Sucker Punch’s Infamous series built its reputation on explosive powers, comic book storytelling and karma-driven choices that shaped the player’s version of a superhero or supervillain. Across PS3 and PS4, the series delivered stories of flawed characters navigating worlds teetering between order and chaos.
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But not all entries hit with the same voltage. Some felt like fully-realized arcs with emotional climaxes while others served as flashy side stories or technical showcases. Here’s a detailed ranking of every Infamous game, based on impact, storytelling, gameplay design and how well each captured the series’ central themes of power and consequence.
5Infamous: First Light
Neon Punches and Emotional Gut-Checks in a Smaller Sandbox
inFAMOUS First Light
First Light took players back to Seattle but swapped Delsin’s smirking rebellion for something more tragic. This time the spotlight was on Fetch – one of Second Son’s more compelling side characters – as she relived her past inside Curdun Cay, the D.U.P.’s isolated prison facility.
The story leaned heavily on loss, guilt and a desperate desire for control. It didn’t have the scope or variety of the mainline games, mostly because it focused exclusively on Fetch’s neon powers. But that singular focus gave First Light a tighter identity. The city races, battle arenas and energy-infused combat all felt like polished offshoots from the base game, built to highlight the speed and flash of neon traversal.
Still, despite its visuals and strong lead performance from Laura Bailey, it never fully escaped its identity as a spin-off. The lack of karma choices removed one of the core pillars of the franchise and the shorter runtime made the emotional beats feel slightly rushed. It’s a solid addition to the Infamous universe, but ultimately, it works better as an expansion than a standalone experience.
4Infamous: Festival of Blood
When Cole Macgrath Got Bitten by Halloween DLC
inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood
Set during the fictional Pyre Night celebration, Festival of Blood didn’t follow the usual Infamous structure. There were no branching decisions, no XP trees and no moral dilemmas. Cole gets turned into a vampire, fights to reverse the curse and that’s it – all told as a wildly exaggerated campfire story by Zeke.
The real strength here was the atmosphere. Flood Town transformed into a shadowy, red-lit playground filled with Gothic architecture and flying bloodsuckers. The new powers like shadow flight and bloodsucking enemies added just enough of a twist to feel fresh without complicating the mechanics too much.
But it was also a narrative cul-de-sac. Nothing that happened here was canon, and it never advanced Cole’s journey or the world around him. Still, it was one of the better examples ofsingle-player DLCfrom that era, giving players a focused two-hour diversion that was stylish, weird and surprisingly fun.
3Infamous: Second Son
Flashier Powers, Shinier City, but a Bit More Hollow Inside
inFAMOUS Second Son
Second Son marked the franchise’s leap onto the PlayStation 4, and in that sense, it delivered. Seattle looked slick under rainy skies, the particle effects from Delsin’s smoke, neon and video powers were some of the best on the console at the time, and thecombat felt punchierand faster than it ever had before.
What it lacked was a sense of narrative weight. Delsin Rowe had attitude, but his story – built around resisting government oppression and freeing conduits – never hit the same emotional highs as Cole’s did. Even the karma system felt reduced to cosmetic changes and slightly different animations. Unlike previous games where your choices affected side characters and the world, Second Son’s consequences rarely carried lasting impact.
Despite that, the game remained fun to play. Switching between powers mid-fight, using neon dashes to scale buildings and absorbing new abilities from other conduits added variety. But it felt like a fresh coat of paint rather than a reinvention of what made the series special. Stylish, technically impressive, but narratively safer than it should have been.
Where It All Sparked to Life
There was a raw energy to the original Infamous that later entries couldn’t fully replicate. Released in 2009, it was one of the earliest PS3 exclusives to reallypush open-world designwith physics-based powers. Cole MacGrath’s journey from bike courier to electricity-wielding savior (or tyrant) came packed with hard choices and a story that wasn’t afraid to lean into bleakness.
Empire City felt like a character of its own – broken into quarantine zones, filled with masked gangs and constantly teetering on collapse. Players could either help stabilize it or descend further into violence. The karma system wasn’t just for show. It changed the appearance of Cole’s powers, affected story dialogue and even decided which characters lived or died.
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Even though the movement wasn’t as fluid as in the sequel, the parkour felt grounded, and the combat offered real weight behind every shockwave and thunder drop. What really sealed its legacy, though, was that ending – a time-bending twist that recontextualized the entire journey and set the stage for something even bigger.
1Infamous 2
Cole’s Final Choice Still Hurts to This Day
inFAMOUS 2
Everything that Infamous 1 built, the sequel expanded, polished and then shattered emotionally. Set in New Marais – a swampy, southern-inspired city modeled loosely after New Orleans – Infamous 2 took Cole to new places both physically and morally.
Mechanically, it was a huge step up. The melee-focused Amp gave close combat some real weight, powers like ionic storms and ice blasts added spectacle and missions were more varied and better paced. The karma system remained, but now it came with new conduit allies who embodied the moral extremes.
But what made the game unforgettable was its ending. Sucker Punch gave the players a literal sucker punch to the guy by making them choose between sacrifice and survival, with neither option being clean or heroic. The final choice, and the consequences that rippled from it, effectively closed the door on Cole MacGrath’s story. And it did so with more courage and weight than mostgames in the superhero genrehave ever managed.
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Throw on your gear and check that map, because it’s time to head out and explore the best stories of the Action-Adventure genre.
