Building off the great success of Mafia the team at 2K Czech are back to breaking knees with Mafia 2. Breaking from the first game, gamers will find themselves in the middle of 1940′s and 1950′s. Mafia 2 follows the story of Vito Scaletta. Son of immigrants to the USA and Empire Bay, Vito is brought up poor and looking to make a name for himself and pay off his family’s debts. After getting caught during a simple robbery gone bad with his friend Joe, Vito chooses to go into the army where he finds himself overseas fighting in World War II. After two years at war Vito has returned home to Empire Bay, where he is quickly united with his friend Joe. This is where Vito’s journey with the Mafia in Empire Bay begins. The storyline of Mafia 2 is heavily character driven, it’s not about making it to the top, it’s all about Vito trying to escape the same destiny as his father, and live his dreams of becoming a “made man.” If your a fan of popular mobster movies, you’ll really enjoy the story and the way in which it is told. I must also applaud the development team for staying true to raw edginess of the genre. From the racy Playboy centerfolds to the coarse and at times racial language, the script just oozes Sopranos-esque dialogue.
For the most part the game’s story unfolds in a rather linear fashion. You go from mission to mission and point A to point B. However the missions do vary greatly, and you won’t ever get to the point where your feeling like your doing the same thing over and over. The story also unfolds in locations other then Empire Bay, though I won’t spoil where, the location change not only adds a bit of flavor to the game but it also helps move time along. The story spans many years, and instead of living in the game day to day, the story is split into chapters. Missions can range from the simple grand theft auto, timed delivery missions, to escort missions, or various hits against competing mobs or gangs. Many of the missions fit into the organized crime genre well and were obviously inspired by the movies, such as when you need to bury a body that’s been in a trunk, or the mission that involves selling cigarettes off the back of a truck, these are great and nice little homages to some great mafia films. To further vary the gameplay experience there are multiple ways to complete some of the missions, maybe you’ll want to use stealth and sneak in and out with out firing a shot, or other times you might want to go in guns blazing, the choice is yours. While I did enjoy the missions, I did miss some of the more open world options of other games. I felt like the game was very planned out and left me very little room to steer Vito’s life and choices. At times you will be told that if you kill or inflict damage during a mission you’ll get less money, but completing the mission clean or dirty didn’t really seem to matter. No matter how I finished a mission the storyline would progress the same.
While the fuzz is very apparent the law is arbitrary at best. Similar to the first game you will be stopped for speeding and hit and runs. However the law system is very arbitrary, as I’ve slammed into many cop cars without an issue, and things like running red lights, driving on the wrong side of the road aren’t cause for alarm. While I could see strict law system as being real annoying, the current system is just not believable and kinda silly. On top of that, running from the cops are a snap, the only time it’s hard to run is when you’re in a stolen car as they know the plate to look for.
Another issue with gameplay is replayabilty. Again once you are done with the game your done, there isn’t anything else to do. And while the game does take sometime to complete, there isn’t much to keep me tied in, not even a multiplayer aspect. While there is already DLC planned that will offer some more arcade style action, I would have liked to see it right out of the box, and having to find Playboy’s and Wanted poster doesn’t cut it for increased playtime. While I hate when games get multiplayer for no reason, Mafia 2 could have used multiplayer. There is enough in the mob genre to create a decent multiplayer experience. Be it Co-op heists, Cops vs. Mobsters, or other themed game types, there are plenty of unique multiplayer possibilities out there, and they would have been welcomed.
AI is very important in shooter games, how well your team works and how smart the enemy is, is very important. And I’m happy to say the AI is fairly good. Friends of your’s will do a decent job laying down cover fire and picking off rivals. And the enemies do a decent job at finding cover, and if you land shots on them they will move to better cover. Even the people of Empire Bay are rather smart and unique, and aren’t just copies of a few pre-set animations.
Mafia 2 looks great and the many years spent building the game’s unique engine has paid off for the most part. Character and car models look great, and the environments feels great. Each section of Empire Bay has it’s own unique style, be it the Port or Little Italy. Areas that are run down will have alleys filled with trash and look much dirtier then the richer areas. As the years unfold you’ll see changes, like posters changing on the walls or just the attitudes and look of the citizens. The city is also fairly alive. And the people of Empire Bay aren’t just randomly generated, you might see window shoppers, store owners boarding up closed businesses, or business men with their brief cases. It’s really a blast just driving around and seeing what’s going on in the city.
While there might not be any real loading times once you get into the game, there is a fair amount of pop-up. For the most part it’s things like trees or other secondary environment elements, that doesn’t effect gameplay. However in one of the early mission you need to drive to numerous gas station within a time limit, once at the gas station you need to talk to the attendant, at times the attendant area of the gas station wasn’t loaded, and required me to wait a couple seconds for it to pop-in. I can handle some secondary pop-up issues, but when major elements pop-up that’s an issue.
