Game Title Mafia II
Developer 2K Czech
Publisher 2K Games
Platforms PC • PS3 • XBOX 360
Genre/Category Open World • Third Person Shooter
ESRB Rating Mature 17+
Release Date August 24, 2010
Link http://www.mafia2game.com
Mafia II is a third-person, sandbox shooter that provides a look into the dark and unforgiving world of the Mob. Expanding on the original hit, Mafia, that captivated more than 2 million gamers around the world, this new incarnation takes players even deeper into the Mafia with a mature and exciting experience that allows players to explore the gameworld as they wish and immerses them in it like never before. Features include complete gangster movie experience, a wide variety of combat—including vehicular—a mood setting soundtrack and much more.
There was a lot about Mafia II that left me really impressed. The graphics, the story, the overall presentation and polish. But by the time I’d reached the end and watched the credits roll, I also found myself feeling a lingering sense of disappointment. Not by the ending itself, which I thought was just as good as the rest of the narrative. But more by the impression that Mafia II is an incredibly detailed and beautiful structure that’s ultimately skeletal.
There’s no denying that the game’s fictional city of Empire Bay is an awe-inspiring achievement. Very few games in the open-world crime genre actually manage to create a world that resembles a living, breathing thing. And Mafia II can now safely count itself among those illustrious few. Its gritty, thriving, nearly-photo-realistic presentation rivals that of GTA IV’s Liberty City itself. But unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot going on, or that can actually keep you busy between missions.
Unlike most titles in this particular niche, Mafia II is actually surprisingly linear. The whole game is divided up into chapters, each representing it’s own particular time and place, and while you can technically roam around to your heart’s content on many occasions, you’ll quickly find there isn’t much point in doing so.
There are no side missions, or ambient activities like the racing events we might normally see in other games of this kind. All you really have on your plate are the story missions, each presented one after the other, with the possible exclusion of being able to sell stolen cars to a couple of shady characters in town.
You can buy a small selection of outfits, but each one represents a complete set of clothing, so you won’t find the kind of mixing and matching that Saints Row excelled at. And you can also spend some dough on your cars, with modest options for changing the rims, paint job, and engine performance. But once again, these options don’t go very deep, and you can easily exhaust a car’s potential for less than a thousand dollars.
So even though you have a couple of simple ways to earn money between missions (you can rob shops as well) there isn’t a whole lot of motivation to do so. Very few things require spending more than small amounts of cash, and those that do, really aren’t that enticing. On top of that, even the means of earning the money are so simple and threadbare that you probably won’t care to perform them more than a handful of times.
But I definitely don’t want you to get the impression that Mafia II doesn’t have it’s pluses. In fact, I enjoyed the game so much that I logged eight and a half hours with it the first night I played. The graphics are nothing short of jaw-dropping, the story is intricate and beautifully written with believable characters, the voice acting is top-notch, and everything about the game has an inescapable feeling of being polished to a mirror sheen.
Mafia II is an incredibly well-made game. The shooting elements are spot-on, and use an extremely solid cover system. The driving is a pure joy, with the default setting giving you a close approximation of reality without straying toward frustration, while also making available the option to set the game for a full on simulation mode if you prefer. Every control, interaction and feature feels like it received an incredible level of attention and testing. There’s nothing about this game that feels rushed or half-baked.
But for a game that obviously had so much time and effort poured into it, and that wants the player to focus so heavily on the storyline, it’s rather surprising and disappointing that you can breeze through it in less than fifteen hours. And once the credits roll, that’s it. Game over. It’s not an open-ended world you can continue playing around in. Although you can go back and reload specific chapters if the fancy strikes you, but the vehicles and clothing you acquire in later sections of the game don’t transfer over when you replay. So it’s more like re-reading a section from a book than continuing to exist in a virtual world.
Overall, I was really hoping for a 1940′s Grand Theft Auto when I heard about this game. And although you can certainly compare the two franchises on a superficial level, when you get down to the core gameplay elements, they really are two different animals. One strives to let you live a virtual life in a continuous, unbroken, simulated world, while the other focuses on telling a truly compelling, engaging story set against the backdrop of a limited, but still highly realistic city.
So long as you can accept the reality of that, and not get too hung up on “what might have been,” you should do just fine. Mafia II does an outstanding job at what it set out to achieve, and for that, there’s no doubt that it should be praised. I think a lot of people will really enjoy this game.
My Review
Pros Beautiful graphics; Polished mechanics; Engaging story
Cons Less than 15 hours; Not much to do outside of story
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