Infamous: Second Son, the fourth installment in the franchise, picks up seven years after the events of Infamous 2 and this time around you take on the role of Delsin Rowe, a graffiti artist and a delinquent who has the ability to absorb the powers of other conduits.
Starting off from a visual standpoint Second Son delivers an astounding representation of Seattle and the most realistic character models seen on the system at the time of it's release, the facial animations and motion capture truly displays what the 8th generation is all about.
The gameplay hasn't received that much of a change from the previous titles so fans will feel right at home, the good and evil karma choices make a return and affect the fate of some of the characters and the ending, however the cover system has been completely removed with players having to rely more on hit and run tactics rather than camping under cover and picking off targets. One major addition is the ability to change between powers, throughout the majority of the game Delsin will have at his disposal three different powers: Smoke, Neon and Video; unfortunately I feel like this feature isn't as good as it could be due to the fact that the powers are extremely unbalanced, Delsin's base ability of Smoke does substantial damage to opponents however the dashes are short and might leave you open to attacks, Video is the worst of the abilities in terms of attack power dealing little damage with each hit but it gives Delsin ability to fly which comes in handy for exploring the city, then there is Neon the golden egg of the bunch, this power makes the previous ones obsolete by giving Delsin the ability to run at high speed leaving a behind a blur and the range attack when upgraded will allow the player to take down the majority of enemies with 1-2 hits with either a well placed headshot for a deadly takedown or a hit to the legs for a submission, by performing attacks a bar that the player has will be drained this can be replenished by draining "elements" from objects in the world.
All of these powers are upgradable by collecting blast shards that are scattered throughout Seattle, these upgrades range from each attack draining less from the bar to the addition of new moves, unfortunately there aren't that many shards to find and they are conveniently displayed in the map when you destroy mobile D.U.P. command centers turning the upgrading really easy and fast to do.
In addition to the main missions there are a couple of side missions/activities that the player can perform, the most interesting of the bunch are the tagging graffiti spots, in order to do this the player has to hold the controller sideways and shake it as if it were a real can, and the inbuilt motion sensing is used to aim.
The story is Second Son's weakest point, personally I feel that it doesn't make much sense and the way that they explained the survival of conduits feels cheap. The characters are pretty forgetful, Delsin will keep you amused at times with some well placed jokes but most of the times he feels like a rebellious teenager rather than someone his age, Augustine who is the main antagonist is someone that you just can't really care about and you probably wouldn't remember her if she wasn't always being mentioned and the rest of the cast is just bland and uninteresting which is a shame seeing as the game features some really good voice acting.
The game itself is pretty short, with roughly 6 hours of play time, 10 if you decide to go for all the side mission, however on this occasion it feels just like the right length.
Bottom line Infamous: Second Son is a game that no PS4 owner should pass on,
SCORE: 8/10
