Infamous

-Story based Side missions. Why Sucker Punch opted to make pretty much all side missions a "name a meaningless task, you go do it without quetion" type is beyond me. They should have gone for more side story element. What I like about GTA is that when you go on a said "X-Type" mission its not just do the mission, they give it a purpose. For example instead of a generic Go steal this car, GTA will instead give you your cousin's in need of a ride to get to work so you want to commandeer a ride for him. This would have melded nicely with Infamous' hero's plight concepts.

-Actually stat tracking menus. The Stunts list from Infamous 1 was the bane of my existance. How the hell they are just going to NOT give you a actual list of what stunts you are doing. Instead you were only shown one at a time in sequence and had very little to identify which ones you have done already and which you have not. Terrible design decision.

-Custome outfits. I get they probably wanted to sell new outfits as DLC, that is fine by me. Yet I would have liked to dress Cole up a bit to my liking, put my own spin on him to personalize. Could have been similar to how HOME's costumes work. Would have been much appreciated.

I like Infamous, but I agree that the side-missions are dull. BUT they should be instead like the ones in Batman:AC, in which certain group sub-missions have a plot AND a boss.   So you have 6 sub-missions related to each other because who is causing the problems is certain villain.   Well, I think this can also be merged with what you said, reagarding having a NPC helping you in the mission.