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Infamous: Second Son Review Thread

This is a good indicator to stop reading reviews from a) Eurogamer b) the reviewer in question. Reviews are subjective things by nature, you need to find a group or reviewers that fit in closely with your own sensibilities.

for the record I hated GTAV too

Yeah, I've never played any of the GTA games to completion. I don't get the hype with that series.
 
WTF is this next-gen gameplay bullshit? Does anyone really think like this? Super metroid has more next-gen gameplay than almost any game made in the past 2 years. The only "next-gen" gameplay features we've gotten in the past year are payed titles with IAP.
 
I guess some reviewers thought it felt like more of the same.

If that's what they are going to think, they'll be thinking that this entire generation... except for VR experiences, perhaps.

Sorry, but the possibilities using a TV and a controller have kinda plateaued this past decade...
 
Do we know if the review copies had all the extra content, graphical updates, 5 hours of story missions, etc that was just announced in the day 1 patch?

Some did, some didn't

Someone posted it from twitter but we can't be certain for all of em
 
Regenerating health is something that we still have in most games today because of Halo, if that wasn't revolutionary then what is?.
Halo also destroyed PC fps games at the time in almost every way including graphics.

and how did it make it revolutionary? It brought a feature that many adopted it, but it played that same. It just made the game more fun. You didn't have to worry about your health all the time.

How is better graphics revolutionary?

It just made what YOU ALREADY HAD BEFORE MORE FUN. It played the same but it was more fun. EXACTLY what infamous does.
 
/thread

It's a simple formula really. If you like inFamous (or think you might), you'll most likely like this game. If not, then don't bother.

As someone who disliked the ps3 games i hoped this was them getting it right this time. Guess i was just blinded by it looking great. Still will gamefly it to see for myself eventually.


My biggest bummer is this from the giant bomb review.

Karma once again plays a role in this third Infamous game, but it again lacks nuance. The choices you make are very binary and helpfully color-coded. Making blue choices slides your karma in the good direction, and red choices are evil. In-game, this means that you can do things like subdue enemies in a non-lethal way or obliterate them with animated takedowns, head shots, and so on.

This along with bad writing/bad voice cast is a huge reason why i found the first game incredibly boring. was hoping for it not to be so obviously binary every time,
 
Reviews are dumb. I find they hold very little relevance. And I have no idea why people hold reviews to their heart. They're merely... opinions.

Resident Evil 5 was shat on. It's really not as bad as suggested.

GTA 4 is considered one of the greatest games ever. It's bloody awful.

Darksiders II is one of the best games I have played (currently playing the game, 23 hours in, no where near completion) and was only rated 80 or so on Metacritic. I'm amazed really; Darksiders II has incredible depth. It's an improvement over the previous game in every way possible. So many dungeons, brilliant combat, loot system, and RPG levelling up.

I imagine Infamous SS is likely to be a more enjoyable experience than perceived.

I've gotta be honest, I have began to enjoy games so much more once I stopped caring about reviews. I can't remember the last time I let a 'review' dictate my purchase or enjoyment of a game.

This is a good post and completely agree with you, included how good is Darksiders 2.
 
Am happy with the 81 metacritic average, am still getting it (can't cancel my pre-order now anyway).
Thing is, outside of Naughty Dog and Polyphony the rest of Sony's first party devs aren't really anything to write home about.

Sucker Punch and Guerilla make good looking, competent games, but that's about it. Team ICO are still labouring on vapourware The Last Guardian, Evo studios take almost as long to make racing games not quite as good as Polyphony's and Santa Monica are slaves to God of War.

Something needs to change.
 
Anyone that brought up Titan fall should be insta banned. It has nothing to do with infamous.

does this apply to the people who brought up infamous in titanfall threads? just wondering...


anyways,

I will be picking this up by returning this unopened copy of BF4 for ps4 I got as a gift. Gaf made me fearful of opening it.....so I figure I return it for a game that actually "works" right?

Am I making the right decision?
 
Do we know if the review copies had all the extra content, graphical updates, 5 hours of story missions, etc that was just announced in the day 1 patch?

The Paper Trail missions (5 hours) were not active at the time of the reviews. Also, these 5 hours worth of missions are going to be given to us over the course of the next 6 weeks.

