inFamous: Festival of Blood

By Gordon Bryant 01st Nov 2011 | 6,726 views 

So it's New Marais and the locals are enjoying what is known as the Pyre Festival: a celebration that honors an old story about how a preacher cleansed the area of its vampire infestation many years ago. Turns out it's not just a story, and vampires are real, and they seek revenge on the town! In the ensuing chaos, Cole is bitten and turned into a super-powered vampire, forcing him to do everything he can to reverse the curse before dawn lest he be trapped under the influence of the one who bit him forever. It's pretty basic vampire stuff, but Sucker Punch adds a new layer to the mythos by infusing vampire lore with their own brand of storytelling. InFamous: Festival of Blood retains the comic book styling of its predecessor, but also loads on the festivities by dressing up the whole town and its inhabitants for the festival. The graphics are basically the same, but the art direction takes a decidedly gothic turn with the locales and creature design made to fit in with the vampire theme.

Sadly, you can tell the game was rushed. There are a few glitches, some of which are significant. While most of them are pretty minor graphical mishaps, there was one that had me on the verge of rage quitting. About halfway through the game I got lost because there were no mission markers aside from the green 'User Generated Content' indicators (yes, this expansion has its own UGC creator as well, which I give props to Sucker Punch for adding), but these were side missions as opposed to the story missions. I spent an hour doing everything I could to advance the story - exploring, tinkering, and killing vampire mobs - but nothing worked. After entirely too much trial and error I gave up, sure I'd have to either drop the review or simply write an impressions piece instead. However, my love for inFamous won me over and I tried again; this time the new mission marker popped right up and I encountered no more issues throughout the course of my experience. I've read other reviews and nobody else has mentioned this, so I don't imagine it's a widespread issue, but that was my experience, sadly.

As we all know, inFamous is a sandbox game, so that tends to mean glitches are more likely to be prevalent due to the massive amount of content in the game. This stays true for Festival of Blood. While the story part of the game will only last you 2-3 hours, there's a lot to do for your $10 ($8 if you're on PlayStation Plus). Half of New Marais is available to explore (the part which isn't flooded), and in that area you're going to be doing plenty to keep yourself busy. In between the surprisingly fun story missions, you can look for canopic jars of blood to increase your blood level, as well as find vampiric lore and complete UGC missions made by other players. You can also unlock new abilities and trophies. It's not like it's a full game, but for $10 it gives you plenty to do on the side, should you feel so inclined.

You get not only your lightning-based powers in this game, but some really awesome vampire powers - most notably your ability to turn into a swarm of bats and fly over the entire world as you see fit. These abilities are fuelled by blood (as opposed to electricity), and you need to either suck human blood or kill vampires to replenish it. While most of the new abilities are good (but not great), that ability is certainly one I'd like to see retained. Flying over New Marais is - dare I say it - even more fun than grinding along the wires and rails. Very fun, would fly again.

Like previous inFamous games, there's a good/evil choice to make as well, but there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of emphasis behind it, nor do you suffer consequences for your actions. Sure, you can be the good guy and not drain the blood of hapless bystanders, but then you suffer due to lack of blood and therefore lack of vampire skills. On the flipside, you could treat the residents of New Marais as a human buffet, but you don't get bad karma, so there's little incentive to play nice.

Festival of Blood keeps to the spirit of the inFamous name. It's a lot of fun, with great vampire and superpowers to play around with, as well as a good amount of available side content. The only major problems are performance-related issues and a short main story. Definitely worth a try if you're into the series. Happy Halloween!