Review of the game inFamous: Second Son - heavy superhero share

Dear readers, we offer you a new rubric of our site, within which periodically detailed reviews of modern video games for various gaming platforms will be published. The first game of this category will be a project for the Sony PlayStation 4 console - inFamous: Second Son.

The third part of the inFamous series appeared on store shelves on March 21, that is, two months ago. Therefore, many may be indignant, they say, what are you so unhurried with the review? Unfortunately, the circumstances were such that my acquaintance with the game happened only this month, but I simply could not express my emotions on this subject. Moreover, this game personifies the arrival of the real next-gen in terms of technology and the graphic component, so that it can by no means be overlooked.

Prehistory

For the first time, players got acquainted with a series of inFamous games in 2009. It was then that this game visited the PlayStation 3 platform, won the hearts of gamers and impressive critics. There are countless games about superheroes, but not every one of these games allows you to really feel yourself in the place of a man who suddenly gained incredible strength. InFamous in this regard offers the player something completely new.

The title of the series is immediately visible laid by developers approach to providing players with the freedom of choice. You can be a good superhero and carry your virtue to the masses, or you can be incredibly evil and cruel. The name combines two words: Famous - distinguished, and Infamous - dishonest. What will the player be - is up to him alone. By the way, in the Russian localization, the whole play on words was completely destroyed by the Russian-language name “Bad Reputation”.

The first two games told the story of an ordinary courier named Cole McGrath, who as a result of a mysterious explosion acquires the ability to control electricity. The action takes place in the fictional city of Empire City, which, after a powerful explosion, plunges into chaos and panic. On the streets, embittered gangster groups dominate, and the surviving police are not in a hurry to help the frightened citizens. The main character, due to the quarantine introduced in the city, has nothing left but to find out the nature of his new abilities, as well as the cause of the disaster that has happened.

Plot

The third game introduces us to a completely new hero - Delsin Row, a 24-year-old Native American from the Indian reservation of the Akomish tribe. Unlike the hero of the first two games, which was very self-contained, Delsin personifies the real young rebel. He is fond of graffiti and never part with a can of paint, and when the opportunity arises, he strives to decorate the city walls with his art. His older brother, Reggie Rowe, works as a local sheriff, which makes it difficult for Delsin to come off to the fullest and be bullied.

It should be noted here that the name of the third part of the game Second Son is also a kind of play on words. On the one hand, this is a reference to the very first part of the series, where Cole McGrath had to infiltrate the “First Sons” grouping, and on the other, it is a stable expression, which in English means an unprofitable child, who is Delsin Row against the background of his and a law-abiding elder brother.

It has been seven years since the events of the second game. At this time, everything happens in the city of Seattle, where the Department of Unufied Protection (DUP), which aims to search for and destroy people with supernormal abilities, rules totalitarianly. Any suspects are arrested and transported to a specialized prison, from which no one has ever left alive. There are people who suddenly discovered in themselves the gift of subjugating various materials and elements to their will. Those who own fire, glass or even paper in the people are now called none other than "bioterrorists."

During one of these transports, three prisoners escape from the convoy, and one of them, unwittingly, transfers the ability to control the smoke to Delsin, who turns out to be a carrier of a rare gene that allows him to absorb other people's supernormal abilities. In fact, this is his superpower - to adopt someone else's gift for himself. And this fact is especially troubling to the head of the DUP - cruel and ruthless Augustine Brooke. She, by the way, is endowed with the ability to subordinate concrete to herself, and often uses concrete splinters, plunging them into the bodies of people she interrogates.

During the interrogation of the inhabitants of the Indian reservation, Augustine injures several of Delsin’s relatives, and this prompts him to organize an uprising against the authorities. Now she is his blood enemy, but in order to heal his friends, he will have to face her and pull out part of her strength from her. The main plot revolves around this confrontation.

Of course, in the course of the game you will meet other superheroes who will join your resistance. Among them, the former drug addict Fetch, who is a photokinetic and is capable of absorbing the energy of neon signs, as well as the closed boy Eugene, who is able to translate the tricks of his favorite video games into reality. It sounds, maybe not very impressive, but believe me, the team of them turned out just great! And, of course, you can borrow the abilities of your new friends and try them on yourself.

