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In terms of sheer graphical grunt, Infamous: Second Son is one of the best-looking titles I’ve seen here at Gamescom. The lighting model and effects are excellent: Seattle looks good when either bathed in light or illuminated by man-made sources (there’s a lot of neon going on), and the character transitions between human and smoke forms is very well executed.
Aesthetically, it looks great. But in terms of how it plays, and the story that Sucker Punch is trying to tell, I’m yet to be convinced by it. Maybe it’s the fact that the trailers for it – along with lead character Delsin (DELSIN) Rowe’s design – make it look like every single Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park video smashed together. Or that the whole ‘oppressive fascistic government/reluctant superhero’ angle has been quite played out.
Which wouldn’t matter, really, if the game itself didn’t look quite dull. Jumping around the world, shooting fire of your hands does look like fun, but beyond that there’s been nothing to convince me – including this presentation – that this will be anything more than a nice launch window distraction with pretty graphics.
Game director Nate Fox described the world as a “three-dimensional jungle gym”, and there does seem to be a lot of nice architecture to scale, free run and explode out of. But there’s not that spark in the combat yet that makes it feel like you’ll enjoy using this world for anything other than a brief bit of free-running before popping the disc out and putting something else in.
