter.

It’s a great designed city and looks gorgeous. Seriously, it’s hard to believe this game was originally released for PS4 and PS4 Pro, the graphics are fantastic and game play is incredibly smooth with next to no bugs.

Word of caution, on certain HDR supported TVs like my LG OLED, the game will be too dark to play. I spent a couple of hours researching a fix for my PS5 only to discover the developers didn’t optimize the game well. I ended up finding plenty of forums with people having the same issue as me. Turns out my console was fine; you need to change brightness and contrast in the game settings menu to make it playable.

Character animation isn’t bad during dialogs although sometimes the mouth motion is awkward but nothing to ruin cut scenes.

On the topic of cutscenes, just like Infamous 1 and 2, there are two types in the game. There are cut scenes in the game using the game’s graphics and there are some like a graphic novel. Sometimes I enjoyed the graphic novel ones more often, especially when they’re used in the side character’s background story.

Side quests can get repetitive, fast. Most of the methods to gain power ups is by destroying a DUP popup base located throughout the city and moving on to the next one. The first 3-4 times were okay, but after that it gets boring. Find the enemy base, defeat a swarm of enemies and go on to the next one, the next one, the next one, and so on.

This is quite the disappointment and a step backwards since in Infamous 1 and 2, those games had side quests with different purposes: save hostages, defeat violent gangs, defeat mini bosses, disable bombs, destroy enemy weapons storage and so on.

Destroying enough bases and doing other side errands such as doing graffiti in each area could ensue a fight with a DUP battalion. If you win the battle, you unlock fast travel within that area, but this isn’t important as you’ll eventually unlock powers that help you get around the city faster and many of the main quests require you to travel by foot.

Enemies are a bit repetitive at the beginning of the game. Some have guns, some have powers, and some have powers and guns. Thankfully as the game unfolds you start to encounter new types of enemies with different abilities.

Sound

The soundtrack works well in the game and is appropriately used at the right time.

Even though some of the dialog is written poorly, voice acting is strong. The cast does a great job at using the right tone to match the scene and the voices suit character designs well.

Sound effects are also spot on, especially when there’s a lot of chaos in certain fights.