This review contains spoilers

Alright, now that I've done everything my final verdict... doesn't change that much.

Honestly, this second playthrough on hard highlighted for me some of the worst aspects of this game.
Movement suuuucks at the start and doesn't get better until you get the static thrusters upgraded. Even then, vertical movement is so tedious; you just mash x to climb buildings and that gets tiresome fast. Only at the later half of the game you get the electric whip (I don't remember the actual name) that let's you ascend to any surface. There's also the ice jump but that's only on the hero side.

This time I played as Evil Cole and I don't know what I was expecting. Ummm I guess for cole to be more edgy, kinda like Alex Mercer from Prototype? Instead he behaves exactly the same in most cutscenes, doesn't matter if you have good or bad karma. The only difference is that Evil Cole looks like shit and he acts like a dumbass, following every single bad idea that Nix gets.

The worst part of the evil campaign is that you have to listen to Nix waaay more. I just don't like her design, her voice and every single karma choice that involves following her terrible illogical plans.
This game has no nuance. Everything is black and white. But being cartoonishly evil is not even satisfying in a let's-see-what-happens sort of way (like Undertale's genocide run). Evil Cole is not this ruthless monster, he's just horny and naive.

Now the positives: Cole's power set is great. It looks cool (especially in red!), everything flows together and it's satisfying to use everything you have that's not punching and kicking. I do like the hero powers more, particularly the ice stuff, but getting a full refill by absorbing enemies was great, as hard mode meant that I died pretty fast and enemies took a lot of hits.
(btw I feel the game works better on hard mode, it's too easy otherwise)

The ending was also something I liked. Well, the evil one. The good ending, while I agree with the choice (and every choice leading up to it), it felt a little cliché. The evil ending was pretty interesting: Cole wrecking the city alongside the beast. Killing Nix, that only opposed you because the beast killed her pet monsters off screen. Then the final showdown with Zeke was very dramatic.

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There's 2 other infamous games that released after this one. Maybe I'll check them out, even if I'm kinda confused about the in-game timeline (this game's good ending is the canon one right?). Hell, maybe I'll check out festival of blood.
Even if I didn't think that Infamous 2 was amazing, I had fun. It's a good superhero open world game, that needs some improvements (mainly to the combat, movement and the repetitiveness of the gameplay loop), and maybe the next games refine these aspects?

Reviewed on Mar 31, 2024


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