If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “The one thing missing from my life is a video game that let’s me play a junkie with super powers” then I have some good news for you. Sucker Punch recently released their inFamous: Second Son DLC First Light, a stand alone download that follows the story of the Neon huffing conduit Abigail “Fetch” Walker several years before her meeting with Second Son’s protagonist Delsin.
Upon a lengthy install and starting up the game First Light illuminates us (come on folks, that was a good one) with a brief description of events between the time period of InFamous 2, when urban king of lightning Cole McGrath disappeared from the planet supposedly taking all super powered individuals referred to as “Conduits” with him, and InFamous: Second Son giving us a look into the second rise of the super human. After that it plants us right into a day in the life of homeless runaways Fetch and her brother, Brent, loading up a boat with stolen goods before pulling “One Last Job” (yeah right) that will allow them to live on easy street and perhaps allow them to buy a Burmese kitten.
The job, which involves a Russian mob like entity called the Akurans, proves to be a trap that sees the disappearance of Brent while nearly killing Fetch in an explosion. Good thing for her, Conduit powers make you really, really tough to kill. The game jumps between Seattle before its military occupation in Second Son, and two years later after Fetch is captured by the U.S. government’s Conduit hunting Department of Unified Protection.
Everything flowed nicely for me in Second Son and kept me immersed in the game’s environments, even managing to hold my suspension of disbelief in lieu of logically inconsistent powers such as “video”. Meanwhile, First Light feels a bit more “arcade-y” to me. In the X-Men Danger Room-esque D.U.P. sections of the game where you follow Fetch as a prisoner of Curdun Cay she must save holographic hostages from holographic threats, hit bullseyes on targets to rack up scores, and at one point stop wave after wave of digital demon. This is perhaps excusable because it’s all only a ‘test’ to improve Fetch’s powers while she’s in a prison setting.
However that very arcade type feel follows Fetch out into the “real world” of Seattle. There are timed races she can tackle and obstacle courses for her to get through. All of it kind of makes you super aware you’re playing a video game, and so the initial immersion Second Son has worked for disappears a little in First Light. While it’s not a major detraction, the kind of score keeping and minigames First Light gives us feels a little out of step with the rest of the franchise.
Though I ought to discuss the real draw of any inFamous title. The powers. We’ve already seen Fetch’s power set, the ability to drain Neon gas and use it to move at light speed and snipe enemies, but that was Neon feat. Delsin and thus not representative of what it could really do. Fetch feels “better” at her powers than Delsin, which makes sense because she’s had them longer. She moves a little faster, definitely attacks faster (though perhaps with weaker hits than Delsin), can phase through small barriers, has x-ray vision and her special ability creates a badass Neon Singularity or blackhole to suck up enemies and objects in a large radius, yes I’m aware of the contradiction of a “Neon blackhole” but I’m not a scientist so why should I care? From the small nuances to larger mechanic changes, Fetch definitely feels “different” from Delsin and this is a very good thing, especially since I was disappointed with the fact Delsin’s default set of powers felt like a cut and paste of Cole’s from inFamous 2.
Fetch’s Seattle starts different from Delsin’s Seattle. Since there is no D.U.P. Occupation at the top of the game the city streets are initially clear of their checkpoints and concrete fortresses. As the storyline progresses Fetch finds the city taken over by stronger and stronger contenders, first by Akuran Thugs trying to secure Seattle’s underground weapons and human trafficking rings, then later by those concrete super power using darlings the D.U.P. It’s fairly interesting to see the city evolve through these different conflicts, however I felt it all happened a little too fast to properly lap it all in. I should also note part of the “trick” of the game is Fetch only has access to one island, so Sucker Punch didn’t have to modify the southern part of the map that heavily relies on D.U.P. assets. Apologies to all those that wanted to see Downtown Seattle without those ugly concrete obelisks.
This. This is a Neon Blackhole.
Now I probably enjoyed inFamous: Second Son considerably more than Jared, but this is also partly because the core game omitted things from inFamous 1 and 2 that bugged me. First Light unfortunately restores a couple of those minigames and missions I could have done without. One that most comes to mind is inFamous’ infuriating brand of vehicle escort missions, where you place your Conduit atop a truck and have to make sure it arrives in one piece. The enemy waves will make sure your truck blows up, a lot, before you make it to the end, and pelt you full of so many holes your auto healing will fail and you’ll die a significant number of times as well. Boosting Cole across rooftops in a race against time wasn’t exactly my idea of fun either, and that also returns in First Light.
Karma is out, but then inFamous DLC always seems to nix karma, and Fetch’s abilities are automatically set to stun. She can’t get new powers from blast shards like Cole or Delsin, instead she has tricky to track down Neon “lumens” that will grant her skill points. This difference is key because for the most part, blast shards just required you be perceptive and patient. Lumens require acrobatics with well timed runs, jumps and hovering to get at them. I can’t really say it was an improvement, but it didn’t bother me either. You can also claim more skill points by clearing the aforementioned Curdun Cay trials.
Making a return to First Light is Second Son’s graffiti mechanic. Though keeping in step with the differences in Fetch’s powers, you now have to gently rock your controller back and forth and hit the R2 button at just the right time to laser your mark around the city. Personally I feel the change from the hold sides, rattle controller mechanic is needlessly frustrating, as getting Fetch’s powers to cooperate is far more difficult than Delsin’s straight forward handling of the same minigame.
Similar to several other Open World titles inFamous has always been a little weak when it came to its post-game. The franchise seems like it’s making attempts to address this constant problem with the genre and First Light offers you the chance to keep playing Curdun Cay testing grounds once you’ve beat the game, or if you own Second Son, tackle its various trials as Delsin and compare your scores with other players across the globe. Similar to Second Son Fetch’s best powers are saved for once you wrap up the game, but it wasn’t really enough to keep me interested.
The story for First Light moves as fast as Fetch, a blink and you’ll miss it type ordeal. If you’ve already played Second Son than you know all of Fetch’s backstory, so you kind of know how this one ends. But let’s thank the world for comic book tropes and retcons as First Light rewrites the script a little for the sake of making Fetch just a little more likable and a little more heroic. The DLC certainly endeared her to me a little more as I wasn’t exactly her biggest fan over the course of Second Son, but I do wish First Light would have paced itself a little more in telling her tale.
To Sucker Punch’s credit they are pretty good at fixing character portrayals even if they don’t hit with lightning (anything yet folks?) the first time. Her powers are fun even if the missions and mini games are not. At the end of the day First Light feels like more of an acquired taste, if you’re big into score attacks and blasting waves of enemies for the hell of it then First Light is the title for you. If you’re a fan of inFamous and felt Second Son was on the short side, this is DLC will serve as a nice morsel but here’s a fair warning it will still leave you hungry afterwards.
