Infamous Second Son Hands On Preview

After fighting through the sea of people at CES while heading to Sony’s booth to see what this Playstation Now was all about, I noticed something else I was very excited to see, Infamous Second Son was there and playable. So, I did what any other gamer would do… Knocked everyone over as I rushed over to play it of course.

In case you don’t know, in Infamous Second Son you’ll play as Delsin (voiced by Troy Baker). A young man who discovers that not only does he have conduit powers, he has the ability to steal powers from other conduits. Delsin has many of the abilities Cole had, from static thrusters to being able to fire small fireballs to launching giant fireballs that explode like grenades. If you’re played either of the previous two Infamous games, you’ll be right at home since the control scheme and buttons are exactly the same.

I was able to play the part of Infamous Second Son that was shown at the E3 last year. So I had to take a couple of generators out all the while being attacked from every angle by what I believe was the Department of Unified Protection. Infamous Second Son brings all the familiarity of the Infamous franchise from the controls to navigation and action together in the best way thus far. Dashing through the environment to close in with a powerful melee strike on agents and then diving into a vent to be shot into the air to follow up with a strike from the air, unfolded so fluidly. And yes, it is just as pretty as you’ve heard.

The environments, explosions and collapsing buildings were all great, but what caught my attention the most were the character animations. The animations of Delsin only heightened that sense of fluid combat and environmental navigation. For instance, you’re firing off numerous fireballs at the DPU all the while strafing and dashing trying not to get shot yourself. Delsin never takes his eye off the ball, so to speak. If you’re trying to retreat while firing back, Delsin doesn’t just walk backwards he turns towards the screen and runs while slinging an arm back and firing overhead. There is a video at the bottom of this post of gameplay from CES.

The last two things I want to hit on are the way you change your powers in Infamous Second Son and the touch pad. While I played I noticed a couple of “Open” neon signs hanging in store windows. At one point I got close enough to see that I could absorb the neon gas inside. After I did, not only was the fire and smoke changed into pretty neon gas as I destroyed the environment around me, my powers changed. The biggest change I noticed (before I hit a cutscene and my new found powers were taken from me) was that my rapid-fire fireballs had changed into a huge shot of neon gas that acted as more of a sniper rifle. I could hit targets much farther away and take them out in one shot.

Now to the touch pad, there was not much use of the touch pad while I played, but the one thing I did use it for was destroying generators. I would have to hop onto a truck loaded with a generator and then use the touch pad to pull the generator up. The small problem came up that if you started too high on the tough pad while pulling up the generators you’d run out of room on the touch pad before the generator was up all the way. Forcing you to lift your finger off and at the point the generator would drop and you’d have to start over.

I came away from Infamous Second Son wanting more. I could’ve just ran around all day taken fools out. With the only problem I had being a small snag with the touch pad, Infamous Second Son has definitely sold me. If you want more Infamous Second Son talk, I chatted with Chris and Matt about it on our most recent episode of This Game Is Broken.