sometimes I'll pick a game to play based entirely on the locale it's set in, the urge to go and walk around and explore, compare with what you know of the real place, like virtual tourism almost but with crime and the lack of a 15 hour plane ride, this is usually popular with places like Japan or your typical kind of overused cities like new York or LA, but this one grabbed me more than almost any of those right out of the box, it had a whole recreation of Seattle to explore with cool abilities and some damn nice looking rain, my sister lives there so being able to explore somewhere she lives? hell yeah! sign me up, it also helps that it was the only game i hadn't played in a series that i adore, i could not have been more excited to play this and it's a game that fully lived up to the excitement i had for it!

this was a PSN stand alone expansion based on infamous second son, a game i played wayyyyy back when i first got my ps4, it was even the first game i played on it, i loved the first two on ps3 and even the PSN game and i was really blown away by second son..... for the 10 mins i was able to play it before my ps4 bricked itself thanks to rest mode, i went through like 6 of those damn things before i found my way into a slim that still, shockingly, somehow works, i did love the game though. i do have to say that even now i don't remember a whole ton about it, i remember the cool neon and video powers, bits of the city, the rain and the story, it's one I'll for sure need to go back to soon but when i booted this up it brought a ton of memories of how fun the original game was for me, this isn't as good as it but it's a damn fine game on its own right. it's a little stripped back first and foremost, with you only having access to fetch's neon and not the smoke or video powers, so you'll see things in the world that usually delsin would be able to use for traversal but you just can't, it also locks you out of the second half of Seattle which is a shame, throwing it in there even just for exploration would have been super nice, it has a few of its own areas too like a cool snowy prison break and an arena you go to for challenges but it is mostly a lot of reused content here, which is fine i think when you consider that this is just a PSN game, it almost feels a little nostalgic, it reminds me a lot of the likes of those dead rising XBLA games or stuff like the majima saga in yakuza kiwami 2, it's neat! what parts of Seattle the game does have are beautiful, you have the top half of the map which is the part that's more full of small stores, docks and apartments and small forresty parts plus some big landmarks like a lone skyscraper near the top of the map, a science centre and a huge needle building in the middle of the map you can climb up for an amazing view, it's very accurate i'm told even down the the overcast rainy weather and it's a great time to get around, it's super memorable too, the one from second son has stuck with me for years and even now going back to it in this game it felt super cozy and lovely to walk around, feels almost rustic and old fashioned, it's nice and i think one of the all time great open worlds even here, it even has a day and night thingy going on and it looks amazing at night, especially when its raining. the neon effects for the powers are a real showcase of what the system can do as well, even now they look amazing and some things like the neon graffiti you spray really impressed me and the light trails you leave when you do the cool neon run, it's a real sight to look at in action.

the gameplay gives you a fair amount of tools considering her more limited moveset compared to Delsin, there's a cool dash thats used super well for traversal and it even gets more added to it like an air dash and a glide and you get mario kart-y speedboosts placed around that help you get places even faster, you have a ranged attack, a shotgun wave blast, some finishers, you can turn your ranged into a machinegun, there's some cool dash attack finishers and even a cool sniper shot, plus some optional unlockable things like the ability to turn enemies against each other or to trap them in statis! there's a lot to it and it all feels super fun to use, the increased movement stuff can make it hard to hit people at times, though the game also does give you time slow to help with that, so it's all very easy to use too, it's the kind of game where its very easy to be very stylish while playing, though if you've played the main campaign first it can feel a little limiting not having the other powersets usable. there's a lot to do in the game beyond combat though, the races are a lot of fun and have you chasing after upgrade points in the open world, they're a little short though if you're good at them, they can last only 10 seconds sometimes but there is a lot of them scattered about. you have tagging with the ps4's motion controls which looks spectacular and they're pretty fun to find, plus you also have some crackdown style upgrade orbs to find around the world which really incentivises you to learn the movement well, some of them can be really tricky. that's more or less it for the open world though, there is a challenge mode which has you surviving waves of attacks in the prison area and you can save people here, but your milage will very much vary here, i enjoyed playing them a few times but i didn't chase high scores much, especially since you do a lot of these in the campaign first anyway i didn't feel a huge need to go back, they're also more or less the main replayability incentive since outside of the skill tree you can keep going with you don't really unlock much like new content or costumes or anything, which would have been nice.



the story is solid for a prequel, it's not on the same level as the maingame i would say and it does, i think spoil some stuff about it? with the prison, i think, its been so long that I'm not 100% sure on weather it would be spoilers for second son with some of the things in that section, but as a standalone story it's pretty good, it has a fun cast, a good villain, the side cast is small but super likable and fetch is probably the series best protagonist, she's a lot better than delsin at the very least. she's fun and funny and super charming, full of great lines and she has a fun chemistry with the main villain especially, i love the interactions where she just constantly insults him the most and she has a really sweet relationship with her brother that managed to get me emotional a few times, the game even managed to make me tear up at the end, not quite ugly crying like second son and infamous 2 managed to, but it got me really emotional which I'd say is a sign it did a good job with its story, though i will warn it has a slow start and the pace breaks with the prison segments are a little iffy.

the music is also surprisingly good, games like this tend to have very forgettable OST's, very movie music kind of deals, utilitarian even if you want to go that far, they exist to fill a single purpose and not for much beyond that, something like god of war or spiderman are perfect examples of this, the cinematic Sony OST, but this doesn't have that, sure its not the most memorable in the world, but it has a distinct vibe it goes for with a very grungy, almost broken sound to it, it's very unique sounding and it fits the game perfect, almost gives me shades of an akira Yamaoka soundtrack sometimes. Marc Canham is listed as the main composer here, he worked on tons of driver games and even the Wii fit series. I'd also just like to shoutout the voice acting here too? the game has one of my favourite Laura baily performances and you even have travis Willingham showing up here in a fun role playing a southern scumbag, plus Ashley Johnson playing a side character, it's funny seeing her and Laura alongside each other in a Sony game here considering the roles they'd eventually play in the last of us 2, which is one of my favourite games actually.

if you want this game it's release schedule was a little weird, it was a PSN title first and foremost, though unlike the prior infamous standalone expansion (festival of blood) this one actually did have a physical release! only in Europe though and it is a little uncommon, not hard to find or rare but you will be spending about 20 or so for a copy, which is more than the other 3 games go for combined, totally recommend it though and i for sure got my moneys worth out of it, it's also never been ported to anything else, though if you have a ps5 the game will run fine in backwards compatibility mode. this would also, regrettably be the last game in the series, sucker punch would go on to make the much more successful ghost of Tsushima, a game that i can't wait to get around to playing, and its sequel which will also probably be great, though I'd be lying if i said i didn't miss infamous a little, the movement mechanics in these games are like nothing else and its a shame we don't have much like them anymore, though at least sucker punch get to make games they seem to care about unlike other sony alum insomniac who are seemingly stuck in the marvel mines for the rest of their days, so it could be worse, i guess (those games do seem like a lot of fun though). i fully recommend giving this a try, it's short and fun and beautiful and it's more infamous, which is never a bad thing, it's worth it to even just be able to wander around the amazing open world for a little on its own, plus when a lot of games very similar to this one tend to run you upwards of 15+ hours just to finish them, a brisk run that you can beat in a sitting feels so refreshing to me, we could use more games like this in the cinematic games space for sure.