GOTY 2011: Best Overlooked Game Runner Up - Infamous 2

2011 was certainly one of the biggest years for the gaming industry, as even if sales and profits were affected by the recession, we were treated with a huge amount of high quality, triple-A games, as well as plenty of great indie and downloadable titles, like Orcs Must Die or Bastion.

Sadly, this flood of great titles also resulted in some releases being overlooked by the majority of the public. Among my favorite games of the year which didn’t really get the recognition they deserve is Infamous 2, coming from Sucker Punch Productions and Sony, exclusively for the PlayStation 3.

While I really liked the original Infamous, I was blown away by its sequel, which refined pretty much all the aspects of its predecessor, from the more detailed open world, to the great looking and feeling powers, to a more streamlined morality system that allows you to lead the protagonist, Cole McGrath, down whatever path you choose.

The story was also very impressive, this time giving Cole some lifelike companions, chief among which being Zeke, his longtime buddy, who gets a more fleshed out rendition, but also his moral guides, Kuo and Nix, who both grow a lot throughout the narrative and have some compelling arguments for you to join their side.

More importantly for a superhero game like Infamous 2, however, was that Cole now had lots of interesting powers besides the ones he already unlocked throughout the first game. As such, you could glide on the tram lines from the city of New Marais with ease right from the get go, while unlocking new abilities that could manipulate ice and other such elements throughout the campaign.

Once you completed the already lengthy single-player mode, you could either start it up again, and make different choices, or try out the huge number of missions created by actual players, through the User Generated Content mode, which allows anyone to create their own challenges for Cole and share them with others through the PlayStation Network.

While it doesn’t have a multiplayer mode, like many other games these days, Infamous 2 is probably one the most fun experience I’ve had throughout the year, and certainly made the days of last summer pass that much easier.

In case you don’t want to try out the full game, which can be bought either on a retail Blu-ray or as a digital download from the PSN, you can get a quick taste through the standalone Infamous: Festival of Blood expansion.

Check out a video of Infamous 2 below.