inFAMOUS 2 [Spoilers]

[JonB]

So, got my order today. Been playing it.

Nice Thing #1 - New Marias is hella prettier than Empire City. More colour and more variety to the buildings. I especially like the unique structures littered around, like the clock tower and that gothic cathedral and the cemetary and the... You get the picture.

Nice Thing #2 - The new Karma choices are far less good/evil binary in nature, but a better representation of Order v Chaos. Still binary as hell though, but at least there's less hitting you over the head with 'DO GOOD' and 'DO EVIL' than in the first.

Nice Thing #3 - Semi-destuctable terrain. It's not a lot, but I've already knocked down a power line by accident. Don't count on it though, to make a difference. It's a nice touch though.

Nice Thing #4 - Watching the map as the Beast gets closer to Marais. Seems Empire City is north of Boston by the trail he leaves. Maybe even in Canada.

Bad Thing #1 - The new building designs make it a bit harder to get topside, so I can see why Sucker Punch installed the railguns accelerator locations. I miss the ease of climbing.

Bad Thing #2 - GIMME BACK inFAMOUS 1's VA for Cole! Please! And what the heck did you do to Zeke? His model has certainly lost a bit of weight (given the conditions of I1, I'm not surprised), but he's channeling Elvis like he wants to go to Vegas.

Bad Thing #3 - The Assistants / Love Intrests. No, really. Cole, you're hitting on Kuo and Trish is less than a month in the dirt? That's cold. Well, considering her powers... Also, miss Evil, Nix? There's this thing called subtelty. It's in the dictionary. Assuming you can read and you don't burn the book in the first place.

What about the rest of you?

[Dread Not]

I played the demo and have been thinking about picking this up. I really enjoyed the original.

The demo impressed me with some of its improvements over the original, though it gave me some concerns with the difficulty. However, I have rarely found demos to be indicative of the final product so let me know if the full game is different or more challenging.

I'm going to guess (and hope) that power cores to not regenerate on their own in the full game. It basically allowed me to spam grenades and rockets at everything with little to no strategy, and it seemed pretty effective. I also found the ionic vortex really overpowered. I kept quickly picking up those purple shards that allowed me to shoot a vortex after every other enemy encounter.

Also, I found the new telekinesis power pretty awkward and useless. Most of the time I tried to use it I was left too vulnerable, and using standard attacks was much less of a hassle.

As for the things I liked, navigating the city is much more fluid and exhilarating with the new and improved static thrusters, which you thankfully have from the beginning of the game. I also like the increased use of in-engine cutscenes with the improved character models. I liked the comic book style cinematics both here and in the last game, but they somewhat limit the impact of certain scenes, especially with only Cole narrating them with no other voice work. The enemies also seem much more varied, which was definitely needed.

I'll probably buy this eventually but am still debating whether to buy it full price.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Amusingly, there's a trophy for climbing a chainlink fence.

So far, so good. Though the death-cam on certain big enemies is starting to get annoying.

[LadyTevar]

Nitram, being without his computer as it gets repaired, has already ran through and beaten the game on "Good". Watching him (when I could) I got to see the storyline play out, and DAMN its not as Black & White as you'd expect. Spoiler

Bertrand is a very twisted, self-loathing man, who makes and sells Conduit-powered "superweapons" like the swamp monsters and the IceSoldiers, just to fund all his humanity-helping charities. He's also a very NASTY Conduit himself, this the self-loathing.
Kun goes through something just shy of rape & torture to find out she's a Conduit, and then wrestles with what that means for the rest of the game. But she'd rather be a live Conduit than dead.
Nix the selfish psychotic lil swamp bitch. By the end, she's the one saying Humanity must be saved.
The Beast. Kessler didn't know the full story, that's painfully obvious after your second fight with it. The Beast awakens Conduits, and the Plague spreads from the Ray-diation surrounding Conduits.
The Ending. Your choice to be Demon or Saint. Humanity or Conduits. And if you were relying on Kun/Good Nix/Evil to guide your choices, you're SOL when it comes down to the final.

[JonB]

I have to agree deeply. Finished the ParagonGood Cole, and the decisions made are definitely considering the greater numbers. Will play the RenegadeEvil Cole for the other side of the character development and interpretation.

But the ending guarentees which way inFAMOUS 3's (if it's made) Cole will start out as.

[Ford Prefect]

I always felt that the decision to return to a character design closer to the original was a mistake. The new design for Cole was actually pretty cool, though I guess fans didn't agree.

[JonB]

Ford, most people I talked too didn't realize that Cole in inFamous 1 was wearing a jacket all the way through the game, which covered up the ink he displayed in i2. It's the voice that got to me, but as I played the game, it did kinda grow on me. I can almost imagine the i2 voice to be Cole's "real" voice, and his i1 voice a result of lingering injuries from the Ray Sphere blast.

Playing the Renegade Cole, one of the major differences that I've noticed from the Paragon route is the content of the Dead Drops. John White's colour commentary is an interesting examination of Cole's character in i1. It's almost a reflection on the preconceptions of what players thought about Cole. There's also more examination of the differences between Paragon and Renegade routes than in the first, which I appreciated.

I miss the Black and Red Lighting though. Need to off more civvies for the bad Karma. And the delicious XP. Playing on Hard, being Evil means you can spray crowds to make up for the reduced XP gains.

Melee is still underused, though his end-game ability to recharge all his energy with it made it semi-useful. I'm looking to see how he plays in the Tekken/Street Fighter cross though. May be fun.

Silly question for all - those who played this game and it's predecessor, did you go Blue or Red first? I went Paragon then Renegade myself.

[SirNitram]

Blue first. I'm a serious goody-goody at heart, so no surprise.

[GeneralERA]

Do you guys think this is worth picking up? I loved the first one, but that $60 console game thing always hits me hard.

[Chardok]

If you loved the first, and I mean LOVED it, then probably, yeah. It's more of that. Not too awful much has been messed with, and the new powers are good, dirty fun. the UGC is kind of meh, and some trolls have taken to creating side missions that you enter, talk to a dude who does nothing but spoil the ending and then you exit, so fair warning on that. For my money, I'm waiting until it drops to 30 bucks. I simply cannot allow more than one game with nugget collect-a-thon mechanics in my life at any one time.

[Metahive]

Some subtle changes I noticed:

1.Shards are easier to collect since it seems you don't need to come as close to pick 'em up in as in the first part
2.Even the basic bolt costs energy to fire now, better make those hits count
3.Enemies are easier to hit. In the first game I felt like I always had to go for dead center to score a hit, here I feel like I'm getting somewhat more leeway
4.RPG toting enemies have a much longer reload time now and their missiles aren't as accurate as in the first part, although that latter part really only counts for the Militia. The Vermaak 88 are better somewhat better marksmen
5.Sources of electricity are noticeably quicker depleted, with only some exceptions

Played it through as hero. Trying now the villanious route.

[ComradeClaus]

I played the demo at best buy, lots of fun just beating up civillians (I saw only a couple guys but dozens of women, is that plot relevant?) & making cars explode, thank PS3 for open sandbox-style gaming. But the dual shock joystick location still fails as bad as PS 1.

I'd rather save up for the Skyward Sword & Wii U