Infamous 2. Oh, where do I begin? Before I get into the real nitty-gritty, I want to make it clear that I'm very hard to impress. I'm more inclined to dislike games than like them. So when I tell you that Infamous 2 features in, if not tops, my Favourite 3 games, I hope you understand what I'm saying.

I've now played through the storyline of this game three times over. I've done both endings, but on my most recent playthrough, chose the Good Karmic alignment. There's just something so pure about making Cole a hero to these people. I should also mention that both endings left me in tears. Like, stupid, gut-wrenching, what-a-stupid-game, stop-crying-I-can't, sobs.

This game has it all. Story, script, character development, combat, travel, setting, music - EVERYTHING. Most games excel in one or two areas of expertise. Dragon's Dogma, another of my all-time favourites, is great in combat and setting, but really lacks character development and tends to fall-back on tropes to save time. Uncharted 3, the other of my Big 3, comes close - story, script, charrie development, music, setting - but the combat and travel let it down (I'm the biggest sucker for open world environments, I can't even begin to explain).

Infamous 2 never really stops giving, so it's kind of hard to break the entire game down for review. I'll try to stick to specific sections.

Story:

One of the best stories in a game, I've played to date. Not overly complicated so as to take focus from the other components, but interesting and exciting. It's very easy to go from story mission to story mission - it flows extremely well and develops quietly, slowly so you don't even realise it.

I'm also a sucker for tragic endings (which is why this game has my name written ALL over it). Impossible choices are the best ones to write. They leave your audience conflicted and confused, making them reassess what they themselves would do in the same situation. It allows for real reader/gamer connections to the game, and is one of the most sure fire ways to create real personalisation. But now I'm just rambling.

The story sets you up. You fall right into its pit trap and at the end, at the final choice, you're completely blind-sided. As Cole says "This thing isn't quite as cut and dry as we thought." - AWESOME. Brilliant. That's exactly what I want to hear. I don't want a story spoon-fed to me. I want to make my own decisions, my own interpretations, and Infamous 2 definitely allows this.

Script:

One of the most essential elements for a successful game, and Infamous nailed it. No cheesy dialogue, no corny attempts at crappy humour. What humour does exist is quite good, giving in tiny little tid-bits when you least expect it. Zeke is the one to deliver most of it, and it defines his character well. Two of my favourite quotes:

(when talking about New Marais): "We're here for the three B's – beer, boobs... and mechanical bulls."

(after Cole has drained several network dishes, allowing Zeke to hack the feed and place an 'advert' for Cole's love life): "He loves all that romantic crap. Long walks on the beach. Picnics. With cheese."

Hell, give me a picnic with cheese and Cole MacGrath and I'd be so fricken happy.

Anyway.

The script just ties in with the game well. A few info dumps here and there don't go astray (you usually need them), and each character stays true to their personality and make rational choices.

Character Development:

Nix probably displayed the biggest growth here. I won't mention the exact moment for fear of spoilers, but I was glad how they turned it around. I wasn't expecting it, and yet it made sense. And here I was, all geared up and waiting for a stereotypical ending.

I love being wrong in that sense.

I don't know where else to put it, so I'll mention it here. For one of the cutscenes after obtaining a blast core, Cole returns to Zeke, and they chill out, drink some beer and watch a movie.

Literally. That's what the cutscene is. It's great. Most games wouldn't bother showing it, but I'm glad they chose to do it here. It fit. It allowed you to wind down as Cole did, and displayed the relationship the two had before everything went wrong. It was refreshing.

Combat:

Aw yiss. The addition of the Amp was excellent. Hitting motherf*ckers with an electric motherf*cker. Driving it home with an awesome cinematic combo, which also replenished all your power? Brilliant. Whoever came up with that, pat yourself on the back. It was one of the little things that made combat so well-designed.

