As both a sandbox game junkie, as well as someone who loves mob movies that stereotype my Italian heritage, I knew I was going to have to pick up this title. Mafia II takes you inside the life of a poor, Italian immigrant named Vito (big surprise with the choice of name by the way, also happens to be my middle name) who is brought over to America at a young age. His father, a poor alcoholic dockworker doesn’t make enough to support the family, and Vito swears to himself he won’t end up like his father, and will do whatever it takes to make money and provide for himself and loved ones. He teams up with his best friend, and future partner in crime Joe. Starting out pulling small time jobs, and working their way up to bigger money making opportunities, they eventually make friends inside of organized crime. Over the years they make the right connections, and it isn’t long until they become made men.
While the plot of this game is every other mob movie you have seen rolled into one, the storyline stays compelling despite its lack of originality. Mafia II does a few things very well, and one of them is a trend I have seen more and more in games, character development. Historically a tactic more used in feature films, Mafia II makes you care for your criminal main character much in the way that many Mafia movies have as well. It doesn’t matter that he is pumping rounds into someone’s head just to make a buck, the way the story is told, you don’t really feel like he is a bad person. The down side is to establish such a feeling towards the main character, the first few hours of this game are painstakingly slow action wise.
Another highlight of the story telling is the character dialog. The writers of this game NAILED the mafia genre attitude for their characters. The characters, even down to the NPC’s who are walking around on the street, have the mafia attitude from the vulgar swearing, casual racism, to the “I don’t give a #*#& what you think” attitude. Oh, that word isn’t bleeped out in the game, and they say it a TON.
Mafia II is also definitely a title for adults. The violence is top notch, the swearing is bountiful, and the crime content itself is something to keep the kiddies away from. But there was an additional adult feature I haven’t seen in a game before up until this point. One of the collectibles in the world of Mafia II is classic Playboy pictures from that time period. ACTUAL…PLAYBOY…PICTURES. Yes, there are 40 some odd collectible pictures of 1940’s and 1950’s nude models in playboy magazine. Sure I have seen naked computer generated people in video games before (Dante’s Inferno, God of War, etc), however to actually have real pictures of real people is a little odd. Also a lot odder when you take into account most of those women are probably dead…
However for all the things Mafia II does well, it does a few things flat out horribly. Firstly most of the game play is driving around Empire City. Even the missions tend to be 50% driving. Most other sandbox titles that have come out the past two years have found a way to get around this by allowing you to skip the long tedious drive around the city to get right to the action (often at the expense of dialog), or they just put the mission objectives close together. This game does neither of those.
Also the AI of the police that chase try and stop you is set to drooling idiot. On top of that, they decided the police should try and arrest you for everything, including speeding and running red lights. This just seems like a really poor choice when most of the game is driving. So while you just want to go ahead and slam on the gas to get to the next part of your mission across town, you have to deal with a bunch of moron police officers trying to pull you over. You can literally pull over, come to a complete stop, wait for the cop get out of the car and walk to your driver’s side window, and slam on the gas and get away 100% of the time. Mafia II tries to compensate for the “speeding” thing by allowing you to toggle “safe driving mode” on and off which will cap your speed so you don’t get pulled over. Personally I would have liked them to do away with it all together. More realistic in a game doesn’t always mean better game play.
In another lapse, the mission themselves are uninspired. I don’t know if it is just the large amount of time you spend driving around during the missions, but I didn’t find them particularly as entertaining as other sandbox titles like Grand Theft Auto. I found about one out of three of them actually fun. The other two out of three were boring and just served to progress the storyline. Truth be told it takes you about 5 hours of game play to even get to full on, mob violence style kind of mission. Everything up until that is a lot of errand boy stuff.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m disappointed I bought the game, as I have enjoyed playing the title, but what I am finding most appealing in the game is the story line, the cut scenes, and how well the game nails the Italian Mafia genre. Sadly the game play has little to nothing to do with it. Additionally, the game length isn’t all that long (story line wise, it’s a sandbox so you can really play for a while without progressing the story line). This game is definitely a renter to pick up from Gamefly or your local rental facility.
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