It has a couple rough patches, but Infamous 2 is a solid open-world platformer that is a joy to play.
The original Infamous was great. It wasn't the best looking game, but the controls and mission design were very well done. So the question is, how do you improve upon what already well? The answer is simple: add some extra environmental hazards. The missions in Infamous 2 didn't have the railways to race across to get from one place to another, and the marshy swamps of New Marais made getting from one patch of land to another a challenging experience. It came together in a perfectly balanced package that was a blast to play. These very same marshy lands were a vast improvement over the grey landscape of Empire City. Art design and graphics were so much better then the first game that its hard to go back and play the first one without questioning if these people are really the same characters.
Thats not to say Infamous 2 doesn't have its problem. Character personalities are waaaaaaaaaay overdone. The supposed good lady wouldn't dare do anything to jeopardize people, while the girl you meet a bit later is just a strait-up badass who doesn't care about anyone. This extreme character development brings me to my other problem with this game: the ending. The "good girl" was willing to sell out humanity just to keep herself alive at the end, while the badass chick was ready to convert to being good just because evil threatened her pets. This completely contradicted each characters personalities and got me extremely confused.
Despite these shortcomings, the good easily overshadows the bad in this game and earns this game a good score.