Ok, hear me out.

You start the game game out and the hero is blamed for the recent catostrophe(s). You gain amazing abilties and use them to clean up the town. As time goes on you gain the support of the people.

Gampelay consists largely of:

 running on top of rooftops

floating to your destination

walking across  wires

collecting specific items

gradually gaining more powers.

Oh and one final thing: the Townspeople are incredibly UGLY

Alright so this all a pretty big stretch but I thought it was interesting to see all the similarities.

In all honesty I'm loving InFAMOUS. It's scratching that itch for an open world game with more freedom than just walking around that I haven't seen since Sunshine

can't argue that logic,.. sony ripped of nintendo yet again.

It's more or less a more expansive Sly Cooper 2 & 3 if you think about it. However, Sly 2 came out after Sunshine. So technically Infamous is a ripoff of a ripoff.

And the main character is a moron without personality. Agreed!

I noticed that as well when it came to the floating ability. It doesn't even make since since lightning doesn't make you float :/

But everything else you listed is very vague and can apply to many other games. "collecting things" wasn't invented by Mario Sunshine. It's a bit of stretch to say that it copied that mechanic.

I've never played Mario Sunshine. Despite it being considered a disappointment, was it an influential game?

Ay Mario had more personality in one "Mamma Mia!" than Cole had in all of his lines of dialouge

No. But it did inspire the Galaxy games though.

Not really, that's why I'm glad InFamous has similar feel. You really should play it though 

Yah I know. I almost added "defeating enemies to the list" but that would be pushing it lol.