E3 2010: Infamous 2 Preview The Electric Man returns in our massive hands-on report.
The wait is over. Infamous 2 is here. If those words mean anything to you, I probably don't need to recap Sucker Punch's 2009 hit, Infamous, but I will. Players took on the role of Cole McGrath, a bike messenger who gained electricity-based superpowers after a bomb went off in his hands. Spread out over three islands, Infamous had you grinding along power lines, leaping from rooftops, and hurling lightning bolts at baddies from across the screen.
All of that is back, but there's so much more. Cole runs around with this two-pronged cattle prod that he charges with electricity and slams into bad guys. With a tap of Triangle, Cole can set off "ultra moves" where he shoves the prod around someone's neck and spins around the foe or pulls off a leg sweep before hauling off on the enemy with a massive cattle prod swing. He can glide further and faster, he can slide a long walls while tethering himself to pipes with electricity, and he can pull off insane vortexes (electricity tornadoes) that suck up enemies and parts of the environment.
Infamous 2 starts with Cole still living in Empire City, but soon The Beast – the civilization-destroying monster prophesized by Kessler in the first game – shows up and hands our hero his ass. Realizing that the fate of the world relies on him being a stronger superhero, Cole heads to New Marais. A city that's pretty much New Orleans, New Marais is the place where the First Sons constructed the Ray Sphere, which is the device that gave Cole his powers.
The goal here is to learn new abilities, get stronger, and save the world.
That's easier said than done, of course. Now that we've busted out of Empire City, it's clear that Cole isn't the only super-being in the world. Long before Cole saunters into town, New Marais is plagued by "monsters," these beings that resemble the Necromorphs from Dead Space with their talon-like arms, ash-gray skin and split-open mouths. This leads to the creation of the Militia and the rise of a leader known as Bertrand. See, the people of New Marais get sick of getting attacked, so they throw their support behind these vigilantes who have a strict "no supers" policy. There's no exception for Cole. The demo I got to play, started with Cole meeting up with Zeke, his best friend from the first game, at a Bertrand rally. Bertrand was spewing his hate against "the Electric Man" when those creatures I mentioned before crashed the party and all hell broke loose. Cole wailed on them with his new melee moves, and then gave chase to Bertrand.
Now, New Marais looks a lot different when compared to Empire City – there are those double-decker porches you can picture from Bourbon Street, massive swamp trees on the border of the skyline, and lots of neon light. However, the two biggest changes are the new level of detail and destruction. The roofs you're running across are covered in picnic tables, the streets have phone booths, and the people running around the streets are terrified. What makes all those little touches cool is the fact that you can completely eff them up. When Cole throws out that vortex, it sucks up cars and the inanimate objects lining the streets. When he fires off one of his electricity missiles and it hits a car that tumbles into those porches I mentioned, the three-story structure collapses to the ground. Smoke gets kicked up and fires break out – the world is alive in a way Empire City never was.
Eventually – after some improved parkour and gliding – Cole caught up to Bertrand, the two had a conversation, and a helicopter popped on to the scene by knocking Cole off of the villain's car and onto the pavement. This started a sequence where Cole – controlled by the player – ran from the chopper. Machine gun fire rained down, and when a rocket hit too close, Cole was knocked down. This proximity knockdown happened earlier in the demo when a RPG hit next to our hero, and the animation for Cole getting leveled was impressive. He'd land and react in a similar fashion to how Nathan Drake did in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
Speaking of Uncharted 2, it's time to address the change in Cole. At this point in development – Sucker Punch was quick to point out there's still at least a year to go on this game – Cole looks completely different. Beyond the superficial stuff – his clothes are different, he's got tattoos, and he's wearing necklaces – his face is pretty much completely different. Cole packed a buzzcut and a gaunt face last time around, but the Cole in Infamous 2, he currently has brown hair, freckles and facial hair. Perhaps an even bigger change, however, is that Cole has a brand new voice in this game. In the original, Cole had a gravelly voice, and now he has a much lighter, sarcastic at times voice. It actually sounds a bit like Nathan Drake – especially in the way humorous lines are delivered. Personally, I'm not sold on the new look and sound at the moment, but I can wait for Sucker Punch to prove this guy's more than Nathan Drake with superpowers.
Sucker Punch is also picking up Naughty Dog's – the developer of Uncharted – take on cutscenes. The comic book ones from the first game are still there for major moments in Infamous 2, but in-game cutscenes will make up the more day-to-day conversations (like Cole and Zeke at the Bertrand rally) and they look good.
After running from the helicopter, Cole had a quick face-to-face with Bertand before the villain receded into the shadows and a massive monster roared and stood up on the smoky horizon. Then, the demo ended.
Infamous 2 feels good and plays like you'd expect – just bigger and better. Still, in the grand scheme of things, Sucker Punch really didn't get to show all that much of Infamous 2. We know that the morality system (make good or bad decisions and live with the consequences) returns, but we don't know how it works or how it'll tie into your saves from the last game -- Sucker Punch hinted that they wouldn't want to disappoint fans who had poured hours into being good or bad in the first title. Sucker Punch made it seem like there would be something like blast shards to find but didn't say much about it. And we know Cole's going to have a slew of new powers, but other than the ice in the trailer, we don't know what they are. This was nothing more than a good looking tease, and it worked. Show me more.
