Infamous 2

Infamous 2 is an action-adventure game set in an open world environment and played from a third-person perspective. The player controls Cole in the world of New Marais. Cole's electricity-based powers are used in movement, offense and defense in combat, and either for better or worse in dealing with the citizens of New Marais.[1][2] Cole can climb buildings and other structures,[1] grind along power cables and powered train rails, and hover for a short time.[1] Cole can engage in melee combat with enemies using a weapon called the Amp.[3] The game features many different powers, ranging from simple electric bolts to large electric rockets.[4]

Cole defeats an enemy using the Amp. The Karma meter, energy meter, experience gain, and mini-map can be seen.

In order for Cole to use his powers, he must have stored electrical power, represented by an energy meter on the player's heads-up display (HUD).[4] The player can recharge Cole by draining electricity from powered sources, recharging also restores Cole's health,[4] though Cole's health can regenerate over time without recharging.[5] Many powers are acquired over the course of the game. The player can use experience points to increase powers' effectiveness or unlock new powers.[1] Experience points are awarded for actions including defeating enemies, healing citizens and completing missions.[4] The player can use such powers to destroy environmental scenery such as towers and stone columns.[6] Depending on the player's choices, the player can gain ice or fire powers from the game's female protagonists, Kuo and Nix.[1] Additionally, passive abilities based on Karma level called Karmic Boosts can be unlocked.[4]

Starting in a neutral position, Karma can reach up to Hero on the Good side or Infamous on the Evil side. Certain actions, such as stopping to help injured citizens or killing them to restore Cole's health, will affect the Karma level in either direction.[4] Normal story missions may also alter the Karma level. During the game the player will encounter Karma moments, the Karma moments are delivered with 3D cutscenes and character-driven dialogue,[7] the action pauses and the player has two actions that can be taken, always a Good and Evil option. There are also Good and Evil side missions in the game as well as random events which provide Karma decisions.[8] Completion of Karma awarding missions helps gain access to unique powers based on the Karma level.[4] The player is not locked into choosing either Karma path, and may opt to play towards one extreme and later switch to the other mid-game.[7] Karma also influences the way that citizens view Cole[4] in addition to altering Cole's appearance and certain aspects of the game's story.[9] Citizens may throw rocks at and turn on Cole if he has Evil Karma or take pictures of and compliment Cole if he has Good Karma.

New Marais is built on two islands,[10] and the player must work through main story missions on the first island before being able to access the next one, though future missions may involve the first island. The player can undertake side missions to make the city safer.[1] A feature called User Generated Content, or UGC, allows players to make their own missions and share them through PlayStation Network for others to play.[1] Scattered around the city are hundreds of "Blast Shards" which Cole can collect to increase the amount of electricity he can store.[1] There are also "Dead Drops" that help to reveal more of the back-story in the game.[1] A mini-map on the player's HUD shows their location in New Marais and what is nearby.[4] The mini-map can be used to locate Blast Shards, Dead Drops and power sources.

Gaming journals reported the likelihood of a sequel to Infamous due to a Twitter post made by actor David Sullivan reporting on auditioning for the role of Cole in the game's sequel.[11] In April 2010, Sony purchased the domain name "infamousthegame.com", increasing speculation that a sequel was in development.[12] The game was unveiled on June 4, 2010, when Game Informer released the cover for their July 2010 issue which featured a preview of the game.[13] Development of Infamous 2 started immediately after the first Infamous had finished development.[14] Sucker Punch hired their own QA staff to test and report bugs for the game. Game director Nate Fox, director of the original, also directed Infamous 2.[15] The core development team consisted of 65 to 75 people, an amount considered "small".[16]

Promotional artwork showing Cole's initial design (left)[13] and a screenshot of Cole's final character design (right).[17]

