Mafia II Review – “Your a wise guy ay?”

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Mafia 2 - Review

Mafia II is a long awaited sequel to 2002’s massive acclaimed title ‘Mafia’. Fans and gamers alike have waited for over 8 years to get another slice of a “Goodfellas” styled pie as well as films like “One Upon a Time in America” always aim to make a great video game story. The original title was great at setting a scene and not just being an excuse to rage riot in a city much like previous Grand Theft Auto titles. Mafia wanted you to understand the people you were working with/for and made sure that you cared about the people in the game. Mafia II aims to follow on from the success of the original or will it just find itself in a ball of flames?

Story

Mafia II tells the story of Vito Scaletta’s rise to power in the wise guy world of the Mafia. The game is set on the streets of Empire Bay, an American City that has become plagued with crime and deceit. With no relation to the original games’ Lost Heaven or the original plot line. This has left some fans of the previous title a little jaunted over the decision to not continue on the same timeline, there was always an opportunity to say that Tommy Angelo had a son or something? (We would approve of making that sort of stuff up!). You have a fellow acquaintance called Joe Barbaro who you were best friends with whist growing up, he plays a key role in the games story ark in helping you out for work, money, etc.

The game begins with a fly through a window to give you the opening scene of “Hey, I’m a guy who has done bad, this is my story” piece. The story will take twists and turns throughout and in most cases will leave you wanting more, pressing on towards the 15chapter endgame. It does feel a little stretched towards the end but you begin to see where the game is going about a 3^rd of the way in. It turns out that you are the son of some Sicilian immigrants who came to America in the early 20^th century. As a young child you saw quite a lot of gruesome acts, you even get to see a man getting his face punched in! Terrific! After turning the ripe age of 18 you get caught doing a rather dodgy botched robbery, leading to you have a sentence in...the army? Yes, Vito takes some time out of the possibility of going behind iron bars to instead hold an American rifle and fight for your country.

The game’s opening mission is you on tour with the army. As much as it is the tutorial level of the game you actually get to use a surprising amount of firearms to tickle your taste buds for what is to come. The story is told through conversations whilst you are driving through the city and in-game cut-scenes. Even the world news of the present war of the time frame is played on news bulletins on the radio. The voices and personalities of the people you will meet throughout the game’s story do feel rather genuine, some may even come across with a few witty lines that may just make you chuckle, some great writing in most cases.

Story and characters do remain well written, everything fits the role that it was meant for, and for sure everything needs to be as Italian and mafia as possible. The characters you meet are all well scripted and really do a take a turn for the books in most moments, the atmosphere works. The games endgame can be reached in 10-12 hours, 15 on the harder difficulty

Gameplay

The game doesn’t really play in any other 3^rd person shooter styles, well at least control wise. The developers of Mafia II have taken the genres new mechanics from the past 5 years and begun placing them in Mafia II with their own controller scheme. The game has its own cover system mapped by the ‘A’ button (X on the PS3), which is adapted from Gears of war’s way of thinking. It’s a cover system that is plagued by ‘first time use’ annoyance. It continues to have you stuck to cover when you don’t want to be, you’ll find yourself furiously mashing the ‘A’ button to fix the problem, landing you in a loop of stickiness.

When the cover system does work, it works really quite well. It’s a great looking and working system once adapted to. You can peer in and around corners to get rather accurate shots against your enemies; it is key to many missions’ set pieces, especially on the harder difficulty setting. Firearms are helped out by the games incredibly powerful auto-aim, it’s so powerful that the player’s sperm count must be dwindling. The crosshair reticule does like to aim square for the face once you have pulled the aim trigger. We found that getting an accurate shot off on a nearby target would have you automatically targeting a closer enemy; we struggled to get precise shots fired.

As ever you will do bad things in Mafia II, you are a practically a criminal with a heart, arguably. You will be picking locks quicker than you can say “Bada-bing!”. Picking locks will be used to get into cars, safes and locked doors that may just be hiding something. The simple mini-game of pulling the stick in a certain direction and then clicking the locks into place is simple yet effective. In many instances throughout the game you will find yourself pressured for time, so stealing that all important sports car may just have you breaking a sweat, especially when your in a middle of a firefight, or about to enter one.

Being a member of the mob you may want to do things sneaky from time to time, lurk in the shadows whilst people walk past, not even noticing the shine off your pristine hat. The option to crouch magically mutes the sound of your footsteps from passers by and you can then sneak up behind enemies un-aware and then swiftly go about breaking their neck like a twig. Snap. This is used throughout the game’s story ark, to steal those all-important files that are worth £££ to the mafia. You can’t actually use the sneak ability in normal gameplay, you’ll just find yourself getting shot at.

