inFamous 2

To make the whole process a little less daunting, a group of templates is available for mission types. These provide a basic network of nodes to build upon. For the advanced user, Empty Mission enables creation from scratch anywhere in the game world.

The best example of a playable user-created mission I try is inVADERS, a Space Invaders homage. Cole is tasked with blasting down several rows of monsters as they make their menacing, regimented descent from the sky.

It's simple, smart, left field fun of a type that wouldn't make sense in the game under normal circumstances. Which is precisely the sort of thing Sucker Punch wants to encourage.

Like LittleBigPlanet before it, then, InFamous 2 looks like it will provide the tools not simply to create additional missions but also, for the wildly creative, games within the game. As Media Molecule discovered, the really fun part will be discovering the stuff the game's designers never envisaged.

Whether or not the editing tools prove accessible to mere mortals remains to be seen. But, thanks to the example of LPB, this isn't a serious problem so long as there's a core of crazed obsessives pumping out engaging, inventive content.

And for the budding designer, aside from the promise of tutorials, one nice touch is the ability for level creators to leave text notes in their designs. These appear above nodes, explaining how a certain effect was achieved. Share the knowledge, share the love.

What of the game itself? Already covered in detail in previous Eurogamer previews, Sucker Punch is desperate to stress the leaps - both technical and aesthetic - during this year's tour. The original game has been given a makeover.

Prettying things up was an obvious direction for the sequel to take, but the team has nevertheless thrown itself into the task with gusto. It is with considerable glee that one of the environment team swoops the camera in debug mode through a leafy swamp before crossing into the city, which boasts little pockets of personality largely alien to the often drab uniformity of before.

'We Put In Some Trees and Colour and Stuff' is hardly a hold-the-front-page screamer, but from neon-stained red light district to godforsaken slum, Sucker Punch at least now seems to grasp that visual variety goes hand-in-hand with satisfying sandbox mechanics in motivating players to want to explore an open-world environment for its own sake.

At the very least, the environment is no longer comprised of "a bunch of five-storey urban buildings" as a PR rep puts it (although there's no lack of those).

Meanwhile, a boss battle in an unseen mission called Demon's Running wows as a visual setpiece. It shows off our hero's skills against a massive, Rancor-like beast the size of a tower block.

What's most impressive is that this foe isn't restricted to a defined 'arena'. It's moving (with devastating, spectacular effect) through an open-world, and the technical challenges in making this run smoothly are, as they say, non-trivial.

Doubts persist over whether the karma system will offer genuinely divergent experiences, and whether the host of refinements will amount to a clear overall improvement. And for all the talk about the design of Cole himself as a balls-out, awesomely powerful superhero, he remains, in look and personality, a rather unimpressive and uninspiring figure.

But the inclusion of UGC tools in an action game of this type is a move that at once sets the game apart from other titles in a powerful statement of intent. If inFamous 2 can fulfil its tantalising potential, infamy is surely the least likely outcome.