When designing Infamous 2, Sucker Punch decided to look at everything that could be improved, saying "everything was on the table".[16] Due to negative feedback from fans, they redesigned the main character, Cole.[18] Cole initially underwent many changes, to the extent of making him look like a different character.[17][19] However, after being "taken aback by the uproar of fan support for the original Cole,"[20] Sucker Punch combined elements of the original with the new design.[20] Some of Cole's clothing was changed to suit the new setting of the game. Eric Ladin was also brought in to replace Jason Cottle as the voice of Cole because Sucker Punch felt that they needed someone who could perform Cole's physical reactions as well as his voice with the use of their new motion capture technology.[20][21]

The 3D cutscenes were improved with motion capture technology to create a more cinematic experience.[20] The stylized comic-like cut scenes from the first game carried over into the sequel, though they were reserved for bigger moments in the game. The 3D cutscenes were used to tell the story going on in the moment, while the comic-like cutscenes were used to tell a large piece of the story in a short amount of time.[16] In addition to the cut scenes, the moral element of the original also transferred to the sequel. When incorporating the player's Karma decisions from the first game into the second, it was found challenging to balance the effects of importing saves from the original Infamous and keeping the game interesting for those who did not.[20] The melee combat in the game was redesigned from the original with finishing moves being added. A large focus on the melee combat was the presentation, which was meant to make the player feel super-powered.[22]

The game's fictional city, New Marais, was inspired by New Orleans, though many other southern influences were mixed and matched.[23][24] It was thought New Orleans was architecturally the "coolest city in America" and well suited to a superhero who climbs[24] and also allowed Sucker Punch to have environmental variety.[22] New Marais was designed to have distinct neighborhoods with tonal as well as architectural shifts between them.[22][24] Parkour elements, such as the game's grind rails, were integrated more into the environment to improve the flow of it, while powers such as the vertical grind, were incorporated into the parkour.[22] The goal of the city was to have a "big old jungle gym".[25] Street musicians were added to the city because they were considered an integral part of the New Orleans vibe.[24] Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers was seen by game director Nate Fox as extremely inspirational and stated that the city's role in the story was something they wanted to replicate in Infamous 2.[24]

The game's music was composed by James Dooley, Bryan "Brain" Mantia, Melissa Reese, the New Orleans band Galactic, and Jonathan Mayer. All of the music was recorded live with a total of four hours of music being recorded. Starting from the first day of recording, the music was composed in a year. Many of the music's sounds were produced unconventionally, with some of the largest percussion coming from things such as fingernails on an amplified tin plate. Collaboration was considered a major part of writing the music, with the composers "ripping each other off." Themes were composed for the main characters, such as Cole and Nix. A dynamic music system was developed for non-mission gameplay. The game would track a music tension value with thresholds set to determine what the music would be. While missions used the dynamic music system too, the music was laid out more like a movie with set music occurring for specific events. The music of the game was inspired by the city, meant to be "organic" compared to the industrial and electronic music of the first Infamous.[26] The score was released as two soundtracks, Infamous 2 The Blue Soundtrack and Infamous 2 The Red Soundtrack.[27][28]

Sucker Punch was using around 30% of the Cell processor by the end of Infamous, and for Infamous 2, they were "creeping up over 50 and 60%, because [they] know how to put things on to the Cell processor."[18] With the additional power, Sucker Punch was able to "have more characters on-screen, more complicated shaders, and much greater layering".[23] For the game, a new method of ambient occlusion (AO) was developed, a hybrid of precomputed AO and dynamic AO. The new method was used to render contact shadows and self-occlusion for moveable objects and was meant to complement the other methods of AO already used.[29]

On March 1, 2011, Sucker Punch announced a mission creation feature for Infamous 2 that had been in development since 2009. A limited beta for testing this feature was released in April 2011.[30] Sucker Punch wanted to give players a way to continue enjoying the game after completing it and felt there was immense pressure to incorporate multiplayer and that many games were tacking it on. They considered cooperative gameplay, though found it did not make for an experience you wanted to keep playing, saying "ultimately, the game still ends."[31]

In October 2011, it was announced that PlayStation Move support would cover the whole game as part of an update which would come out sometime after Infamous: Festival of Blood was released, along with a new cutscene creation tool for the UGC creator.[32] The update was released on November 2, 2011.[33]