Cole's Legacy however, I'm not sure about. That includes 1 hour's worth of content.
 
Great scores. Why were people expecting 10s everywhere?

Exactly. This is just not the type of game that gets a bunch of 10s. It's not a knock on the game, and I'm really REALLY excited for it, but a game like this just won't get a bunch of 10s, no matter how strong its elements are (and they do seem to be very strong). It's not a super ambitious game in any way, which is totally fine.
 
And all the gamers that are saying this is by far the best infamous of the 3 and it has the lowest review scores of the entire series. People scratch their heads.

Reviewers don't keep going back to see what they reviewed a prior game in a series to make sure they give the newer game a better or lower rating than past games because they liked the game more or hated it more etc.
Reviews don't work like that and so they shouldn't as expectations change and tastes change etc over the years.
 
Yeah but it is available on a previous generation console... and almost everything has been done before gameplay wise.

I don't know what I expected.

I didn't realize we were only talking about games that ONLY appeared on next gen consoles. I think the term "next gen gameplay" is really just another way of saying "is it doing something new". People are getting all caught up on that wording for some reason.

And while Titanfall does share aspects of lots of FPS games, no game has ever combined them all into a package, and executed on all of those things so well. It's kind of like how Gears of War was heralded as a new thing it's cover shooter mechanics. But of course it wasn't the first game to do that, but it was the first game to nail it and bring it into this great overall package.

But Titanfall is a new IP, do you think Titanfall2, will have more new gen gameplay from titan fall1?

Probably not, but are you suggesting reviewers should grade on a curve? Uncharted 2 was most definitely a better game than Uncharted 1, but by the time Uncharted 3 arrived a lot of people commented on how it was kinda more of the same, and even do a few things worse than Uncharted 2.

Infamous 3 really doesn't seem to be doing anything new beyond the first two games, besides being really pretty. I think that is the simplest way to sum up some of the negativity in the reviews today.
 
Am happy with the 81 metacritic average, am still getting it (can't cancel my pre-order now anyway).
Thing is, outside of Naughty Dog and Polyphony the rest of Sony's first party devs aren't really anything to write home about.

Sucker Punch and Guerilla make good looking, competent games, but that's about it. Team ICO are still labouring on vapourware The Last Guardian, Evo studios take almost as long to make racing games not quite as good as Polyphony's and Santa Monica are slaves to God of War.

Something needs to change.

Killzone is criminally underrated. Especially SF.
 
Great reviews, Infamous isnt for everyone. Luckily I loved the last 2 games and dlc, so I'm in day 1. Plus my inner graphics whore is salivating with anticipation. I'm tired of all this pseudo next-gen/cross-gen crap.
 
Obligatory

2oYIGGH.png

I see this chart as a sign of things needing to improve on the pricing front, more than anything else. If you charge that much money for a game that is being so easily outshone by other games that are in most cases cheaper, you need to find a way to combat it. Whether we like it or not, Metacritic decides purchases now. These are tough times financially man.

The gaming industry is growing wealth wise exponentially every year, as much as pundits and back scratchers like Pachter would like to suggest otherwise. They can afford to be a bit more competitive with pricing. If that means you won't earn enough back to fund the development of the game and makes the size of the studio developing it unsustainable then that's your fucking problem. Learn to manage your teams better.
 
I don't get why people have to start this whole flame war of which game is better and which console is better. If you prefer Titanfall and the Xbox One, cool man that's on you. You like shooters and big mechs that's awesome. If you prefer Infamous and its open world game with superpowers, that's great too. It doesn't matter which is better and honestly you can't compare the two games. They're two completely different games. You should be comparing COD to Titanfall or BF4. Plus, it doesn't matter which is better as long as you have fun. Whether you choose PS4 or the xbone, having fun is what matters.

I imagine a lot of the flaming has to do with some fans of opposing consoles having a dig for all the stick they have been getting over the past 4+ months.

Just a guess
 
and how did it make it revolutionary? It brought a feature that many adopted it, but it played that same. It just made the game more fun. You didn't have to worry about your health all the time.

How is better graphics revolutionary?

