Ok so my impressions after completing the game.
Honestly, I'm still dumbfounded by some of the extremely negative reviews. Overall, Mafia II offers up an experience that draws us the closest to the genre any game yet has. The world it creates, the atmosphere, the characters, they're all very well realised whilst still remaining gamer friendly. What I love about it is the pseudo realism of it all. Again, pushing it as far as a gamers attention span can go, the jobs you carry out, the pace of life, the occurrences, the constraints, the failings. Yes, carrying crates is boring as hell, but it's supposed to be. Yes, selling cigarettes or petrol stamps is also quite repetitive, but it's supposed to be. What we have here is almost a Mafia simulator, perhaps not as action packed and over the top as say, GTA, but far more grounded and within gaming limits, believable (hey if you couldn't kill hordes of people it wouldn't be fun). It really gives you a sense of what these Mafioso's got up to to make their bread and butter and no, not all of it was as glamourous as Hollywood often makes out (though obviously to keep things entertaining a lot of it still is). And whilst it's not consistently realistic (Police AI, limited freedom, linear hand to hand combat etc), other things it does, it often does exceptionally well and the attention to detail is sublime.
The shooting is brilliant, cover works well, health is just enough that every fire fight is threatening and forces you to take a well paced realistic patient approach. So even if you've killed dozens of people, you almost feel like you could have in real life too. Then there's the driving, again, brilliant controls with a real learning curve where you can actually fine tune and improve with delicacy and caution. Heck, even the damage modelling is brilliant.
Then there's the story arc. The ups and downs and occurrences the game puts you through, often cliche, just do wonders to give you a sense of the times and genre. FBI rats, protected citizens, mafia family hierarchy, initiation ceremonies, prison life, prison rape (lol), financial highs and lows, trying to make it on your own, betrayal, friendship, murder, mystery, wars, family troubles, it's got it all. I don't care if it has a sense of been there seen it, point is, we've never lived it. It's different when you're playing a game and actually living it all out.
I think where Mafia II is it's own worst enemy is in trying to maintain that sense of realism. Don't offer realism but take away true freedom to roam. In trying to re-live the monotony of a Mafioso's day to day life (which probably really did consist of mainly driving or waiting around), don't forget to make it more fun and exciting along the way.
The game should have had less driving, or rather, a lot more shooting or dynamic missions. Doing other stuff (like GTA is good at doing with random missions and gameplay mini games thrown in). The shooting segments were especially fun, but too few and far between. The set pieces you got to explore were brilliant, but again, rarely explored. The driving mechanic is excellent, but up the ante and make it more death defying. Where are the insanely fast cars? For example, I loved the mission in the original Mafia where you had to steal and drive that old F1 race car!
Despite it's failings though, overall, it's sense of grandiose, production values, characters, the world it creates etc, all help it to still make for a very entertaining ride. It has it's lows and repetition yes, but at it's best, it's riveting stuff that you just don't want to end. I honestly wish it was longer. Just as it was getting in to it's stride and really intensifying, it ends. Ends well with a great cliffhanger, but too soon none-the-less.
I really do hope they make a third and iron out some of the kinks, because the franchise still has the potential to blow the competition away. I might just be a sucker for the genre, but I honestly can't wait for more.
8.5/10 from me.
P.S, try and play this with PhysX, not kidding, it adds loads of value to it and that extra layer of realism that all just makes it come together that much better.
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