Infamous 2 received "generally positive reviews", according to review aggregator Metacritic.[47]

The story of Infamous 2 was divisive. Sterling McGarvey from GameSpy thought the story was a "pulpy comic book narrative",[51] Colin Moriarty of IGN found the story well-delivered and "incredible",[1] and Eurogamer's Christian Donlan found the endings of the game to be "genuinely satisfying" and an improvement on the overarching storyline of the series.[49] Conversely, Andrew Reiner of Game Informer found the story disengaging with confusing narrative threads,[50] Giant Bomb's Brad Shoemaker felt the story was scattered and had too much going to find its center,[52] and Tom Mc Shea from GameSpot described the story as bland and lacking a hook to invest the player in Cole's affairs.[3]

IGN's Moriarty thought that New Marais was more living and breathing than Empire City and the overall look of the game was improved over the original.[1] Game Informer's Reiner saw the city as a "sightseeing marvel."[50] GameSpy's McGarvery found the game was much cleaner-looking than the first.[51] GameSpot's Mc Shea noted the city's neighborhoods were varied and felt alive, and found the visuals "great-looking".[3] Eurogamer's Donlan wrote "New Marais is every bit as good at its job as Empire City was".[49]

GameSpot's Mc Shea considered movement through the city a pleasure, but many fights tedious.[3] Eurogamer's Donlan stated Infamous 2 is "video games' true master of parkour" and found the combat struggled to match the thrills of traversal but that the combat had improved since the original.[53] Game Informer's Reiner enjoyed combat, describing the situations as "amazing open-world superhero fights."[50] Giant Bomb's Brad Shoemaker felt enemies were overwhelming at times during combat like in the original Infamous.[52] Mc Shea found the pacing uneven and the morality system "laughable". Shoemaker felt the powers of Good and Evil Cole were better balanced than in the first game and saw morality as only a gateway to cutscenes and the possible powers.[52] GameTrailers's reviewer said the morality system did not provide tough decisions, but provided two dramatically different gameplay experiences.[8] Both Mc Shea and Reiner thought UGC was a "great" addition to the game.[3][50] 1UP reviewer Thierry Nguyen hoped Sucker Punch would mix the combat and traversal of the game with the pacing and storytelling of the first Infamous to create an "utterly fantastic" superhero game.[48]

GameSpot's Mc Shea found that problems would occur during precise climbing because of Cole getting "sucked" towards objects during climbing, though found it made climbing easier in other aspects.[3] Giant Bomb's Brad Shoemaker also appreciated the way Cole would be drawn to things while climbing but found that it led to frustrating moments where Cole would grab onto the wrong area.[52] IGN's Moriarty criticized the game's camera, calling it "wonky",[1] while GameSpy's McGarvey thought the game needed a better targeting system as the camera could not consistently keep up with the action.[51] Eurogamer's Donlan found the draw distance was low, though the frame rate improved from the first game.[49] Shoemaker also noticed the frame rate had been mostly corrected since the first, making the game more fluid.[52]

The game was listed on IGN's Top 25 PlayStation 3 Games, achieving rank 14.[54] The game was nominated for Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition at the 15th D.I.C.E. Awards[55] and nominated for Best PS3 Game at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards.[56]

A stand-alone expansion for Infamous 2, titled Infamous: Festival of Blood, was announced at Gamescom[59] and released on October 25, 2011.[60] A vampire-themed spinoff,[60] Infamous: Festival of Blood features a non-canon story set in New Marais.[61] The story follows an infected Cole that must kill the vampire which bit him in order to save his soul. The game featured new enemies and powers.[59][62] A stand-alone sequel to Infamous 2, titled Infamous Second Son, was announced at PlayStation Meeting 2013 for PlayStation 4[63] and was released worldwide on March 31, 2014.[64] The game takes place seven years after Infamous 2 and follows Delsin Rowe, a new protagonist in the city of Seattle.[63]

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