This is a game that I in all likelihood would have never purchased out of my own volition. But, I ended up getting it since it was part of a humble bundle that I was splitting with +Younes Abutaleb. I can't say that I regret getting or playing the game, but I don't think its an experience I would recommend to anyone due to a number of reasons.
Mafia II is a third person action adventure game that is obviously based around a story that is mostly focused on the Italian-American mob. The game was mostly an internal affair with development and publishing being taken care of within 2k Games, development was done by 2k Czech and the publishing was done by the whole organization of 2k Games. Its available to play on PC on both Windows and Mac OS as well as being available on both the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Before getting into the game I was hoping to talk about some of the more interesting things about the game that happened as a result of its getting made. I found it particularly interesting the game was actually brought up on accusations of racism, glorification of violence and obscenity charges in three separate cases. The first came from the US where an Italian-American organization (UNICO) accused the game of playing up Italian stereotypes, I found this amusing since the game is not any different from some of the more revered Mafia movies like the Godfather series. The second cam from Italy, where the game was brought up in European parliament and an unsuccessful attempt of banning the game was launched by Sonia Alfano, this I'm a bit more understanding of, although I don't support those actions I can at least see the logic behind the thinking of the ban attempts. The last one is more an acknowledgement as opposed to a charge, but the game currently holds the record for the game with the most uses of the word "Fuck" in the world with over 200 instances of the word being noted. But that really should not matter since the game does have a correct M rating. None of this really tells you much about whether this is a good game or not, but I thought it would be interesting to bring it. I'll just give you a bit of a heads up that this was all just a lot of noise for a game that didn't deserve any of it.
Mafia II is primarily a third person shooter and I'm going to start diving into the game starting with those mechanics. I'm not entire sure if this game was developed for consoles first and moved to PC, but I felt awkward on more than one occasion trying to control my character. Moving in and out of cover was a bit frustrating at times since the game would not register or dive instead of cover, or cover behind the wrong object. The controls on the guns was fine, it was competent with nothing new really coming out of that part of the game. Although, there was more than one occasion where a head shot did not register and clear instances of the AI being quite dumb with regards to the cover it chose. The hand to hand combat was a bit better, but it was pretty boring given that it is essentially three moves and only comes up in the game about five times if I am not mistaken. As a whole this entire combat aspect of the game, both gun and hand to hand, ranks in upper mediocrity at best. Unfortunately there not all parts of the game managed to achieve the high standard of mediocrity as their goal with the driving aspect of the game just being dismal. Aside from the cars being slow, they control like fridges on wheels at best and its one of the most experiences I had in a videogame when I tried to drive in this game. What makes this a cardinal sin for the game is that you are always forced to drive in the game on all the missions and there are even some chase and follow missions in cars that all just made me want to rip my hair out of my head. There was no need to force me to drive around the world since its pretty much an empty facade, they could have just let me make the AI drive like in L.A. Noire or just skipped all the driving sections with cut scenes. This isn't the end of the frustration you are going to feel playing Mafia II though.
Just think of the driving as the first step in your descent to subpar gaming when it comes to Mafia II. The game was panned and looks at a glance like an open world adventure game, once you actually start looking around though you clearly see that its all pretty much a massive lie. The setting of New York, called Empire City in the game, is pretty pointless since the entire world is a facade. There are clothes stores that I visited on occasion, maybe the only marginally useful stores. Otherwise though, I never once visited the gun stores, gas station or car repair shops aside from getting the related achievements since you don't need to at all. You can play the entire game without going to any of them and your game would actually be better. On top of that please make a massive note that the entire city has literally nothing else to offer, its an entirely dead world which itself is a perfect segway to the fact that the game is entirely linear. Aside from the story missions there is literally nothing else to do in the game. There is no world to explore, there is no new characters to see or old ones to flesh out, its just one story mission after another in a gilded cage.
I wouldn't be so hateful if the game did not attempt to disguise itself as a sandbox game. Because the core story isn't that bad, the character in it are interesting, the story line makes sense and I did not find any outstanding loopholes in the overall narrative. I found it to be as good as any crime focused film like Scarface or the Godfather series, yes it lacked their character but it not really that different. I would even go so far as to say that I found the story interesting, hell I had to because something pushed me to see the game through to the end despite its clunky controls, and I would go so far as to call out the narrative as the game's strongest aspect. Floating to the top isn't difficult though given the plethora of weakness that I listed above.
Mafia II isn't a game I would recommend. The game is starting to show its age. Maybe there would be one exception though, its strong narrative still might be enough to drive the interest of people who find Mafia themed stuff compelling as it might push them to actually see the game through to the end. Otherwise though, the dead world, utterly average combat mechanics, entirely linear game should be enough to keep almost everyone away from this game. Even if you were to take the fact it came out in 2010 as a consideration it would still be subpar, just look at some of the other games that came out that year and this game will be blown out of t he matter.