And the powers! You just kept gaining them! They gave you so many fun ways to mess people up, you couldn't help but take on every side mission, just to whack a few people with some sticky grenades or rockets.

Also, the Ionic Vortex. Ohhh my goodness, yes. Having three of those babies stored up to unleash hell was so damn satisfying. Another note I'd like to point out – during the end of the game, when you're chasing Ice People through a storm? Boy, did they pick the wrong environment to take on the 'Electric Man'. Replenishing powers through the storm would've been enough, but they also added limitless Ionic Vortex's.

*sigh*. I enjoyed myself quite a bit in that section. Recommended to play just to get to it.

Travel:

Another sector usually overlooked by other games. I'm looking at you, Dragon's Dogma – no fast travel and limited stamina, bah. In Infamous, there are four modes of brilliantly fun transportation.

Grinding/Electric rails – throughout New Marais are powerlines, which create a sort of fast travel high way for Cole. He can also zoom up the side of buildings if they have an electric rail thing (I've forgotten the exact name of them, feel free to enlighten me). Both of these come in real handy with the next item on this list.

Static thrusters – I remember these from Infamous 1, but there were a lot more fun in this game. Lots of fun linking grindwires with this move, especially as you're normally moving at speed. Yes I had a lot of fun with this move.

Rail/Tram lines – Fairly self-explanatory. The rail/tram lines are electrified and therefore Cole's easiest mode of transportation. My favourite section would have to be in Flood Town, where a ruined train line catapulted you into the air and landed you neatly onto a grindwire. It linked nicely, and I'd often spend hours just travelling around the city.

Lightning Tether – screw Spiderman, you're Cole MacGrath. This was one of the more clunky modes of transport, but it could get you up on top of buildings in a jiffy, which made chase missions a lot easier. My only wish was that they'd had some sort of auto-aim for the tether itself – it took just a little too long to line up an anchor to get that free travel between buildings – or maybe I just suck at it.

All in all, fun. Very fun. Another note, no fall damage. You can literally climb up some buildings so high it would make Assassin's Creed, as a franchise, cry. You can see the curvature of the Earth! And then you jump down, sailing through the air and landing harmlessly wherever. Just to add more to it, they gave you a movement that allowed you to blast power out in an explosion when you land. Brilliant.

Setting:

New Marais is quite obviously based on New Orleans. It's a vibrant, music-filled metropolis that has suffered some damage in the low lying Bellevue suburb – now called Flood Town. Very interesting to read into when you see some of the graffiti, hint hint.

I also enjoyed the titles of the movies showing at the smut theatres – Call of Booty, Assassin's Need (Love, too), Hey Low Reach, Ratchet and Skank. I'm ashamed to say it took me longer than I'd like to realise they were pornos.

Reading all the slogans on buildings and trucks made me realise how much thought had been put into developing this city. There's a series of food trucks in the industrial sector called the Roach Coach. I laughed longer than I should've.

Music:

Very distinctive, and matched the scenery. They went for cellos, bass and violins, basically all strings, and it definitely suited. At first I was a bit iffy, but as the game progressed, I liked it better and better. During the final fight, I was tearing up as the score composed of the game's theme, and several reoccurring elements that I hadn't noticed until then.

All in all, this game did everything right. I'm considering getting a next-gen console PURELY for continuing the Infamous games. The interlacing story scenes, with their comic book style, couldn't have been done better.

I'm still cut up over the ending. They really went all out on tearing out the heartstrings. In addition to saying goodbye to the open world you've been travelling for the past, I dunno, thirty (?) hours, there's the ending itself (A TEAR FEST), and the credits with their finishing song (are you f*cking kidding me). I sobbed while my cat looked disdainfully at me.

Play this game. Read the article on Wikipedia so you don't have to endure Infamous 1 and then play this game. Five out of five. Well-earned its spot in the Big 3.

