I Quit: InFamous 2

The original Infamous was not a perfect game, but it did one thing really well: it made you feel like a superhero far better than any other superhero genre game ever had before.  A game doesn’t have to be perfect for you to get a great deal of enjoyment out of it, and Infamous had that special something, that meant that for all its faults in graphics, controls and story telling, I still loved it and actively looked forward to the sequel. 

I read a letter in Total Film recently, in which someone was commenting on the tendency to judge sequels more harshly than the original.  Would Batman Begins, the writer argued, still be considered a great film if it came after The Dark Knight.  My answer to that would be of course it would.  Batman begins is still the superior film in terms of character study and story structure.  But the point is, you always judge a sequel by the one that came before, whether it was good or bad.  No one ever says Assassin’s Creed 2 is good, they say, “It’s so much better that the first one!”  If InFamous 2 was a stand alone product, I would probably find a way to look past its problems, but because it’s following on from a game that already had problems I can’t do that.

Not every part of InFamous 2 is a let down.  The graphics have has a major overhaul and look like proper PlayStation 3 graphics, instead of just very good PlayStation 2 graphics.  More than just being good, they are atmospheric.  As the Beast draws closer to the city, the skies take on an ominous blood red colour.  The controls have also been improved upon, they are far more responsive now and allow you to switch from power to power with ease.  Playing the game, however, still manages to be a major drag, for three reasons.

First of all, the enemies are ridiculously difficult.  This was a problem with the first game, which had enemies able to land every single shot on Cole, even if you were blazing past the enemies at high speed.  Similarly in this game, if the shoot you, they usually hit you, and that’s only the beginning of it.  Soon enough you find yourself constantly facing off against huge waves of enemies armed with rocket launchers or have super powers of their own.  Where are they all coming from?  Where did they get all the rocket launchers?  Why can the super powered guys zip about the place at high speeds leaving me barely able to get a lock on them?  And then there’s the big monsters who shoot big balls of saliva that all but instantly kill Cole unless he runs away like a big girls blouse.  I’m all for a variety of enemies but the difficulty of these guys is insane.  Instead of enjoying the combat like I did for the most part in the first game, I ended up dreading it and trying to avoid it.

The second reason is because of the way it tells its story.  My major issue with the original game was not so much the story itself, because there was the potential for something interesting and engaging, but rather how the game chose to tell its story.  Instead of traditional cut scenes, the camera hung limply behind Cole as he and Zeke just stood still next to each other, talking.  Bigger moments had comic book style art and monologues from Cole.  The game chose to narrate the major events rather that show them happening and the result was a story that had the potential to be gripping and emotionally engaging ended up being a bit shallow.

It has been improved upon slightly in that they tell a lot of their story in cut scenes and leave the comic book art and narrations for a few of the bigger moments.  I was initially hopeful that this would mean a far stronger story this time around.  Sadly, it didn’t.  The problem this time around is that the characters are so weak, two dimensional and boring that I didn’t care about them.  The story itself is hollow and empty and serves no real purpose other than to give Cole lots of enemies to fight.  It’s a real shame, because the first hour is interesting, there’s the introduction of the Beast - who doesn’t look as beastly as I’d hoped - there’s the defeat of Cole, and the retreat to a new city.  Every now and again you are told, “The Beast is X miles away…”  It’s a decent set up but the story so fades away and you are doing the same thing over and over.  Missions usually just involve being told that something is going down, and I should go shoot a bunch of people.  There was no real substance or meaning behind any of it.  I felt like a lot of the story was happening behind the scenes, like the secondary characters were doing stuff unseen by me, and they were only bring me in to be the muscle.  Compare that to Grand Theft Auto games, which take a moment it a cut scene to not only set up the mission, but developed the characters and there relationships a bit more.  In some ways, GTA never really stops telling its story from beginning to end.  In InFamous 2, the story is just a justification for shooting people.  The behind the scenes story telling isn’t even implemented that well.  At the end of one mission, Zeek settles back with a beer telling you he’s going to chill for a while.  Not twenty seconds later he called saying he’d been doing some investigating and I should stop by and see him.  No you weren’t, Zeek, you were slouched on a couch doing your best Al Bundy impression.  That’s the point I’m trying to make: the story isn’t about the story, it’s about providing trigger points for the action.

Thirdly, the moral choices are still painfully black and white.  There’s never a grey area, there’s never a third choice.  You have two secondary characters, Kuo and Nix, who represent basic good and bad choices respectively.  In this game, making a moral choice usually means choosing between one of the two women, so it feels less like “what do you think is the right choice?” and more “which one of them would like to shag?”

Let me digress for a moment to tell you what I think is one of the best moral choices in a game ever.  In Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, you are sneaking through the streets of Jerusalem, guided by a woman, Dahlia Tal, to a terrorist hideout.  Dahlia is also a terrorist, but its a case of siding with the lesser of two evils.  When you get to the hideout, you receive a new order:  “Kill her,” the player is told.  “Don’t think.  Just do it.”  The problem was, in that moment I began over-thinking.  I began to panic.  I was just ordered to fire on an unarmed woman.  Sure, she was a bad guy, but she kept up her end of the bargain, didn’t she?  Whether she lives or dies is the choice of the player, but it’s not a simple case of press X for good option, press O for bad option.  You don’t even know what the good option is.  If you decide to kill her, you have to pull out the gun, aim it and pull the trigger.  Then you have to play the rest of the level knowing you killed an unarmed woman.  This choice has more power and impact than any other game I’ve played with moral choices because it comes out of no where and stays with you long afterwards.

InFamous 2 just doesn’t have that impact on me.  The only real reason for making the choices you do is because, like the first game, your Karma dictates the kind of powers you develop.  But all that means is you will play the game once as a good guy then once as a bad guy, you are never really making the choice that you think is the right one in that moment.

I quit InFamous 2.  It’s shallow, it’s boring and it just doesn’t have the fun factor the first game had going for it.  I looked forward to this game for two years all I got was that mild depression that comes with bitter disappointment. 

Oh, well, there’s always Batman: Arkham City to look forward to.