YMMV / inFAMOUS 2

• Accidental Aesop: Zeke's character arc has a big one. Instead of spending your time wanting what you can't have and trying to accomplish what you're not suited for, if you simply focus on doing your best to help others, you can eventually do great things.
• Accidental Innuendo: Bertrand has this to say right before killing Wolfe.
  Bertrand: We will not allow Dr. Wolfe to play for the other team.
• Complete Monster: Joseph Bertrand III has committed various atrocities such as cruelly experimenting on Lucy Kuo, using the Power Transfer Device to turn Vermaak 88 into insane Conduits with plans to sells them to rich countries, and sacrificing the lives of Nix's mother and several hundred others in his attempt to activate his own Conduit powers. Voluntarily becoming the Behemoth, he would use his powers to turn ordinary humans into the Corrupted while ordering the Militia to execute any Conduits or potential Conduits. After being called a monster for murdering hundreds of innocents all to become a Conduit, Bertrand's only response is that all Conduits must then be monsters and in need of extermination.
• Contested Sequel: While still mostly positive, reviews for the second game were a bit more mixed.
• Continuity Lockout: Downplayed. While there are certain things that make much more sense when you play the first game (Cole's issues with Zeke, his hatred of Kessler, the characters' knowledge of the Beast, and the Beast's identity), the story doesn't require too much knowledge of the first entry.
• Even Better Sequel: The game did much to improve upon what was in the first game, with more powers, smoother gameplay, and even more characters to appreciate. Storywise it's a bit more divisive compared to the first game, but it's still a strong enough story on its own.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Many fanfic writers prefer to pair Cole up with Kuo, even though their relationship feels mostly professional. This is likely because their interactions on a Good playthrough are very friendly and can feel like Ship Tease and the Evil playthrough ends with them both replacing the Big Bad. And while there's some light flirtation between Cole and Nix, the latter is loaded with issues.
• Gameplay Derailment: User Generated Content can be used to collect all the UGC related trophies just by searching for missions that are deliberately short. Even further than this is a UGC mission that will auto-colloect all 305 blast shards, netting you a full power bar and the Just One More trophy.
• Goddamn Bats:
  • Shotgunners, who will use their powers to get right up in your face and hit you point blank with a shotgun blast.
  • Don't forget the Spikers, which are quick, numerous, and have long range attacks on a par with any mook running around with an automatic. On the other hand, this does make Cole's melee animation for killing them, a punt, incredibly satisfying.
  • Festival of Blood being about vampires contains these by default but special mention goes to the Harpies who bounce around just out of reach hanging from improbable locations shooting you with dual Uzis also the zombie civilians who swarm you during certain missions and can deal more damage with a single melee swing than the minibosses can.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Its possible to use User Generated Content to bypass a Broken Bridge to enter the second half of the city before you're supposed to. Depending on the content there can be no enemies whatsoever, and with the power out only the blast shards will show up on the radar. Makes it very easy to find them in that area.Just remember to die before aborting the mission, or you might get stuck.
  • You can also do this without UGC, by lowering the bridge during the "power up Flood Town" mission then crossing it without launching a Tesla Missile at the next transformer.
  • Large bosses such as Devourers can sometimes actually get stuck inside scenery, forcing you to restart the mission, but skipping the boss.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Considering that Zeke activated the Ray Sphere in the first game and the plague is caused by Ray Sphere radiation poisoning it is possible, however unlikely that Zeke gave himself the plague.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Two of the DLC amp skins turned out to be prophetic; One is Sly's cane two years before the raccoon made his comeback (and actually returned the favor with an amp skin for Sly's cane), and the other is a samurai sword, years before the studio would come up with Ghost of Tsushima.
• Jerkass Woobie: Nix.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Considering all the atrocities he commits, it's hard to pin down when exactly Bertrand crossed this. Turns out it was before the game even began. He rounded up hundreds of poor people into the swamp, including Nix's family, and killed them all with a Ray Sphere. All to empower his transformation into a Conduit.
  • More a pragmatic than evil decision in-universe due to the surprisingly deep and complicated moral dilemma but the game locks Cole in the Evil ending if he joins the Beast.
• Player Punch: Both endings are a real gut punch. The Evil Ending requires Cole to personally kill Zeke. He takes multiple hits, and just keeps raising his gun. And he had fully reformed himself before, this time turning on you because you acted selfishly, not him. Then Cole becomes the Big Bad. And the good ending has you go through the process of activating the RFI, knowing it will kill yourself, Kuo, and every Conduit all across the globe.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Zeke was hated by more than a few players in the first game, but considering how Zeke became more mature, useful and was genuinely sorry for his actions in inFAMOUS, he won over some of his haters. It helps that not only does he fully redeem himself, but if he turns on you, it's solely your fault.
  Yahtzee: "[...] Cole's fat comedy sidekick, who was most just an arse-parson in the first game but gains enough depth and character moments to almost become the emotional heart of the story."
• The Scrappy: Nix. She's got a tragic back story, but that's treated as a licence to be insane, rather than a reason for her violent streak. It's especially noticeable because she's usually put opposite Kuo, who has more character depth.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The Amp, as it can be slightly difficult to control. A smaller, less notable one, would be that Cole's ability to regain health by grinding on power lines is gone.
  • While the mission creator is mostly well done, it lacks some features that really limits your creativity, such as the lack of a Karma detector, the inability to make cars drive ^note They can be made to move with the physics editor, but making one to look like it's driving somewhere is pretty darn difficult and the relatively small memory you're allowed to use, although the last one is a limitation forced by the PS3. The swear filter has also been criticized, mostly because it also censors words that the main characters use frequently throughout the story mode.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • To Michael Vey. Both stories have protagonists with electric powers, the hero's best friend is a chubby tech genius, and the Big Bad is a Corrupt Corporate Executive who turns out to be a Boomerang Bigot.
  • The game is also a great adaptation of the X-Men graphic novel God Loves, Man Kills, with Bertrand as a Right-Wing Militia Fanatic version of William Stryker and the Final Boss being equal parts Dr. Manhattan and the Phoenix Force.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Kuo's reluctance to sacrifice herself when the RFI gets activated. Even if the RFI was the only way to stop the Beast, which could kill millions, anybody in that situation would be apprehensive about giving up their lives suddenly unless they were suicidal. Not helping matters is that many people with the Conduit Gene had to die without knowing why. However, despite that, she's painted as a Dirty Coward. Not helped by Kuo being the moral choice at all other times, which means she must have a good reason to act selfishly.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Nix is supposed to be sympathized with because Bertrand killed her parents. However, she comes off as a homicidal sociopath. The only thing you could say in her favor was that she was willing to sacrifice herself for the RFI and even that was done solely for selfish reasons (namely the Beast killing the Corrupted she had tamed, and in the evil ending, wanting to retain her uniqueness, which would be lost if only Conduits survived).
• Unnecessary Makeover: Almost happened. Cole's redesign initially looked like this◊, but fan outcry was so bad that Sucker Punch changed him back to how he looked in the first game.