Infamous 2

As the sole owner of a Playstation 3 in the Faceplant triumvirate of nerds, I feel a certain responsibility to play some of the exclusives and expound upon them here.  I’ll admit that when I have a choice I almost always go Xbox, as I am an achievement whore, trophies on Sony’s platform don’t do much for me.  The original Infamous (PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED HERE OMG) made me forget all about the fanboy console wars and just enjoy a fantastic game.  The story, while a little hokey, was compelling and made me want to keep playing, but it was the experience of flying and power line grinding around Empire City using a combination of all my powers that really lent itself to the player feeling like a super hero, which few games manage to capture.  Infamous 2 keeps that feeling going in spades.  The nuts and bolts gameplay remains true to the original, with some small but awesome additions that will make the first game harder to play again (not that it matters, any Infamous fan should have played through at least twice to see both endings anyway!).  Sadly, the problems with story and the touted morality system have not gone away.  They don’t detract from making Infamous 2 a joy to play but they do hold it back from being truly great.

Infamous

Who doesn’t love being a super hero?  The powers, the gadgets, the spandex, the babes!  In comic book form (or more recently, in film)  they wield incredible powers and cut a swath of destruction through the puny henchmen of whatever super villan of the week appears on the radar.  So how come being a super hero in a GAME is so difficult to pull off?  Other than Batman: Arkham Asylum I can’t think of a game that truly makes you feel like the savior of a city.  Infamous, even more so than Batman, captures this feeling due to its great sense of scale and strong main character.  The fact that the universe of Infamous is an original IP lets the game build the hero, villains, and setting in such a way almost perfectly suited to gaming.