Even though inFamous 2 lacks a lot in comparison to the first one, it's still loads of fun.
The scenery moves from Empire City to New Marais as Cole tries to become strong enough to defeat a creature of dangerous power called The Beast. The only bad thing about the new residence is how eerily similar it is to Empire City.
Not much has changed when it comes to the inFamous formulas. The controls feel literally untouched and Cole still sticks to every single thing when it comes to climbing; a feature that should've changed since this usually gets in the way when you're in heavy gun combat and can easily lead to a lot of unnecessary yet frustrating deaths.
Cole starts off with some powerful attacks such as the standard lightning bolt, static thrusters to glide, the ability to zip across electric wires, grenades and better hand-to-hand combat with the introduction of a melee weapon called the Amp. As the game progresses, you obtain new powers and upgrades to your old ones. For example, upgrading the static thrusters makes Cole go even faster and higher in the air. Obtaining these upgrades is even easier with stunts. In the last game, they expected you to know what all of the stunts. This time around, the game tells you what stunt upgrades what and how to unlock it before purchasing, ensuring that obtaining these powers are not time consuming like last time.
With the introduction of new powers also comes the ability to combine Cole's lightning powers with other elements such as fire and ice. Two super powered females (Lucy Kuo and Nix) join Cole's quest to vanquish The Beast, yet they are both one-dimensional; character wise. The ice powers represent the good karma while the fire powers obviously represent the bad karma. Needless to say, gaining full karma for either side can be obtained within the first 8 to 9 hours of this 20 hour plus adventure and a lot of the karma moments are also as one-dimensional as the females. inFamous 1 made you think before you act during the karma moments whereas in inFamous 2 you act before you think.
As such, some of the regular enemies in New Marais range from normal military authority to ice mutants. Randomly, you'll encounter several bosses that come in the form of colossal creatures such as giant mole monsters, a behemoth that eats everything in its path with steel armor to shield itself from damage and a colossal ice mutant with deadly attacks. The good thing about fighting these boss enemies are the depth behind it. All of them do not require the same strategy to defeat them, so once you find the right method taking them down becomes quite a chore.
As impressive as inFamous 2 looks and sounds, this game has its fair share of glitches. One of the most annoying yet questionable are mole bosses burrowing THROUGH the ground and reappearing on the ROOF OF A NEARBY BUILDING. Others don't hinder the game much, though the mole boss glitch is highly annoying.
inFamous 2 takes several steps back from its predecessor and did not live up to the hype that surrounded. That doesn't mean the game was bad. The same karma moments, grenade chucking, lightning shooting and sandbox environment exploration is still there and the combined powers make it a blast. Some parts of it can be cheap when it comes to it being enemy-wise though not completely unfair. I would recommend you play inFamous 2 only if you enjoyed inFamous 1 or like playing games in a sandbox environment.