2.5/5 ★ – FoofDeckman's review of inFAMOUS Second Son.

After just finishing the entire Infamous series, all I can say is that I'm incredibly disappointed. There's some really great ideas sprinkled throughout all three of these games that really make it shine, but it's shrouded in some of the worst writing and level design imaginable. When I hear a game has a morality system, I usually expect the worst because I don't think there's a ton of examples of games pulling it off well. The problem comes when your entire series is revolving around this morality system, but then it doesn't do anything. Outside of the ending and a few general missions here and there, you deciding to go on a genocide run versus a hero run, really don't matter. I've had that same thought throughout all of these games, and Second Son made me definitive about it. Since Infamous 2 left on a closed note with Cole and everyone else, Infamous Second Son is the start of an entirely new story and is pretty much standalone from the first two games. I wasn't that big of a fan of Cole, as the way the morality system is written in those first two games really makes his character feel inconsistent. I picked the evil path during all of these games, but it feels like depending on the mission his dialogue wouldn't entirely reflect that until the final mission, of which doesn't matter in the end since none of the Evil endings are canon. Delsin feels like they were trying to write an actual character, but it didn't really fit with the series and the morality system in play. He comes across as like a rebellious punk, but nothing about his character shouts "I'm a genocidal maniac", so when he starts killing indiscriminately and reveling in it, the tonal clash ruins the entire story for me. It's not like Cole where he's almost expressionless throughout the whole game, Troy Baker really gave it his all, and I'd imagine it would pay off better in the hero morality, but him being evil just doesn't work the same way Cole did. One of the biggest issues outside of the writing with the first two games were the visuals and framerate. I know those were both PS3 games, but the choppy nature and the dull color palette really didn't do the game any justice. Second Son not only is gorgeous to look at, but runs really really well. I couldn't help but imagine the first two Infamous games running and looking like this, but I know very well that remasters of those games are a long ways off. There's so many visually unique powers in this game, all of which use the hardware to it's advantage, specifically with the neon power. Infamous Second Son is a disappointing game, but not a bad one. For an early PS4 game I feel like it served it's purpose of showing off the technical capabilities of the hardware for the time, and lucky it doesn't overstay it's welcome in the process. I really hope this series gets some love in the future with ports or some kind of remake, but Playstation hates it's community so that probably won't happen.