Mafia 2 Review

It has been about a month since I finished Mafia 2, a feat which took maybe 15-20 hours, not including my stint with the many DLCs. Though my memories grow more and more vague, they are still fond ones; so I thought I should try to convey them to you all as best I could, before they are entirely disappeared beyond "I think it was pretty good."

Mafia 2 is one of two single-player games I've played this holidays that are gripping enough to have made me want to play them erry day and finish them. The other was Black Ops, but that wasn't nearly as good, partly because it's just more of the same. Competition to this claim includes Splinter Cell 1 (which I have finished but it took about 6 months), Bioshock 1, FO:NV, Mass Effect 2, Amnesia, Starcraft 2 and I'm sure many more which I've forgotten. All amazing games, greatly acclaimed both within and outside of DC, yet ones which I only open 1 or 2 times per month and then quit after a short session.

Mafia 2's combination of story, setting, characters and voice-acting is the best I've played for years. I think that this is because of the connection created between the main character Vito Scaletta and the player. Vito is a Sicilian immigrant to the USA in the years leading up to WWII. His poverty line existence in the new country, coupled with seeing his father work a low income, dead-end job, causes Vito to turn to a life of crime in an attempt to make something of himself.

During the course of the game, this sees him succeed in (SMALL SPOILERS) making bogus amounts of money, moving between the poorest and most expensive suburbs in the city, driving beastly 50s sports automobiles and penetrating lots of whores (though far fewer than his chief partner in crime, Joe.)

This, however, is coupled with many downfalls, including going to prison, being summoned to fight for America, and the loss of family and friends. It is this struggle of Vito's - his and the player's desire to keep rising from a series of increasingly worse kicks to the teeth - that makes the story so addictive to pursue. It was not only my desire to collect the finest and most perfectly tuned cars that made me keep playing, but after a while, also the sense of paranoia that had built - wanting to know what challenge to my self-earned, "made man" lifestyle was next to be overcome. It truly draws one in to the volatility of the life of organised crime.

Unlike what I recall from the GTA series, there is also a more realistic sense of hesitation due to morals etc. evident in this game's approach to crime. For example, Vito's sister appears several times in the game and is increasingly more disturbed by Vito's behaviour and requests that he become legit. But Vito's world-weary regret and conviction towards his chosen path are masterfully demonstrated to the player through his narrative. "Where I grew up, the only people who mattered were the ones who took what they wanted."

Furthermore, the mafia brutality and politics are all very high quality, Godfather-esque stuff, and I think that and the 1950s are underused as game settings.

So, that is why it is stand-out, I think. Now on to gameplay, graphics, physics etc.

At a glance it looks like a GTA clone in many ways, but it isn't really in any way except for the free-roaming and car stealing. The story is much more structured - you almost always have an objective for the main storyline, but similarly almost always still have the option of roaming the city. This city is more than big enough for the purposes of the story, but it's not h00J and there are not a great deal of non-story things to do really. Pimping rides, pimping your dude's clothes (HHHNNNNGGGG dem jackets) and robbing gun stores for lots of cash and infinite ammo (then making it your fortress as you slaughter infinite cops from behind cover) were the crux of it for me. If you intend to play, get thinking of funny 6-character numberplates. eg.
6CUNTS,
6DICKS,
3FUCKS,
UJELLY (fastest car),
U--MAF (second fastest car),
GET-IN (supercharged taxi),
POLICE (stolen, supercharged police car),
KIDIES (pedo little milktruck with sweet decal art that for some reason when you buy a supercharger gets an orchestra of horns that play a tune rather than a conventional honk, and yet it's still the slowest thing in the game) etc.

I've not played a lot of PC drivers, but the driving was awesome. There is a real contrast in speed and handling between a shit WWII-era car and wicked-sick mid-50s sports car. Handling seems a bit more down-to-earth than GTA, so it's really important to learn at which speeds you can pull off particular maneuvers. There are some very good chases, with you both fleeing and pursuing, and fellow civilian road-users can really mix things up with their ridiculously succinct freeway lane-changes sometimes. There's some really hilarious moments on the roads.

To be brief about graphics and physics, they are both mostly very good. Destruction during firefights looks and functions very realistically, however when driving there are a few fences and walls you should be able to drive through but can't, and conversely a few which are enormous but can still be driven through. The game chugged a bit for me during some of the larger firefights, but often a restart fixed it somewhat.

The shooting doesn't look like much to start with - you only have a big, fat, crude crosshair and a zoom-in on that crosshair. It turns red when over a bad guy. However as I learned it's subtleties I really began to enjoy firefights. Pistols have smaller zoom, accuracy and damage than an M1 garand (my personal favourite) but their RoF can help when aiming for dem headshots. There are about 5 SMGs to choose from which is wonderfully mafia. Shotgun is OP in the way that it 1-shots at better range than most shotguns, however getting in close to dudes can be fun yet suicidal. The cover system is quite good, my main issue was that it was a bit difficult to use the move-between-covers button fluidly. Combat AI didn't seem really intelligent or anything, but it was damn effective sometimes when a dude is in cover and only comes out every 1 minute and you forget about him and he shotguns you as you walk around the corner. Sometimes a big group of people rush towards your cover and you need to change weapon and do your best to take them down really quickly, 'cuz close guys hurt heaps. There's a fair bit of fist-fighting too, which I liked, and I mixed it up sometimes by just pulling out a gun on small-time blokes and raping them.

What I've played of the DLCs wasn't very good (they lack much story or new gameplay), and their main selling point seems to be the car customisation. They introduce superchargers to put on cars (in addition to the simple tuning options of the original), and entirely new sports cars that are so obscenely faster than the vanilla cars, that there are no roads in the game long enough for one to reach max speed. The DLCs take place in the same city as the main game, and in thinking back to the original storyline while playing the DLC, it is both disturbing and exhilarating that you can cross the map from a standing start in about 10 seconds.

I think that's about it. Ask me for the install files if you are interested. Or you could buy it LOL.