One of the strangest things I've noticed when playing games from the recent past is that they are often harder to play than games made decades ago. Since games from about a decade ago had a strong influence on games we play now, sometimes going back only a few steps can seem archaic. For example, playing Infamous 2, after having played Marvel's Spider-Man, I couldn't help see what the later game did well that the prior game didn't seem to think was a problem at the time.

Playing Infamous 2 for the first time, almost a decade after it game out, the influences are clear. Of course, Sucker Punch's Sly Cooper series has its DNA all over this new franchise, but also the ambition of trying to compete with other new franchises like Assassin's Creed can surely be felt. Both the Infamous series and Assassin's Creed at this time allowed the player to explore everything, climb everything, go everywhere. That's certainly a trait that has motivated so many games today, but going back to play that type of game on the PlayStation 3 is awkward and frequently clumsy. My biggest problem throughout Infamous 2 was an inability to navigate this world in a simple way. I'd often try to climb something and end up on a different ledge than I was intending, or fall off a building because of how things were awkwardly placed. Moving through the city didn't feel fun, it almost felt like a chore at times. If I had an objective across town, I often wouldn't do it just because of how frustrated getting to that other location would be.

Which brings me to another point I have with open-world games: make navigating them fun from the very beginning. At first, moving through Infamous 2 is irritating, and even though your character is a superhero who can fly, you're mostly just walking the streets like any other rube. But as the game progresses, the main character Cole can levitate for longer, jump higher and therefore, makes moving through the world easier. The developer Sucker Punch makes this a part of Cole's growth and evolution through the game, making it so the player wants to improve Cole's abilities to make the game more fun. But with tools like this available from the beginning, it would make the overall experience of the game more enjoyable, and they probably should've been part of the player's arsenal right from the beginning.

But even then, movement around the city isn't all that fun. There are power lines to grind around, but there isn't often a way to string these together, leaving the player grinding two or three lines before falling back to the streets. I again am brought back to a newer game - Sunset Overdrive - which allowed for so many opportunities to grind or jump around the world that moving through the city was fun, and I wish Infamous 2 had more opportunities like that.

As someone who hasn't played the first Infamous game in years, the story here clearly isn't for me, but rather, for people who still are aware of the events of that game. Infamous 2 throws the player right into the story, without reminding who these characters are or what is supposed to be happening. Near the end of the game, Infamous 2 throws in a villain who the player is supposed to know from the first game, yet hasn't been mentioned once in this installment. It would've been great if Infamous 2 had thrown in some quick recap or refresher that allowed me to get my bearings so I knew what the hell was going on.

In terms of combat, I have many of the problems still that I remember having in the first Infamous. The further the game goes, the more the world fills with villains trying to attack you at all times. This makes moving around the city even more of a chore, and often too many enemies on screen can make moving around impossible. There were so many times I was trapped by enemies to the point that I couldn't move at all, and at one point, a character was able to push me into a building, trapping me so that I had to reset my entire game. I also just find these later villains irritating, as they can throw you across a map with just a hit and the monotony of fighting the same types of enemies over and over, especially in the game's side missions, is exhausting.

Playing Infamous 2 now, it's easy to see where this game could've improved based on where this type of game went in the last decade or so, and yet, I feel like had I played this back when it was originally released, I'd still have many of these same problems. Many of these elements are issues I had when I played the first Infamous closer to its release, and they're issues I still have with this sequel. It's even stranger when I realize many of the issues I had with this game are things that Naughty Dog and Insomniac had already done well in their own platforming games, and to think that Sucker Punch hadn't learned from them either is especially odd. This is a decent franchise, but it always feels like it's just getting by to me, like there are clear rough edges that need to be rounded down that never are. I'm certainly interested to see if Infamous: Second Son is an improvement on these ideas, as I imagine the jump to Playstation 4 certainly must have made the realization of this franchise a bit easier to achieve. But at Infamous 2, it seems like Sucker Punch's ambition is greater than their ability to achieve what they want to do with this series.