The Mog Blog

So this week we saw the release of Infamous 2 Festival of Blood. One of the last titles for Sony’s “Only on PSN” campaign for the month of October. It’s a pretty decent tie-in with Halloween being right around the corner and all. Besides that, the question on everyone’s mind is if Sucker Punch can deliver. With the release of Infamous 2 and the offering of Infamous as part of the Welcome Back package earlier this year due to the PSN outage, I’m sure plenty of people have had some experience with the series. For $10, is it worth the investment for this episodic content.

Festival of Blood is kinda of different when it comes to DLC expansions. First being that this is a stand-alone title. You don’t need to own either of the titles to get into this. It also doesn’t tie into Infamous 2 in any way and can be enjoyed much like the Uncharted games. Though this may seem ok, the first major issue people may come to is how massive the download is. You’ll be waiting for a bit to get your hands on it being that its 3 gigs large. Some people seem to not take advantage of the fact the PS3′s HDD is expandable so if you’re strapped for space, good luck.

I heard there was blood around. Who's offering? Anyone?

The story of Festival of Blood is through Zeek inside of a bar explaining the colorful story of Pyrenight with this woman who he runs into in a bar. It recounts Cole’s run-in with the vampire Bloody Mary and his one night adventure. Before you begin, if you liked playing Hero Cole then you’re out of luck here. During the beginning of the DLC you end up being bitten by Blood Mary. What this means is you’re not an electrically charged vampire and as such you retain some of your powers as well as gain new ones. Honestly speaking though, your Vampiric powers don’t expand past a refined scanning ability dubbed Vampire Sense, Shadow Swarm for flight (awesome btw) which can also be used as a weapon when upgraded, and the ability to bite people. Yeah, you read correctly, you can bite people. This allows you to use people as a means to heal yourself while fighting opposing vampires (yay, new enemies) and recharges your blood gauge used for Shadow Swarm. Those are the core gameplay changes for Cole.

Since this is DLC, it also has a linear story. Unlike the other two games in the series, this lacks karmic decisions. This also means there isn’t a different ending either, just a jaunt through what is offered and a showcase of the new UGC (user-generated content) feature to do dynamic cutscenes. Also gone is the ability to upgrade your powers through conventional means. Upgrading in Festival of Blood is done through specific task such as biting a number of people, defeating a enemies, story progression, and UGC missions. You also have no ability to set different powers from Infamous 2. There are also no side missions. For a DLC they really drive home the fact that this isn’t Infamous 2. Honestly it feels less Infamous than anything though its not as bad as it may sound.

Of all the new enemies, this one gave me the most problem. HATE HER.

Another addition to Festival of Blood that was recently integrated into Infamous 2 were PlayStation Move controls. Considering I have both previous games and I was done with the Infamous games by the time the patch dropped, I found this prime time to test it out. The controls themselves handle well but of course the main issue you’ll run into is Aiming. Its something you have to get used to as you have to hold a button in order to aim though when you get pro at such feats like using PS Move, you can run around all day with the aiming reticle out and have no problems. All your powers are also accessible on the wand itself as well so everything is right within reach without feeling awkward. I can honestly say that the setup for Move is quite comfortable. It could have been far worst like trying to play RE5 with Move (god I hate that game with Move).

Final Verdict:

The main thing asked at the start of this was if it was worth the $10? Well, I will say yes and no and I’ll go into detail as to why. Its worth the money if you’re obviously a fan. Besides that obvious answer, if you’ve been on the fence on buying an Infamous game or specifically Infamous 2 then its worth the $10 for what could be considered a preview of the bigger game. It also offers the UGC as part of the package so you can also make your own missions in this DLC package. If you’re one of those people that are creative then this is your playground to do with what you will. Also this DLC offers exclusive content for UGC that’s only accessible through Festival of Blood.

I would also say it isn’t worth the $10 because some people wont use it to its fullest. If you didn’t bother with the UGC stuff in Infamous 2 or just don’t feel like making your own missing to extend your own game and others then you’ll only be grabbing it for the story. The story itself only last a good 3-4 hours if you decide to do everything to upgrade your abilities. With the lack of side missions and total reliance of UGC to increase its longevity, this isn’t the type of game for those just in it for the story.

Overall, its good. Its not as substantial as I would have hoped but for what was given it was a nice addition to the story. Sucker Punch could honestly do more of these type of things and with other national holidays (Christmas anyone?) and the party atmosphere of New Marias, they could stand to put out a bit more. I just hope they offer a little more content than what was given here and a less fragmented UGC. Its a good start with their first story based DLC but definitely room for improvement. Storytelling is just fine though, they got that in spades. :D Being $7.99 for PS+ was also a plus. No pun intended.