Location in Video Games: inFAMOUS Second Son

Infamous is an interesting game for me it's the first game I remember buying just because of the location.

Currently I live in Seattle and Seattle is the most familiar I've been with a real world counter part to an in-game location. I've been through L.A., D.C., other major metropolitan areas, but not spend the time I have here in Seattle.

I've been to all the locations shown here and fighting in the Seattle Center, Pioneer Square, etc... is a lot of fun!

After playing for a bit I realized what was bothering me about the game. It is a compressed world of course so things aren't lined up like they are in the real city. The 520 bridge is located closer to the actual West Seattle Bridge location, but is by far the most hated bridge in the City. Not only does it congest with rush hour traffic, but it is also a tole bridge with a money sink of a replacement protruding out of the water next to it... so choosing this to be the bridge to blowing it up is a no brainer even though the location is wrong.

So I'm not a huge fan of the game... I received the first game from the infamous PlayStation Network outage of 2011 and picked up the 2nd in a bargain bin, playing both very minimally.  I'll probably put up a post on my thoughts about the game at some point, but this is for the environment art only that looks fantastic! If it wasn't for the slightly off locations I don't think I'd have anything to complain about and that is very minor indeed! I do wonder if Pike's Market is included or more of the waterfront, but I'm to low to venture into parts of the game at this point, so those are questions to be answered later. This is a very good job recreating Seattle in the confides of a game environment!

Timed Progression

Ah Nintendo, you do everything a little bit different! Some times better, most of the time just stranger... Anyway, why am I blogging about Super Mario Maker and not playing it? Timed progression!

So I have only a few small problems with the game:

The first is the price point, I know it's Mario and a console release, but this is a development tool they already had laying around they decided to release as a full title. And yes I know it takes a lot of work to polish dev tools to a public release state, but still.

Second it requires the Wii U gamepad, the huge, screen one that never feels right when you're playing on it, and only for the touch screen. What you see on the tv is EXACTLY the same as what you see on the gamepad. I've never liked the controller and use a pro controller whenever I'm able, this won't matter for some people.

Those two are both minor complaints, now to the big one... The "building blocks" you use to make the level unlock over DAYS! 9 DAYS! (according to reviews) that's insane! And the controls you get out of the box don't even allow you to make world 1-1 from the original game! I feel like I should probably embrace a minimalist approach and make levels as fun as possible with the limited controls, but there was so much fun I wanted to have that I'm just disappointed... I'm hoping I don't have to play every day for the 9 days, but the tutorial kinda sounded like it. I'll pick this up in a week and two days and hope everything is working I guess... This strategy sounds okay to someone that's never played a Mario game or pretty much any other platformer, but selling this as the end all to make awesome Mario levels and then locking it down for the first 9 days is just messed up... this is the wrong kind of different. Even a tutorial progression that took an hour might be alright, but not timed with no way to bypass. /sad

Maybe I'll post an update 9 days from now about how good the game is... I really look forward to playing it!