It seems like almost every game has some form of DLC, but this also requires you to hold onto your copy. Every now and then a company will just release a digital title. This is just the case with inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood. Here you will have all of the inFAMOUS 2 updates and the games not even required. While this is great; will this help Festival of Blood become a winner or just another sad loser?
Hot
Story
In a welcomed change of pace, the game starts with Zeke hitting on a girl. This leads to his relationship with Cole and more importantly how he saved him from Vampires. From here the story progresses to Cole doing his hero thing. During the mission he runs into some interesting ghouls, which proceed to feed their leader his blood. The blood causes Bloody Mary to revive, but this also causes her to drain Cole. You’re then given a few hours to stop her or become her slave.
In addition to the interesting premise, you’re also given several motion comic cut scenes. These really help give you the “inFAMOUS” feel.
Combat System
inFAMOUS 2 added several welcomed changes. Festival of blood features all of them, plus some additional vampire based skills. The most interesting new skill, is the bat swarm. With this you can travel anywhere quite quickly. The skill does require blood, but who doesn’t like attacking random people? This can become incredibly helpful, for taking down groups. Best of all; you start with just about every (lightning) power. Another perk are fairly basic enemies. Contrary to 2, many enemies are rather docile. This allows you to beat them with melee. Upon getting the upgraded cross; there really isn’t a need for another type of attack.
Open World and Collectibles
Festival of Blood offers you a third of inFAMOUS 2. This means you have a full island to play around with. Here you can find several hidden messages (Think Dead Drops) in sense mode or look for blood canisters (Blast Shards). With the addition of the aforementioned sense mode, everything is far easier to accomplish too. Collecting the shards in one was a chore and only slightly better in two. However in Festival, finding all 100 can be accomplished in under an hour. Overall it feels like there’s a lot to do, in addition to the nearly endless user generated content or UGC.
No karma
A large part of the originals, was the act of doing right or wrong in a situation. This generally dictated how you played the game too. Naturally if I want to become a hero, you’re not going to kill everyone you see. The same can be said about becoming infamous. Here you’re basically put in a lose lose situation and you’re allowed to play your way. None of your actions affect powers, plot, or anything that can be considered important. While this does hurt some of the games depth or concept, you’re also saved from a fairly similar cycle.
Not
Short
Very few network titles have long playtimes. This can also get overlooked due to price. Festival of Blood features 7 story missions and no true postgame. If you’re in a rush to finish, the game is maybe 2 hours long. If you’re going after trophies, the 100% averages 5 hours. You can definitely increase this with user generated content, but these will naturally be hit/miss.
Bloody Mary
Ignoring her being, well rather boring, the final boss fight was also very underwhelming. For the mistress of all vampires, being several hundred years old and wanting revenge… This fight is very drawn out. It starts with Cole chasing after her, but Mary will constantly turn everyone around you, against you. In certain area’s she will use a scream attack, which will push you back. During these instances you have to hit her.
If you can manage to hit her, she will lose a critical amount of health. A single hit will also cause her to run. This will become fairly rinse/repeat fight, till she can get finished off. Naturally nothing is that easy… so you need to fight her in another location. This boils down to countless enemies rushing you, then at some point you can attack her. This whole fight takes around 15 – 20 minutes, but is mostly just chasing after her. When you figure she dies in around 8 hits, it feels very drawn out.
Verdict
InFAMOUS Festival of Blood is an interesting standalone title. It’s easily the best open world game on the PSN. The story is fairly interesting and helps sell the concept. Many of the changes work really well for the game. I strongly recommend this to long standing fans or anyone looking for a sample of two. I really hope we see more standalone titles like this in the future.
[Editor’s Note: Infamous Festival of Blood was played on a PS3 system.]
