Infamous: Festival of Blood is awesome. Serving as standalone DLC to Infamous 2, not unlike the Undead Nightmare expansion for Red Dead Redemption, this expansion shows New Marais celebrating a Halloween-esque holiday known as Pyre Night. This is a macabre, spooky evening where the citizens of New Marais dress up in costumes and raucously party in the streets. The holiday is celebrated annually in remembrance of the killing of the vampire Bloody Mary by a local hero, the Catholic priest Father Ignatius. Typically, Pyre Night comes and goes without any major issues, but this year things take a sinister turn when Bloody Mary rises from the grave, seeking to turn Cole into her superhuman minion and wage war against the people of New Marais.
At the very beginning of Festival of Blood, Cole is bitten and turned, though he won't be fully under Bloody Mary's control until dawn rises on New Marais. This race against time forms the driving force of the story. Cole must navigate through a dark city now teeming with dangerous bloodsuckers to find the famous cross that Father Ignatius used to exterminate vampires and kill her with it again. Of course, this task proves to be significantly more complicated than it should be, and Cole is left scrambling up until the very last moment. Cole, with help from his good friend Zeke, manages to overcome Bloody Mary and her horde of nightcrawlers and save New Marais.
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Festival of Blood is a short expansion; it can be fully beaten within three hours or so. Given that the events of the DLC take place all within a single night, I think Sucker Punch did a great job of presenting a concise, tense story without much narrative fat. You still have an open-world to explore, but there aren't a ton of secondary objectives to spend time on. You have some PSN trophies that you can work toward earning, and moves that you can unlock through combat challenges, though I should say that combat is largely identical to what you'd find in the core game. There are also some bits of lore scattered throughout parts of New Marais, and these tell you more about Bloody Mary and her past. These are totally worth finding, just to learn more about the intriguing story at the rotten heart of Festival of Blood.
This expansion also prominently features UGC, (user generated content) which are player-created missions which you can complete if you're wanting to spend more time with Festival of Blood. As you'd probably expect, these missions lack any sort of the polish or depth that you'd find in a properly designed mission from the actual campaign. Unfortunately, in order to progress through the campaign, you're required to complete a few UGC missions that Sucker Punch themselves designed, and even these just feel comparatively dull against the fantastic and compelling main story.
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There isn't much more that I have to say about Festival of Blood. It's more Infamous, so if you liked the first two games, I think you'll really enjoy this expansion. New Marais' distinctive aesthetic served as the perfect setting to receive a gothic horror-tinged makeover. I thoroughly enjoyed the awesome story and tone that they captured in Festival of Blood, and really would've loved to see Sucker Punch get the chance to explore this even further.
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