The Infamous Fanboy: Colin Moriarty Anyone who listens to Podcast Beyond has heard Greg and I rail on the new look of Infamous 2 (while Ryan sits frightened nearby). Greg loved the original Infamous -- he gave it a 9.2 -- and I was very vocal about how I thought Infamous was easily the best game released in 2009. But when the new look of Infamous 2 was shown to us, we were taken aback. Stellar gameplay and engrossing story aside, what really tied Infamous together for me was its gritty look and unusual main character. I'm a sucker for hopelessness in my fiction (which is why I like books like The Road so damn much), and Infamous really hit home with me in that respect. The fact that Cole wasn't some pretty-boy, exceptional person before the Ray Sphere went off was what made him so special to me. He was a 30-something bike messenger with a girlfriend, a best friend, and a normal, boring life. Then, everything changed for him in a blink of an eye, and you realized that he was more remarkable than you initially thought. But Cole was still Cole. He was sullen and sad, easily tugged around by those in his life who he loved and cared about, and, depending on how you decided to play the game, a righteous paragon or a devious villain.
For me, his new look seemed to have changed all of that. In addition to his look, I was also disappointed by the recasting of his voice, because I actually liked Cole's gritty, sardonic delivery. But those are aesthetic issues, and frankly, in the realm of gaming, gameplay is king. Having gotten some hands-on time with Infamous 2, I can tell you that the game still plays as smoothly as the original. And with all of the added perks to both combat and your surrounding environment, the game is even more fluid and satisfying than Infamous. And that's saying something.
A few things struck me as standouts during Greg's and my demo and hands-on time. The first thing was the destructible environments. Cole is a powerhouse, and the relatively static state of Empire City is no longer the status quo. Much of New Marais' environment can be destroyed during combat, giving the city a more living and breathing (or in this case, gasping and dying) feel. Another standout to me was the added emphasis on melee combat. Cole is no longer a force to be reckoned with strictly from a distance. His heavily-electrified cattle prod has streamlined melee combat and made it an important feature of the never-ending battles you're bound to encounter during your adventure.
And while I wasn't feeling the new looks for Cole and Zeke, I was very much enjoying Cole's new nemesis, the southern gentleman known as Bertrand. He's a great addition to Infamous' cast of characters, and a villain I'm interested in learning much more about. So, too, am I interested in learning more about his organization, the Militia, and their struggle against inhuman humans like Cole.
Following our demo and hands-on time with Infamous 2, Greg and I were fortunate enough to speak at length with the extremely humble and friendly director of the game, Nate Fox. Greg's run down most of the information we extracted from Nate during our talk, but I will tell you this – fear not for Infamous 2's new look. It's all about gameplay, gameplay, and more gameplay, and it seems that Infamous 2 will follow the proud tradition of the original.
The Infamous Noob: Hilary Goldstein Confession time: I didn't finish the first Infamous. Though several IGN editors assured me the game picked up later on, I just couldn't get past the slow beginning and I never felt much of a connection to the main character, Cole. I don't think the game is bad in any way; it just didn't grab me and I moved on to something else. So I don't have any sort of attachment to Cole's original look or design or voice actor. I know the twist of the first story (learned only as someone tried to explain why the changes in Infamous 2 are so devastating to a fan), but they don't have any negative effect on me.
So now you know my point of reference when I came to sit in on an Infamous 2 demo. The fact that Cole had a different haircut, sounded younger, and wasn't all gritty didn't bother me one bit. Nor did the more colorful New Orleans-inspired setting. It made it easier for me (as someone who wasn't a fan of the original) to view it as a new game that happened to have a "2" at the end of its name. Maybe that is in part why I found Infamous 2 so friggin' epically awesome. When a game is a year out, I don't worry too much about the voice acting or even the script. Those presentation elements are almost never set in stone and often not indicative of the final product. I'm much more interested in how a developer sets up and builds a sequence, the pacing of action and the payoff. And in those regards, Infamous 2 at E3 delivers one of the better demos at the show.
The chase scene where Cole is jetting after Bertrand is fantastic. It shows off the fluidity of travel, gives you a sense of the potential for bigger and more intense chase scenes that may follow, and looks like a lot of fun.
One of the things that really struck me with Infamous 2 is the rhythm of the chase. The chase has beats, basically. A string of electrically charged parkour moves (where Cole is sliding along electrical wires and hopping across rooftops) is broken up by short cinematic moments. An explosion rocks the street in front of Cole or our hero catches up with his target for a brief tete-a-tete. These moments are just a short exhalation before the next beat of action.
It creates this really cool and unique rhythm to the action that you don't see in a lot of games. Most games have the action kick off following a cutscene, then end with a cutscene with no other scripted moments in between to build the tension. I don't know if Infamous 2 will have dozens of these moments mixed in with the big action sequences, but I certainly hope so. The demo builds so well to the final conflict, that I'd be hard pressed to pass on Infamous 2.
Oh, and then there are the super powers. Slinging cars? Blowing up city blocks? Creating electric tornados? It all looks amazing. I'm psyched to get some real playtime with Infamous 2. I don't care what Cole looks like (so long as he doesn't look like a total douche nozzle) or even if his voice has changed. It's the gameplay and the how the action is presented that has me keyed in on Infamous 2. Man, 2011 is going to be on mind-blowing year for videogames. I can't wait. (That's why I'm freezing myself in Carbonite for the next six months). Greg Miller