Driving has been given a great feel. The cars are also affected by the current weather in the world. For instance: driving on snow will have the car feel rather loose and sliding around the road, use of the handbrake is not recommended. Also the damage models on the vehicle will cause a rather bumpy ride if you have taken a few heavy blows to your wheels and rubber tires. If your car does take that critical blow to the engine you may have to get out the car to fix the engine. Simply open the bonnet and with a click of the button most of the black deathly smoke will depart, a feature we have never seen in a game before, the option to be your own mechanic! Cars are also stored in your garage and you can happily take out any vehicle you have collected throughout the game whenever you like. However, even the old rusty buckets stay there, so they end up clogging up your garage space of 10 cars. There is no option to remove them, oddly.

If you do at some point break the law, which you will have to naturally at some time in the game the police will be after you. Much like any GTA game you have a felony bar which will indicate to you if your getting away for the cops or not, taking that swift turn down an ally way may just throw them off guard and you may even make it away. The A.I for the police is rather enjoyable to watch, we found that running through a park and hiding behind a bush was an amazing way of hiding from the filth, and it even worked! If your caught in a vehicle it will remain wanted until you have changed the plates or you have taken your sentence, making those getaways even harder when your in the same car. This definitely adds more depth to the chase scene and you can either hijack another car or go to the chop shop to get the plates changed (and personalize your own ID!).

Mafia II is at heart a linear world. A story driven world which holds your hand, pulling you through it. Places to go and purchase new outfits so you can look proper fly and of course the local gun shop to pick up a 9mm pistol on your way to work. It is nice that they have made these places for you to go to and purchase goods which will help you out in your missions but we did feel that to fully fledge them out the game would have to become an open world game, which wouldn’t be a good thing to the Mafia title.

Visuals and Audio

Mafia II suffers visually; it looks like a game with the same visual standards as the original title. Jagged lines extrude your eyesight with the amount of awful anti-analyzing problems, everything looks razor sharp and looks as though it could cause considerable damage to the player. Most cut scenes are rendered with the in game engine and in most early scenes they render rather horrendously. Indoor sequences suffer from bad textures and visual glitches. Objects, like food and other items, which the players interact with, look truly alien and are frankly awkward. These textures look 2D and motionless. Once you’re in the more action packed scenes you’ll notice the more likeable textures, smoke looks great and other particle effects glamour up the scene.

Although the game does look aged It’s still a world which remains representable whilst you are traveling around the city. Animations of faces work well and eyeballs have a rather mesmerizing look to them, thought It was best to take note of that. There are moments where you can see the smoke rippling of a lit cigarette or from burning rubber of a set of tires, looks real nice! A main problem we did have to deal was a rather muggy frame rate. We played the console version of the title (so it will be different for you PC gamers out there) which suffered from frequent ups and downs in the FPS department. During heated disputes the game felt muggy and as though you were dragging a dead body around. It mostly runs at a steady 30fps but it doesn’t feel a good enough for the player.

To progress the story on a few years or months you are presented with a pre-rendered cutscene, showing off what you have been doing with your life. These look great and we were left to wonder why they didn’t just do every cutscene like this, a rather strange mix in the cutscene office at 2K Czech.

The games soundtrack is brilliant, exceptional to the eardrums. The car radio has jazz, big band, blues and rock n’ roll tracks from the timeframe. Broadcasts are frequently plugged onto the radio as well, so news on the on going world war in Europe is mentioned, as well as your on going deeds in the city. The game also has an orchestral score for the game’s main soundtrack and much like the original game it draws an emotional sound for the player, especially the menu music. A well written score overall. Sometimes you may even spill a tear if you stay in the pause menu too long, or that may just be us.

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Details

Category: 3rd Person Shooter
Age: BBFC rated 18 Years and above
Publisher: Take 2

Trouser pressing:

1. An overall well scripted story and characters, mostly likeable people.
2. Driving and shooting mechanics work really well.
3. Great soundtrack to tune into whilst traveling across the city

Bullet wounds:

1. Shops are pointless to the world, you hardly visit.
2. A few graphical glitches here and there, looks aged in comparison to other titles.
3. Frame rate suffers in muggy times.

Overall then…

Mafia II is a worthy sequel to the original game, that’s not to say it’s a great sequel. Like many fans of the original they have been waiting for 8 years for the possibility of a great action packed sequel and this taps that opportunity, slightly. It remains to be a game which will be enjoyed by most, but as soon as the end-game rolls, It’ll end up plunged into the GAME shop bargain bin. If you played the original and can’t wait to check the game out, expect a moderate experience, on the other hand if you’re after another mafia styled game then look no further than Mafia II.

Written and reviewed by Sam Clay

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