Path to Platinum: InFamous: Second Son

InFamous: Second Son Platinum Trophy

Difficulty: 3/10

Fun: 8/10

Online Trophies: None

Time: Around 20- 30 hours

The Good, The Bad & The Story

11 years ago, Sucker Punch Productions dropped their final full-length entry into their beloved superpowered open-world adventure series, InFamous, with PlayStation 4 exclusive, InFamous: Second Son. The game itself never quite hit the heights of Cole McGrath's PlayStation 3 adventures, but the Delsin Rowe-led adventure is still a great game that's a lot of fun to play, with an even sweeter platinum to obtain.

InFamous: Second Son puts you in the shoes of new Conduit (A person with superhuman abilities), Delsin Rowe, as he travels to Seattle with his brother to stop the anti-Conduit group known as the DUP and take the powers of their leader to save the lives of his tribe back home. Much like in previous InFamous games, the player can choose to reach this goal by playing as a hero or a villain in a still gorgeous open world.

Tackle Expert Difficulty & Beat It Again

The first thing you'll want to note when tackling InFamous: Second Son is that you'll need to beat the game on expert difficulty and tackle a second playthrough, choosing the opposite path (One good playthrough, one bad playthrough). How you do this will come down to personal preference, whether you want to start with an easy playthrough to get to grips with the game before you then tackle the second playthrough on the more challenging difficulty. Or like me, tackle expert on your first playthrough and run through the second playthrough on easy. It doesn't really matter as long as one playthrough sees you beat it on expert.

Thankfully, expert difficulty isn't too much of a challenge. I beat the expert difficulty on my hero playthrough, as some of the upgrades helped health recovery instead of power, and the karma-specific abilities felt more attuned to my playstyle. What I would say with expert difficulty is to take your time and look to complete as much of the open world as possible, since the collectable blast shards are the currency used to upgrade your abilities.

Map Clear Up Is A Breeze

Speaking of collectables, a good bulk of the trophies come from map clean-up which you'll get from collecting blast shards, beating side missions and defeating the DUP presence in each district. What's great about the map is once you remove the command centre from each district the collectables and side missions will all appear on the map, so hitting 100% on each district becomes an incredibly easy affair.

Thanks to Delsin's array of powers, getting around the map is a breeze, especially after you get the neon powers, which allow you to sprint across the map at speed and run up the side of buildings. It helped make cleaning up each district easy due to traversal speed, also Seattle is a great open world, so working on the map never felt like a chore, but a fun distraction from the central story. It's worth noting that there is one blast shard you won't be able to reach until the final mission, so, like me, don't stress too much trying to reach it before it's available.

The Odd Trophies To Be Aware Of

During your playthrough you'll also find trophies tied to random karma events that pop up throughout the city, these will be for things like zapping sign spinners and buskers, preventing drug busts and freeing detained citizens. Each activity needs to be reacted to 10 times, so as long as you keep your eye open for them and react when they crop up you'll have no trouble.

Outside of these karma-based events, there are a few miscellaneous trophies, but they're a lot easier to achieve than you might think from first looking at them. The trophy 'Cough Drop' can be easily obtained by throwing a smoke grenade onto a drug bust event and then comet dropping onto them, whilst the 'Double Smoke Stack Attack' trophy can appear tricky but can be obtained by going through a vent and then boosting off the output vent before comet dropping onto any unsuspecting DUP agent. The only other trophy that seems daunting at the start is 'Keep It Up', but once you have the concrete powers upgraded, you can simply float down from a tall building and get it, no problem.

All in all InFamous: Second Son is still a great game with an incredibly straightforward trophy list, that's a blast to run through. If you haven't already given it a shot, I'd highly recommend adding it to your platinum collection or if you just fancy working your way through an enjoyable open-world adventure this PlayStation 4 exclusive is still a great time.