Like everyone else, I was hyped for the release of Infamous: Second Son (Sucker Punch, 2014) after seeing the trailer at E3 last year. A new infamous with a young Native American character on a next-gen system that looked absolutely beautiful. Kinda grungy, all flashy, and starring a minority character. Sign me up! I had HIGH hopes, but somewhere in the back of my mind I kept going back to Prey with it’s drunken natives, spirit walks, and really bad alien metaphors. Video games really don’t have a good track record with representation of minorities as we all know.
Well the moment of truth finally came for me this week when I popped Infamous: Second Son into my PS4. Let’s start by saying that the game is just as beautiful as I had hoped that it would be. The PS4 did not disappoint and neither did Sucker Punch.
As for the storyline, there’s nothing really out of the ordinary. Enter Delsin, rebellious teenager/graffiti artist who seems to always be looking for a way to let his displeasure with authority known. And the narrative goes deeper as we learn that his older brother, Reggie, is the cop who keeps arresting him. In the opening mission we learn that Delsin and Reggie still live among the Akomish tribe in Washington State. A tribe that doesn’t actually exist, but is perhaps drawn from the Skokomish tribe that actually does live in the same region. I would love to know why Sucker Punch didn’t actually use a real tribe of people instead of just making one up. In this case they failed at one huge opportunity to add a real level of authenticity to the narrative in inFAMOUS: Second Son.
During the first hour of game play the only women that we meet are Betty (the only character with no last name thus far) who is apparently an elder in the tribe and part of Delsin’s solid connection to the tribe and Brooke Augustine, another “bio-terrorist” who is a pawn of the oppressive government that is bent on imprisoning other bio-terrorists/conduits like Delsin. And during the first hour of game play we have gotten none of their backstories (even though we know lots about the conduit, Hank Daughtry, who passes Delsin his first powers and see for significantly less time). While I expect that there will be much more well developed in the coming hours, the first hour only brings us the matron and the “red headed bitch”.
The mechanics of the game are solid. There is both melee and superpower usages, but you regularly have to find things that will recharge your powers. Luckily Delsin also has super healing powers so he is impossible to kill though you can fail missions and find yourself back at the last checkpoint. I was extremely happy to see that those checkpoints aren’t usually to far back (because some of the 3 move combos had a bit of a steep learning curve and involved adding a move that they didn’t suggest in order to actually complete).
All-in-all, inFAMOUS: Second Son is a solid game mechanically and narratively thus far. There is definitely something left to be desired in terms of female character development, but they have yet to be offensive at this point. And at this point I can even see playing this with Pea since there has been no blood and no one has actually died (only been defeated), but I’ll wait a bit to see how it continues to evolve.
Definitely a game to run to the store and grab if you have a PS4 or a good reason to grab a PS4 if you have been considering one.