Game process

The gameplay can be divided into two main components: the implementation of the main storyline quests and the execution of optional side quests. If you just run along the plot forward, the game will end pretty quickly, in 6-8 hours. But if you delve into the world of inFamous: Second Son, as I did, then the game can delay you for a good three to four days.

Side quests are to free the urban areas from the DUP units that have firmly settled there and are not going anywhere. Delsin ruthlessly explodes armored personnel carriers, destroys roadblocks, shoots hidden cameras hidden throughout the city, calculates government agents who were lost in the crowd - in other words, he is struggling with the system with all his might.

In parallel, he peculiarly marks the liberated territories with the help of his graffiti. It should be noted that the process of creating drawings made just wonderful. Let me remind you that a gyroscope, an accelerometer and a speaker are built into the DualShock 4 controller. So, for a while, your controller becomes a can of paint: you turn it vertically so that trigger R2 is under your index finger, slightly shake it to shake up the paint inside and start applying color after color to the image using cardboard stencils . At the same time, a hissing sound is heard straight from the controller, as if you really are holding a real spray can. How can you not feel like a famous street artist Banksy? Moreover, Delsin's work carries with it various social overtones and is not deprived of a healthy sense of humor.

Now let's talk about the superpowers, of which there are a lot of in the game. Four matters will be available to you: smoke, neon, video games and concrete. Each ability has strengths and weaknesses. For example, the smoke is good when attacking enemy convoys, but neon allows you to quickly move around a huge city. Each ability comes to the main character with time, moreover, these abilities can be developed with the help of special energy fragments left over from the big bang in the very first game.

Anyway, Delsin's main skill is the element of smoke. It can draw energy from chimneys on the roofs of buildings, feed off burning machines or even smoke grenades. With the help of this force, it can momentarily turn into a cloud of smoke and penetrate any grid into the protected area or soar through the ventilation shaft onto the roof of the tallest building. Emitting smoke from the palms, the protagonist can slowly hover over the city, and Delsin uses small sparkling smoke clots as throwing projectiles. If you try - you can even launch a real smoke rocket that can shoot down a helicopter. The most pleasant thing for the players is to accelerate the regeneration of the body of the main character: he can be put under bullets or fall from a great height without much damage to his health, and he can survive. Of course, this should not be abused, because sooner or later the energy will end and the hero may die. Much of this depends on the complexity of the game you have chosen.

All abilities are divided into those that are available to the positive hero and those that only the negative character can master. As I said at the very beginning, everything in the game depends on your choice. Karma Delsina is made up of a multitude of decisions made, and if you kill passersby and blow up cars with policemen, over time your character will turn into a villain from whom everyone will shy away. If you protect the weak and defenseless and help the police fight against criminals, the hero’s glory and people's love awaits you. In order to experience the game 100%, I recommend that you go through it twice: first, for good Delsin, and then for evil.

Visual component

Visually, the game looks amazing. This is the long-awaited by many next-gen-project for the new PlayStation 4 console, using all or almost all of its power. Gorgeous high-resolution textures allow you to see the threads that make up the main character's cap, wet asphalt, which reflects Seattle by night lights, a huge drawing distance and an incredible amount of details in 1080p resolution - all this was impossible in the previous generation of gaming consoles.

The work of animators of the studio Sucker Punch, done by them on particle animation and numerous effects, is striking. This is where they really cleared up - this is in the visualization of the superpowers of the characters. Neon rays cutting through the air, giant blocks of concrete breaking up from the ground, columns of smoke and sparks emanating from the main character. A striking example of improving graphics can serve as the fact that in this game, even at clubs of a couple, shadows of surrounding objects are displayed. This is what I first saw in video games for the first time, and I saw a lot in my lifetime. What is happening on the screen in most cases excites the imagination and delights even the most spoiled players.

Game Seattle, which replaced the Empire City, was created on the basis of a real city, so many real-life buildings, places and attractions were included in it. We must pay tribute to the developers of the game: when moving quickly around a huge city, downloads are instantaneous, and the LOADING label no longer distracts from the gameplay, objects and textures are not loaded on the fly, which is also pleasing. The game suffers from easy clipping, when one polygonal object can slightly pass through another, for example, Delsin’s leg falls slightly into the concrete wall when it is too close to it, but it doesn’t happen so often, so you don’t pay much attention to it .