Mafia II is a third person action adventure game that is obviously based around a story that is mostly focused on the Italian-American mob. The game was mostly an internal affair with development and publishing being taken care of within 2k Games, development was done by 2k Czech and the publishing was done by the whole organization of 2k Games. Its available to play on PC on both Windows and Mac OS as well as being available on both the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Before getting into the game I was hoping to talk about some of the more interesting things about the game that happened as a result of its getting made. I found it particularly interesting the game was actually brought up on accusations of racism, glorification of violence and obscenity charges in three separate cases. The first came from the US where an Italian-American organization (UNICO) accused the game of playing up Italian stereotypes, I found this amusing since the game is not any different from some of the more revered Mafia movies like the Godfather series. The second cam from Italy, where the game was brought up in European parliament and an unsuccessful attempt of banning the game was launched by Sonia Alfano, this I'm a bit more understanding of, although I don't support those actions I can at least see the logic behind the thinking of the ban attempts. The last one is more an acknowledgement as opposed to a charge, but the game currently holds the record for the game with the most uses of the word "Fuck" in the world with over 200 instances of the word being noted. But that really should not matter since the game does have a correct M rating. None of this really tells you much about whether this is a good game or not, but I thought it would be interesting to bring it. I'll just give you a bit of a heads up that this was all just a lot of noise for a game that didn't deserve any of it.
Mafia II is primarily a third person shooter and I'm going to start diving into the game starting with those mechanics. I'm not entire sure if this game was developed for consoles first and moved to PC, but I felt awkward on more than one occasion trying to control my character. Moving in and out of cover was a bit frustrating at times since the game would not register or dive instead of cover, or cover behind the wrong object. The controls on the guns was fine, it was competent with nothing new really coming out of that part of the game. Although, there was more than one occasion where a head shot did not register and clear instances of the AI being quite dumb with regards to the cover it chose. The hand to hand combat was a bit better, but it was pretty boring given that it is essentially three moves and only comes up in the game about five times if I am not mistaken. As a whole this entire combat aspect of the game, both gun and hand to hand, ranks in upper mediocrity at best. Unfortunately there not all parts of the game managed to achieve the high standard of mediocrity as their goal with the driving aspect of the game just being dismal. Aside from the cars being slow, they control like fridges on wheels at best and its one of the most experiences I had in a videogame when I tried to drive in this game. What makes this a cardinal sin for the game is that you are always forced to drive in the game on all the missions and there are even some chase and follow missions in cars that all just made me want to rip my hair out of my head. There was no need to force me to drive around the world since its pretty much an empty facade, they could have just let me make the AI drive like in L.A. Noire or just skipped all the driving sections with cut scenes. This isn't the end of the frustration you are going to feel playing Mafia II though.
Just think of the driving as the first step in your descent to subpar gaming when it comes to Mafia II. The game was panned and looks at a glance like an open world adventure game, once you actually start looking around though you clearly see that its all pretty much a massive lie. The setting of New York, called Empire City in the game, is pretty pointless since the entire world is a facade. There are clothes stores that I visited on occasion, maybe the only marginally useful stores. Otherwise though, I never once visited the gun stores, gas station or car repair shops aside from getting the related achievements since you don't need to at all. You can play the entire game without going to any of them and your game would actually be better. On top of that please make a massive note that the entire city has literally nothing else to offer, its an entirely dead world which itself is a perfect segway to the fact that the game is entirely linear. Aside from the story missions there is literally nothing else to do in the game. There is no world to explore, there is no new characters to see or old ones to flesh out, its just one story mission after another in a gilded cage.
I wouldn't be so hateful if the game did not attempt to disguise itself as a sandbox game. Because the core story isn't that bad, the character in it are interesting, the story line makes sense and I did not find any outstanding loopholes in the overall narrative. I found it to be as good as any crime focused film like Scarface or the Godfather series, yes it lacked their character but it not really that different. I would even go so far as to say that I found the story interesting, hell I had to because something pushed me to see the game through to the end despite its clunky controls, and I would go so far as to call out the narrative as the game's strongest aspect. Floating to the top isn't difficult though given the plethora of weakness that I listed above.
Mafia II isn't a game I would recommend. The game is starting to show its age. Maybe there would be one exception though, its strong narrative still might be enough to drive the interest of people who find Mafia themed stuff compelling as it might push them to actually see the game through to the end. Otherwise though, the dead world, utterly average combat mechanics, entirely linear game should be enough to keep almost everyone away from this game. Even if you were to take the fact it came out in 2010 as a consideration it would still be subpar, just look at some of the other games that came out that year and this game will be blown out of t he matter.
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