Alright so I love games that have to do with the gangs and mobs of the American past. Mafia II is set between the years of 1945 and 1955, and it takes place in a fictional city called the Empire Bay. It’s pretty much a sandbox game similar to the others in its genre, i.e. the GTA and Godfather games. The world is reportedly ten square miles large so there will be a lot of exploring to do.
After you initially leave your apartment, you have only ten minutes to freely roam the city and one story-driven mission to complete before the demo is over. Although you are restricted to one part of the city during the demo, in the full retail version you can go anywhere you want right from the get go. The world is reportedly ten square miles large so there will be a lot of exploring to do.
Getting away from the police seems to be harder than it should be. Unlike in GTA, there isn’t a circle that you can leave where the police will stop actively looking for you. Instead, you have to disappear from sight and stay gone for a certain amount of time. Sometimes your wanted stars will disappear then reappear on their own mysteriously and you will have cops all over you again. The cops can get you for speeding and sometimes reckless driving. You can pay the ticket or resist. And if you happen to get away from them, but are still wanted, you can still drive by them without them coming after you. Drive too slow, and they can make you or the license plate out and will come after you. It’s also pretty cool if you murder someone in a store because the police will come and tape of the crime scene.
Combat seems to be a bit clunky at times. The cover system is pretty good but sometimes it is really hard to shoot people and there is no way to jump or vault over cover. It’s really easy to die as it takes only a few shots to bring you down as if you are playing a Tom Clancy game or something. This can be a problem when the enemy A.I. is actually smart enough to use cover and sometimes hide behind doors waiting for you to walk through unsuspectingly and blast you. Fist fights are definitely cool though. You can start one by pushing a guy and then the game enters into a sort of mini-game mode where you square off with him. If you stun your opponent and then input the button combo displayed on screen, you can even perform a special cinematic attack to finish the fight which is awesome.
There are five vintage Playboy centerfolds that you can find in the demo (fifty in the full retail version of the game) so you should be aware that there is nudity in the demo since several of the photos show girls completely topless. It’s not really that big a deal considering what has already been in video games like God of War but this game definitely isn’t for kids (which should have been obvious in the first place since the game is based off the Mob lifestyle). These definitely make for one of the best collectibles ever in a video game and will be way more fun to hunt down then finding all the stupid pigeons in GTA IV. Finding all fifty will earn you 40 gamerscore but each is a reward in and of itself.
Overall, Mafia II is probably worth picking up when it releases on August 24th if you are into stuff like Goodfellas or The Godfather but if you are looking for another GTA game, you might want to actually try the demo first to see if you like it.