The animation of the main characters of the game, as well as their enemies, is done perfectly well, but the animation of ordinary passers-by for some reason looks very clumsy and incomplete. Apparently, the developers didn’t have enough time and budget to thoroughly refine the minor characters. Still, the development of the open-world sandbox game takes a lot of energy from any studio.

Music and sound

If you purchased the Russian version of the game - immediately turn off the Russian voice acting. It is terrible, fresh, unemotional, and in general, you should always play with the original sound. Fortunately, the game gives you the opportunity to leave the subtitles in Russian, but the sound to leave the original. After all, the main character is voiced by Troy Baker, whose voice speaks the protagonists of such great games as The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite. In addition, the Russian voice acting is full of mistakes and incorrect interpretations of American stable phrases. If you are friendly with the English language, you will notice these inaccuracies to yourself and more fully see the big picture. And yes, the curses in the Russian version are cut clean, which even makes it somehow uncomfortable. In the original, the hero swears, but in the translation he is just a little upset.

The musical accompaniment of the game was written by several musicians at once, and it is as diverse as its authors. Here you will find both tense ambient and dreary instrumental post-rock, conveying all the hopelessness of the city occupied by the authorities, where everyone is under the vigilant control of the government. Epic symphonic works inspiring and impelling you to great accomplishments are replaced by energetic electronics, under which it is so much fun to deal with the troops of enemies. In general, with the music in the game full order, and I even made the sound a little louder from time to time, to better feel the atmosphere of this superhero game.

Play outside

This game has a very serious drawback - these are its sidequests. At first, everything seems insanely fascinating and interesting to you. But when you release three or four urban areas out of control of DUP, you begin to catch yourself thinking that you are repeating the same actions for several hours. Missions, with the exception of plot tasks, quickly become terribly boring. This could be seen in the very first game of the Assassins Creed series - everything was good in the game, except for the monotony of the missions.

In order to somehow diversify the lives of players, the developers have found a rather elegant solution. They created an “offside game” called Paper Trail, which is the so-called ARG (Alternate Reality Game), when you are given tasks to be performed outside the game itself using your personal computer.

For example, you find some evidence in the game, after which you are sent to http://infamouspapertrail.com on the Internet. On the site, you study this evidence in detail, follow the links found, hack databases and solve complex puzzles in order to advance in your investigation. All your progress is recorded on the official website and transferred back to the console, where the adventure continues as an action.

In the course of this fascinating detective investigation, you will have to expose corrupt politicians, listen to the audio diaries of victims of the DUP experiments, look for clues in secret matters, recover recordings from hidden cameras and much, much more. Especially for this game developers have created dozens of fake sites, scattered on the Internet a lot of clues and clues, as well as recorded real news releases, interviews with fictional politicians and so on.

In general, the staff of Sucker Punch approached the matter with all seriousness, because the work was done is truly titanic. Believe me, the six detective investigations of Paper Trail are one of the best parts of this game. Be sure to complete these tasks from start to finish, and you will be rewarded for your insight and perseverance.

Total

The game is definitely worthy of your attention. This is the first project that really deserves to be considered a full-fledged game of a new generation. For the sake of such games, you can and should get yourself a Sony PlayStation 4. And now let's weigh the pros and cons inFamous: Second Son.

Pros:

• Fascinating story.
• Great graphics, animation and special effects.
• Big open world.
• High-quality soundtrack and voice characters.
• Charismatic main character.
• Large selection of superpowers.
• Wonderful ARG quest Paper Trail.

Minuses:

• Quickly annoying side quests.
• Small problems with clipping.
• Not very advanced AI computer characters.

The final score of the game: 8 out of 10.

If you like the new rubric, dear readers, I will try to tell you as often as possible about games for a wide variety of platforms (of course, without a two-month delay). Be sure to express your opinion in the comments: do you need video game reviews on our site? Your opinion plays a very important role for us.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/entertainment/obzor-igry-infamous-second-son-tyazhela-supergerojskaya-dolya.html.