It just made what YOU ALREADY HAD BEFORE MORE FUN. It played the same but it was more fun. EXACTLY what infamous does.

Halo brought in a game mechanic that is still widely being used 12 years later, how is that not revolutionary?. And thats ignoring the story, level design, sound effects, music score and graphics that were also better than almost everything out at the time.

EIDT. What do you class as revolutionary in gaming terms?
 
Man, what the hell does that even mean?

"If it wasn't for all these fancy graphics, the graphics would look quite poor."

There's more after that which puts the quote in context - as usual with Edge, read the whole review for gods' sake (plus, and Edge 7 is a bloody good score)

If it wasn’t for the breathtaking view – and in terms of lighting, shadow and detail, Second Son exceeds even Shadow Fall’s visual achievements – it would be easy to confuse this with an early release for the previous console generation. And not a very good one.
...

By the time you’ve gained the full suite of powers, though, it’s easy to forget its shaky first steps and impossible not to share Rowe’s vocal enthusiasm each time he does something spectacular. And Sucker Punch provides plenty of opportunities to do so.

Whoa.

This is scoring much higher than many expected.

Edge. The original review hipster. *sniff* I am very hard to impress *sniff* never change

That's nothing like an Edge review, that's usually a statement made by somebody who doesn't actually read Edge.
 
I think a key to reading reviews is stick to sites you like and trust.

Personally I like giant bomb and kotaku. I always feel they tell it how it is more than most and have no hidden agendas other than telling you about the game.

This whole "next gen gameplay" though is a myth.


Edit: also wgat better place than neogaf for getting good honest user reviews. I know the folks who had the game early here have convinced me to get the game more than reviews/previews
 
Exactly. This is just not the type of game that gets a bunch of 10s. It's not a knock on the game, and I'm really REALLY excited for it, but a game like this just won't get a bunch of 10s, no matter how strong its elements are (and they do seem to be very strong). It's not a super ambitious game in any way, which is totally fine.
Especially since it's the third installment in the series. 3rd games rarely get much higher scores than their predecessors.

Though i'm sure someone will prove how wrong I am lol
 
The Paper Trail missions (5 hours) were not active at the time of the reviews. Also, these 5 hours worth of missions are going to be given to us over the course of the next 6 weeks.

Cole's Legacy however, I'm not sure about. That includes 1 hour's worth of content.

Wait, so the 5 hours of content isn't available day 1 at all? Only a "portion" of them? And I won't have a complete game to play for another 6 weeks?!?!?!?

Yay AAA gaming! Should have waited 2 months, picked up the game used for $40, and had a complete experience. Way to discourage the used market by not coming out with a complete game on your disc.

Thank goodness I made this game my first day 1 digital purchase ever on consoles. Otherwise I might have saved money and had a more complete experience 2 months later.
 
wonder if the scores will be any higher if this game did come out at launch, because it really is just a launch game. last gen familiar gameplay where most of the effort was spent on fancy new visuals.
 
I would but I'm not going to read through 30+ pages to find what tools thought bringing up a metacritic score of a unrelated video game had anything to do with Infamous.

So what are you implying if you don't even know who are you talking about and what did they even write? Are you for real?
 
Kotaku states:



IGN deducts points for plot and morality issues (no mention of "next-gen gameplay"), but does note that

Destructoid opens up with

... follows up with:

... and

Joystiq has this to say


and yet there are people crying about the game not meeting some (non-existent at worst; vague at best) metric known as "next-gen gameplay." Please. Next-gen gameplay is a farce. I know I'm going to enjoy the game because A) It's more inFamous! B) It's gorgeous C) The controls are reportedly responsive and tight, making skillshots a breeze.

I can't wait to play it. Metacritic be damned.

Agreed. I'm not sure what gameplay revolutions people were expecting from a gpu upgrade and a touchpad on the controller. Gameplay innovation will come, but this gens hardware doesn't really allow for anything that couldn't have been done game play wise last gen. Except some more physics and facial animation stuff (which infamous does actually do well).
 
The game is good, 8 is a great score. The problem is that GAF hyped the shit out of this game, drooling on 300x200 gifs, beanies, screenshots, videos, etc.
 
