From the people who brought us the brilliant Mafia years ago comes the sequel Mafia 2. This tale places you in the shoes of World War 2 vet Vito Scaletta who returns home from the war early only to realize he doesn’t really like living in the dirt poor neighborhood his mother and sister are in.
Mafia 2
Developer: 2K Czech
Price: $60.00
Platform: PC, PS3 (reviewed), & 360
So what does every Italian in those days do in this situation? Join the mafia of course! You’ll accompany Vito on his rise through the ranks of the mafia family as he steals, kills, and beats his way through anybody in his way for that next paycheck. I’d like to mention that this game is the very definition of Murphey’s Law, which the game humorously has one of it’s chapters titled after. Literally every time a character says “What could go wrong?” things go badly for Vito.
The game starts you out in the great city of Empire Bay which is totally not a New York rip-off. Now you might open the map when you start and see the ‘fun’ you’re going to have while not doing missions and just messing around, but I’m here to crush those dreams. Mafia 2 is what I like to call a linear game disguised as an open world game. By this I mean that you have this big open map but all it’s there for is for show. There are no side-missions to complete, no safehouses to buy, no races, nothing at all. There are clothing and gun stores scattered around the town but those are there in case you need to refill on ammo or to lose the police by changing clothing. You can also lose the cops by changing the license plate on your car in a body shop, this is where you’ll ‘pimp’ out your ride by changing colors, rims, and tune it up. You always have an objective to complete but never a time limit of doing it unless they specifically mention it. The most fun you could do is rob stores and even that gets old after you learn how to take advantage of the fact that you can steal clothing to quickly lose that wanted status. Although I guess you can make your own fun like I did for a while where I would steal hotdogs in the diner then drive away from the police. It would always crack me up that I had police officers going to such great lengths to take me down for stealing hotdogs. I just wish there was more to do in the city since it feels like the developers cut out content since you can go speak to Derek and Bruski(2 story characters you can sell vehicles to) and ask them for jobs, but they never seem to have any for you.
The story is really the shining gem in the game. You really do feel connected to Vito and Joe and they go out of their way to help each other out through the game. The gunplay works, but it’s not anything amazing to talk about. Melee is something that works as well, but ultimately is once again as basic as the gunplay.One thing I enjoy about the game is that 2k wanted to go for a more realistic approach and you can die from just a few shots. This really keeps the tension going in certain missions when cover all over you is being shredded about by your enemies. Of course this leads to cheap deaths in certain missions where there is always a man with a shotgun hidden around a corner who blasts you the instant to step into the hallway. These were a majority of my deaths and got really annoying. Another annoying detail is that you can’t shoot while driving so in the car chases you have to rely on your ally to take out the enemies in the cars since instead of the car having it’s own separate health-bar like in most games when the car gets shot you do too. The story does have it’s moments though as you go from robbing jewelry stores to having shootouts on top of a hotel only to blow up a room in it and continuing the fight inside the hotel, then finishing it off with a car chase. In between these epic set piece moments are some really odd additions where you’ll be on one end of the map and then the game forces you to drive all the way to the other end to your house to simply go to sleep in your bed to conclude the chapter. I get it’s supposed to be a realistic game or something but having to drive all the way back to your house to simply go to sleep starts to feel arbitrary after a while. I would’ve really preferred a way to fast travel to my home or simply end the chapter after finishing the mission since Vito doesn’t even at the least offer his thoughts on the mission while on the drive home.
The graphics in this game are some of the worst I’ve ever seen on the PS3 and I’m going to quote my friend by saying “they should change the name of this game from Mafia 2 to Jagged Line: The Game”. There are jagged lines everywhere, textures popping in, muddy looking textures, and not to mention frame-rate issues. The PC version is obviously the best version with the 360 just a tad bit better than the PS3 version. The game does sport an amazing soundtrack both of licensed artists from the 40’s-50’s and an instrumental soundtrack that truly sets the mood in the game. My only gripe with the music is when I played the game the radio would always play the same couple songs and I rarely got to hear some of the other songs. One song I love is Richie Valens ‘Come On Let’s Go’. I only heard this song twice during a single playthrough. I didn’t even hear it at all on my second run in hard mode, while a certain song I would constantly hear and it really got on my nerves. How could a game with over 100 songs play the same ones over and over?
If you happen to fancy the PS3 version then you’ll get the bonus of an exclusive dlc pack titled “The Betrayal of Jimmy” and contains it’s own little story about a new character Jimmy. In it you have the entire city to drive around in and complete various side-missions scattered around that involve shootouts and car chases. Each mission has a point system with multipliers for getting fast chain kills so it has a very arcade-ish feel to it. Even while driving around the city you get points for simply doing things like drifting. It’s nothing spectacular but it is a nice distraction for a while after you finish the story.
The Final Word
Mafia 2 has an epic story with interesting missions in it, but that’s all I can give it. The shooting is sup-par at best, frame-rate is horrid, the graphics are complete garbage, and the city is completely devoid of things to do. If you are intent on buying it I urge you to get the PC version if you can, or if you’re so intent on bonus content get the PS3 version for The Betrayal of Jimmy dlc. This is seriously a game you play for the story which can be completed in around 8 hours. One bonus is that the game has 50 sweet Playboy magazines you can collect, and you can even track the amount of time you’ve been looking at them in the stats screen. I’ve got 2 minutes worth of eyeballing. Oh yea there are wanted posters to collect too but they don’t have any nudity in them so why bother am I right guys?
– MonsterVine Rating: 3 out of 5 – Average
