Mafia II review
It’s time to re-enter the underworld, however does it hold up to the original or should it be whacked off your to buy list?
Vito Scaletta is a Sicilian immigrant who came to America with his family as a child, raised by his very religious mother and his hardworking, but unlucky father. He gets busted as a teen robbing a jewellery store window with Joe Barbaro, his lifelong friend, and rather than facing jail is shipped out to help in the war as an Italian translator.
Cue a short Call of Duty 2 style prologue/tutorial, with Vito being shot in the arm, resulting in him leaving Italy to return home to be greeted by his pal Joe. Less than ten minutes into the game and Joe gets him out of the army and back into his old ways, but not before a quick trip to his mother’s. During his time at war, Vito’s father died and left his family with a $2000 debt, owed to the city’s most prolific loan-shark whose thug is found harassing Vito’s sister Frankie (Francesca).
Slowly but surely a simple task to earn some fast money spirals into what will be a lifetime of violence, shoot-outs, girls and booze for Vito.
The first Mafia game was predominantly progressed and kept in context by Tommy reminiscing to detective Norman, meaning somehow the linearity while within the sandbox made sense. However in Mafia 2 you get only a tiny, almost forgettable cutscene of Vito trying to make sense of where it all went wrong prior to the final mission, and the game slips out of the ‘flashback’ feeling and into a story that is very well constructed, borrowing heavily from almost every gangster film from the past fifty years, and a more than obvious nod to one particular movie about halfway through the game.
The issue with a sandbox game is that you will inevitably need things to do and enjoy after you finish the story. And besides replaying it, there isn’t much else to do in regards to comparing it to other games in the medium.
GTA, Saint’s Row, Red Dead Redemption, they all had some sort of mini-games you could get into whilst spending some time off the beaten track. In Mafia 2 all you have is collecting Wanted posters (152 in total) and some chapter specific classic playboy centrefolds. If it wasn’t for some of the more challenging aspects of the games achievements, it is questionable just how much replayability the game would actually have.
Collecting cash would seem like a viable secondary option, as it would keep your pockets heavy enough to afford continuous load outs of weapons and ammunition to go out and randomly cause carnage. Which is of course an option, but twice throughout the game you have all of your weapons, clothes and money taken from you, and some options aren’t even available after you reach a particular point in the game.
The game has a wonderful selection of golden oldies to hear over the radio, many of which you will catch yourself humming at a later time after extended periods of driving. The cars of old are licensed to the point they even seem to promote the fact through cutscenes in the game, giving you close ups of the model and manufacturer. Luckily this is as far as the promotion goes, there are no unwanted billboards promoting products the way you might have seen in previous sandboxes.
Cars are plentiful, and you can customise pretty much every visual aesthetic of the car, even tuning the engine for a higher response in acceleration or top speed. One of the nicer aspects of the cars is the subtlety of which new models can be introduced chapter after chapter.
Combat comes in two flavours in Mafia 2, gunfights or hand to hand combat. Both work nicely, however the hand to hand combat can be very rough if you should happen to get a bad camera angle, but luckily AI is predictable and easy to avoid once you master the system. The shooting mechanics are very accurate and don’t veer off too wildly from where you were targeting.
Sadly what isn’t pleasing is how glitched the game is. If you don’t at some point experience an indoor location failing to load up that has an objective inside, or the ground secretly opening up beneath your feet or wheels, causing you to fall infinitely in a repeated loop 3 miles below the game world, then you should consider yourself very lucky. Some glitches seem to be chapter specific, but do repeatedly rear their ugly head from time to time.
One of the more subtle yet big draws about the original Mafia title was how the original had a large set of basic traffic laws, enforced by psychotic policemen that would drive more recklessly than you to uphold the law. However in Mafia 2 things like hit and runs between vehicles and people do cause them to chase. Strangely however speeding right through a red light won’t cause them to bat an eye lid, yet your passenger will most likely make a comment. While in no way ruining the game, it is just one of those things that have failed to be corrected, either when adding the AI response, or removing the trigger for the comment.
Mafia 2 is lacking the polish it needs and would have benefited greatly from just another month of play testing. However its complete lack of secondary objectives will make you only replay it if you’re a collectibles hound, or simply wish to experience the story once more. Add to this a save system which only works via the story progression with no manual save options, it makes it almost un-enjoyable for those who like to play a little bit at a time.
The story is a brilliant tale of loyalty and friendship, set to a Hollywood portrayal of the underworlds most glorified criminal organisation, with an ending that will keep you on tender hooks considering the final outcome of its predecessor, which is an Easter egg within Mafia 2 you have to experience. However there are glitches that can make some people want to ‘whack’ a guy or two over, and the short length and general lack of anything to do other than the story, Mafia II falls into the rent rather than buy category.