Texture-wise I was very happy with the game, the world really looks great, I was quite impressed with the early part of the game during winter, with the snow and ice, the game just looked great. While the environments aren’t fully destructible, there are key parts of the environments that will break apart. For instance corners of walls will break off when shot, this is great when your enemy is in cover as you can break away some of their cover and get at them. While I would have liked some more destruction for my tastes, I think the team is right on the line with just enough in world destruction to make it believable. The game also uses the same textures and graphics engine for both the gameplay and cut scenes, which give you a consistent look throughout. But the plus to this method is your character will have the same clothing and even cars look the same in gameplay and cutscenes. If you drive a shot up car with a missing hood to a spot that triggers a cutscene, then the car will have bullet holes and look identical. Speaking of car damage, all I need to say is, awesome. If you get into an altercation and get your car shot up the bullets will riddle the car nicely, and my favorite is when you clip a pedestrian with the car and get a nice red blood spot on the point of impact.
Unfortunately while the textures used are quite pleasing, there are some oddities with the shadowing in the game, that degrades the texture quality at times. Large shadows from buildings and tress look amazing, and whenever the motion is fast paced the shadows look impressive. But during cut scenes and when the motion is slow you start to see that the shadow edges aren’t decreasing in opacity, but are rather using a cross hatching like pattern, this is very obvious during cutscenes on the character models. I’m sure this method is used to keep the frame rate solid, but it makes the textures look subpar and does some funky things to glass. Besides these issues with shadows and the pop-up and occasional frame rate pauses during saving, the game looks amazing and true to that of a living breathing city.
Mafia 2 has a very decent control system. You have 3 sets of controls, driving, hand to hand combat, and walking/shooting. Driving is fairly straight forward, though each car in the game is slightly different, from acceleration/speed to how they handle. Also the weather will affect the handling of cars, snowy icy conditions will cause you to slide easier and will even cause you to spin the tires if you slammed the accelerator. You also have the option to upgrade the look and power of the cars. Don’t worry you won’t lose the upgrades, as long as you have parked the car in your garage with the upgrades it will always be available in your garage in that state.
Hand to Hand combat is also pretty easy, B is to light attack, Y is heavy attack and holding A is dodge. If you tap B or Y multiple times you will do combos, and once you land enough punches you’ll be prompted to do a “finisher” which does vary depending on the situation. Finishers might be simple like a big kick to the face, or a bit more complex like slamming an opponent into a wall or car.
Walking/shooting, is again fairly straight forward and responsive. The A button allows you to enter and exit cover, and the cover system works well, except you can’t go from cover to cover, such as one side of a door to the other side, at times I could have used this, though I never ran into an issue where I would take so much damage that it was an issue. However pressing the X button at a corner will cause you to move around the corner still attached to cover which is nice during shootouts. Though I think even worse then not being able to move from cover to cover, is the blaring omission of blind fire, again while the lack of it never made me feel like the game was to difficult, it’s something you would have expected to be included. There are plenty of weapons at your disposal from simple handguns to big MGs, though I’m surprised there wasn’t more focus on melee weapons. What type of mobster doesn’t use a bat or golf club to break kneecaps??
The team handling sound did a great job with Mafia 2. From the sound effects to the music, this game is great to crank up. The voice talent used was very well crafted and really sounds like the cast of The Godfather or The Sopranos, plus the scripted story is dead on with any popular mobster movie or show. The various sound effects are really enjoyable from the squeak y car brakes to all the fire arm sounds. The soundtrack was an obvious focus as the team did a great job at getting period artists and songs, from Buddy Holly to Dean Martin, there are hits from many 40′s and 50′s big names. The soundtrack really pulls the game together nicely.
Mafia 2 is a really enjoyable game, and I’ve been having a blast playing it. The storyline is very good and is obviously inspired by such great films as Goodfellas and The Godfather, which I love! The story and the voice talent really make up for the shortcomings of the game. While this is technically an open world game, the openness of the experience is rather limited. This is more of a normal story driven game set in an open world. However the open world of Empire Bay is very nice and fun be in while on missions. And the city looks amazing. As the city changes over the seasons and years there are plenty of great sights to see. Even with the odd shadowing at times and the occasional frame drop for saving, this is a great looking game. The biggest drawback is what to do once the story is completed, a multiplayer aspect would have been welcomed or more arcade styled missions, lets hope the future DLC is able to add some decent playtime. If you enjoy mobster games and the culture, Mafia 2 is a game to take a look at. 2k Games really has made a game you can’t refuse.
A copy of Mafia 2 for Xbox 360 was provided to us for this review from 2K Games.
