inFamous: First Light Reviews
If you've already had the luxury of playing through Second Son, you might be tempted to write off Infamous: First Light as a quick cash-in, but you'd be doing yourself a great disservice. At times, it can often feel like an overly distilled version of Second Son, but First Light works because it trims off the fat, leaving behind an engaging story and breakneck gameplay that will appeal both to returning patrons and first-time customers.
For newcomers, Infamous: First Light serves as a taste of the full experience in Second Son, complete with its highs and lows. Existing fans looking for more content will get the most out of this downloadable title, but will be disappointed that some of the concerns were not addressed.
First Light's weird, limbo nature makes it a hard one to pin down. Considered as a DLC add-on, it's pretty generous and fans of Second Son will certainly appreciate the extra backstory and another chance to romp around Seattle. As a standalone game, it earns points for trimming the fat from the open-world template, but is also as generic as they come. First Light is an adequate diversion for fans but unlikely to dazzle anybody else.
Infamous: First Light benefits from Second Son's excellent fundamentals. Its missions and storytelling, however, lack spark.
Infamous: First Light takes an interesting, flawed character and does nothing with her. Even at $15, it's a vapid, empty, wasted opportunity. At least the combat is still fun, though.
For us, nothing in First Light ever really stood out. It's well polished, but plays it so safe that there wasn't anything to really love or hate. Perhaps using it as a taster before investing in the full fat Second Son experience is a good idea.
Infamous: First Light is all gameplay no heart. The action that made Second Son feel so tight is back, but it lacks the earlier game's excellent story and design.
The fundamentals of Second Son are present, obviously restricted to Fetch's flashy Neon abilities, which is fine since Neon was the most free-flowing and fun of Delsin's stolen powers to begin with.
Overall, First Light reminded me how much fun it is to spend time in an inFamous game, but I would have preferred a bit more originality with the mini-games and some life in the once vivid game world of Seattle. This standalone prequel is a nice touch for fans of Second Son, but there's absolutely nothing within to entice series newcomers to jump in.
Relatively generous in size and scope, but being Second Son in miniature only helps to highlight what a hollow spectacle the game is.