The third title in the inFAMOUS series, Second Son takes place some years (10 or 7, not 100% sure about which) after the end of inFAMOUS 2 which included the (spoiler, sorry) death (if you played the “good” guy) of Cole McGrath.  An early PS4 only exclusive, the plot (and random citizen chats) refer to Cole as having been the good guy, though sufficient time has passed that Conduits are feared and oppressed.  As most single-player games go, the game is very story driven.  And it’s a pretty good story.

Unfortunately, I had a hard time (much like I did with the other two) playing it through more than once.  Even with the opportunity to choose being “good” or “bad”, and getting different power abilities when you do, it still is the same basic story (with slightly different cutscenes) each time.  And to a certain extent it does suffer from “power grind”, where you’re going through the motions of doing essentially the same thing over and over again in order to make what powers you do get stronger and stronger.

I also didn’t like what people on the street would say to me (most of the time) when I was bad.  It was very rarely amusing.

In addition, I suffered some minor annoyance with some of the game mechanics that seemed to exist only to explore the more novel features of the PS4 controller (namely, the touchpad, which for a while there I wasn’t even aware of until I played this game).

I also wasn’t all that hip to some of the side missions your character could perform in order to chase the antagonist organization (the Department of Unified Protection, which people liked to call “Dupes”) out of regions of Seattle (the main setting of the game).  It turns out that Delsin (the hero … or villain if you play him that way) fancies himself a street artist, and you are given the opportunity to paint one of two choices in certain side missions: either a “good” picture, or a “bad” one.  Again, the mechanics of doing so involved utilizing one of the “lesser used” controls in the game (in this case, the sixaxis motion sensors).

But, much like some other games I’ve played (for example, the previous two inFAMOUS games), it’s amazing how much you’ll forgive for a good story (though I did miss Cole).  And I greatly enjoyed the picking up of different types of powers (smoke was cool, neon was excellent, video was eh, and concrete … well, you don’t play much of the main game with it, so it too was eh).  If you’ve got a few gaming hours to kill and $20 worth of PSN Store credit, see what Second Son is priced at and consider picking it up.