Video Game Review: inFamous: Festival of Blood

This is a neat little add-on game for inFamous 2, available either on the Playstation Network or as part of the complete inFamous PS3 collection on disc.  Festival of Blood is basically a side story that pits electric superhero Cole MacGrath  against vampires.  Yep, after fighting armies of freakish gangsters, mutated giants, super-duper robots, and gnarly swamp monsters, vampires are now part of inFamous lore.  What will they think of next?

Building on the same engine of inFamous 2, this game plays smooth and fast.  Some things have been tweaked though; when Cole becomes a vampire, pressing the up button on the D-pad now turns you into a swarm of bats that rushes across the map (sadly, that means the precision beam power is gone).  When you use this power, you drain the blood gauge at the corner of the screen, and you will have to frequently bite people or kill vampires to refill it.  Fighting vampires is the big draw here, and they are a challenge; they take a lot of zapping and beatings to fully defeat, and even then, you have to stake them in the heart, or else they'll just get back up and harass you some more.  I found a lot of the enemies to be a little annoying, due to their resilience and constant teleporting.  This game is made to be short and small-scale, so you don't earn experience points for your progress.  Your powers unlock by completing challenges, rather than assigning points of any kind.  These aspects make the game a little less inviting, since you don't really have that much control over your character, and there's little motivation to do much beyond the basic storyline.  The only thing to really shoot for here is getting trophies (which are easy), and playing through the story.

The story for this game is generally okay, but nothing to really scream about.  It's certainly not as brilliant as the first game, or as in-depth as the second.  It's basically just a yarn with a straightforward objective.  There are only, like, five or so story missions, and it'll only take a few hours to beat it.  The final boss is surprisingly easy too.  It's a short and shallow affair, but it it notable for being able to tie in vampire legend in with the world of inFamous.

A lot of the game's strengths will be the same as with inFamous 2.  As noted above, some features have been changed or truncated to limit the gameplay.  The game even cuts off most of New Marais, so that you only have the first island to play through.  Graphics are still good, the levels receive a nice gothic make-over, and some cool music is added in.

It's a short and forgettable expansion pack, but inFamous fans might get a kick out of it.

3.5/5 (Entertainment:  Good | Story:  Average | Game:  Pretty Good)