Halo brought in a game mechanic that is still widely being used 12 years later, how is that not revolutionary?. And thats ignoring the story, level design, sound effects, music score and graphics that were also better than almost everything out at the time.

EIDT. What do you class as revolutionary in gaming terms?

Exactly as what it sounds. Something new that makes the entire experience fresh. Shenmue was revolutionary. Halo wasn't.
 
They did?

Wierd. I seem to remember that Halo just being the first FPS on consoles to actually play great. Probably because of it's controller.

What else did it have that was so revolutionary? Auto regen HP? Because as I remember it, it's gameplay was "point and shoot". Exactly what I already had in Doom.

So we rule out Halo.

Let's move on to COD4. Now where was this one revolutionary? At all?
It was very satisfying to play. But I seem to remember it having the same gameplay as halo. Point and shoot. Same thing.

You do the same things in these game that you did 20 years ago. They just look better at it.

Want a revolutionary experience? Go play something on Rift. There's something new.

No matter what ANYONE tells you, you DO NOT HAVE new experiences without different peripherals.


AHAHAHA what? Halo was revolutionary. You can tell that fact because pretty much all console fps take from that game. And cod4 was the same way.

To bring it down to it had point and shoot like doom is idiotic.
 
Don't worry, I'm sure when Uncharted comes out with prettier version of the same 9 hours of decent TPShooting, challenge-free ledge grabbing/"platforming", puzzles that solve themselves, and a plot that's clearly written around the set pieces and not the other way around, the claims of "not next-gen enough" will disperse.

So you're like this in any thread. I agree with you this time though.
 
AHAHAHA what? Halo was revolutionary. You can tell that fact because pretty much all console fps take from that game. And cod4 was the same way.

To bring it down to it had point and shoot like doom is idiotic.

Getting dangerously close to my boiling point, at which point I'll start talking to people as I how actually view them to be, so I'll end this here with just one question.

What is Halo's genre?
 
Exactly as what it sounds. Something new that makes the entire experience fresh. Shenmue was revolutionary. Halo wasn't.

We just think differently. halo brought in regenerating health and endless amounts of fps have tried to copy the Halo formula since so the game was revolutionary imo.

Also i loved Shenmue but how was it revolutionary?, because you could go to work in the game?
 
I didn't realize we were only talking about games that ONLY appeared on next gen consoles. I think the term "next gen gameplay" is really just another way of saying "is it doing something new". People are getting all caught up on that wording for some reason.

And while Titanfall does share aspects of lots of FPS games, no game has ever combined them all into a package, and executed on all of those things so well. It's kind of like how Gears of War was heralded as a new thing it's cover shooter mechanics. But of course it wasn't the first game to do that, but it was the first game to nail it and bring it into this great overall package.



Probably not, but are you suggesting reviewers should grade on a curve? Uncharted 2 was most definitely a better game than Uncharted 1, but by the time Uncharted 3 arrived a lot of people commented on how it was kinda more of the same, and even do a few things worse than Uncharted 2.

Infamous 3 really doesn't seem to be doing anything new beyond the first two games, besides being really pretty. I think that is the simplest way to sum up some of the negativity in the reviews today.

Wouldn't you be grading it on a curve, when you compare TItanfall1 vs Titanfall2, as you said "probably not". So you can't expect titanfall1 type of new next gen gameplay, with every game especially when it becomes a series right?

Yes within a series, the quality can depends on story and etc. but that's different than expecting titanfall1 quality of new innovation in a series.
 
For me, this was one of those games I was going to buy regardless of the review scores. It is encouraging, though, the reviews are mostly positive.

All I know is I'm really excited to have a new first-party game to play on my PS4 because I want to see what SP was able to do with the new horsepower.

Now, the question is, do I play this or Metal Gear first?
 
Most of the people mentioning Titanfall are its haters who are saying that Infamous should of scored higher becuase its better looking and Titanfall is shite meaning that reviewers are biased blah blah.
You should read the thread before you expose your true feelings.

My true feeling? I'm not hating on anything, but I don't see the point in talking about a game that has nothing to do with Infamous. It is after all The Infamous Second Son Review Thread not Lets Find Someone Who I Think Hates My Favorite Game So I'll Call Him Out Thread.
 
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