Infamous: First Light Review

By Todd Awbrey  |  Posted: October 1, 2014

Downloadable content for games comes in many forms. Most require the purchase of the original game to incentivize consumers to hold on to their discs and not trade them in towards the next big game. Sucker Punch has chosen to go a different route. With First Light for Infamous: Second Son and Festival of Blood for Infamous 2, the additional content doesn't require the game disc to play. It's a unique idea that gives everyone the chance to play their add-on content in hopes of expanding their audience.

First Light is a prequel to Infamous: Second Son. During your time in Seattle as Delsin, you run into a character named Fetch who has neon powers. You spend a couple of hours during Second Son chasing Fetch through the streets and across rooftops, but you never learn much about her. First Light explains her backstory and shows why she is angry, a loner, and has trouble trusting others. Over the course of the 4-5 hours it takes to play through the story, you find out about her brother and their relationship, as well as how she escaped from the hands of Augustine, whom many will be familiar with if you played Second Son. I found the story told in First Light to be engaging and it had a satisfying and emotional conclusion that Second Son lacked. It is more focused and has more drive towards the end. Most of my time spent during Second Son was exploring the City of Seattle and enjoying the combat with Delsin's ever-changing powers. With mostly male protagonists throughout gaming, it was nice to play a powerful woman that wasn't dressed provocatively.

From the start, Fetch is fully powered and able to zip around Seattle with her neon powers. The effect looks as gorgeous as ever and really shows off the PlayStation 4's graphical power through particle effects when she absorbs neon from neighborhood signs. The missions are varied enough to not seem monotonous, and running through the city is quick and fun. There are a couple of missions where she has to stay in one spot and snipe enemies from a rooftop. The sniper missions felt like a weird choice since Infamous is about open-world traversing and fun combat with powers, and there is neither during these moments. There is a new type of mission in First Light where Fetch has to follow and find someone through hacking cameras in the area, which was enjoyable. One of my problems with Second Son was its lack of mission variety, and adding more like this would have worked great.

Throughout her story, Fetch has to show Augustine her powers during challenge modes where she is locked in an arena with waves of enemies to fight. Each visit, Fetch shows off a new neon power, allowing the player to hone their skills in a new way. I found these to be a better test of skill, and if you own Second Son, you can choose to play as Delsin in these challenges. You can even see where you rank against the world and your friends via online leaderboards.

Simply Put

First Light gives people new to Infamous an affordable way to see what the game is about while expanding the story and characters for veterans of the franchise. While limited to just neon powers, I enjoyed the backstory of Fetch and revisiting the beautiful rendering of Seattle.