Vito Scaletta, is one mobster with a lot of problems. But one thing for sure it isn't Mafia 2. Mafia 2 is the second game (obviously) of the Mafia name developed by Czech 2K and published by 2K Games for the PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Let me say this up front, I don't normally play mafia style games with dates back to the "40's", the last one was Godfather 2 and i hated it!! I couldn't even finish the game, no lie. With that said, lets run down Mafia 2 and see how it is.
Presentation - Let me get this out of the way, the game did freeze on me during a mission. I don't know why, it is a new copy. No big deal it happened once could be my PS3 processor never know.
Mafia 2 has a clean layout for navigating throughout the game so getting lost is hard to accomplish. Also, let it be known Mafia 2 is a story driven "linear" game. Vito Scaletta (protagonist) is a guy who watched his father work to hard his whole life. Vito being Vito decided he wasn't going to be like his father and go the "fast route" for making money. Vito's story was a good one imo. Mafia 2's story was really good for the amount of time the game lasted. There are so many spoilers in Mafia 2 I don't even want to get deep into it. Lets just say, Vito goes through a lot in his first 20 or 30 years that most people will never experience in a lifetime. This game is a drama folks. It would make a good mob movie in my opinion.
Empire City aka (New York City) was beautiful and full of life with rich details. The textures, colors, cars, pedestrians were all done well. To bad this game wasn't a real sandbox game because Empire City was so detailed it just made me want to explore it to the fullest. When you get into shootouts in Mafia 2, you can shoot enemies through glass, your cover breaks apart from gunfire depending on the material. I don't know what engine was used in Mafia 2 but it worked great with the open world city and destructible environments etc. Visuals were really nice in this game.
The sound design in Mafia II was impressive. The music in the load up menu always got me in the proper mood to play. The voice actors were all decent. The sound effects during shootouts were atmospheric.
This is were my gripe comes in. I did play on the hardest difficulty. Mafia 2 is a cover based shooter by heart right? But I got killed so many times when I was behind cover. Well, you ask "isn't the cover breakable" yes it is. The problem is I would be behind steel beams and the enemy would shoot at me from in front of me and magically kill me. I died so much in this game it was absurd.
The cop's AI was cheesy and ridiculous, they can spot you from so far away and they were everywhere sometimes (no place to even hide). I do like some aspects of the game. For instance, you can die from crashing your car. If you drive over the speed limit the cops will chase you etc. In other words there are some nice realistic gameplay elements while driving in Mafia 2 but the cops AI ruins most of it. Shooting from behind cover was really good. Aiming and shooting (in general) were good, but jumping out of cover and shooting was near impossible.
I beat Mafia 2 in just under 12 hours (11:55 to be exact). Granted, the game is really linear, you can't do much of anything off from the main missions. This game isn't like Grand theft Auto at all. Mafia 2 is a linear story driven adventure game. You can go back and do some collectible hunting (playboy magazines anyone?) or some side missions but they're aren't many.
Mafia 2 is a really good game. It is not a sandbox game and doesn't need to be. What it has is a great story, characters and satisfying shooting but some gameplay mechanics holds it back from reaching higher potential.
8/10
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