Mafia II? Didn’t that game come out in 2010? That’s more than three years ago, why are you reviewing an old game?
I’m writing this review not to inform the audience on a nearly three year old game, much less a AAA title most have heard of, but as a means of practice for review writing in general. To get my writing style and early trade mistakes out of the way on a game that many already know and probably have played or watched videos of at some point. With that being said let’s dive into Driving Miss Daisy, Sociopath Edition II, eherm, I mean, Mafia II!
Flash back to America in 1945, World War II is in full swing, and back home the airwaves are filled with Nationalist propaganda, “Support our troops or you support Hitler!” A time of new inventions and a new way of life for the American people. “Support our boys! Give the Nazi’s hell!” It is truly a time where being an American is something to be proud of.
Enter Vito Scaletta, a handsome Italian sociopath from Sicily, who’s only defining characteristic is his inability to say no, not matter how many times he’s been screwed over. After a failed gem story robbery with his childhood pal Joe Barbaro, Vito is caught by the police and given an ultimatum. He can either serve his country and wipe away his debt, or he can rot in a cell. Off to the war it is! Here Vito learns the tools and skills that will later propel him to the top of the Italian mob in Empire Bay….or something like that.
That’s about as much of the plot I’d like to focus on illustrating, I’ll point out certain memorable moments when relevant, but honestly there isn’t much else to say that the player or this case the reader can’t really predict from the cliche cinema mob life of a man working his way to the top of a criminal family. This also happens to be my first complaint on the game, it’s 100% predictable. I pretty much knew what the outcome of the game was going to be the second the intro started to run, and after beating the game my hypothesis wasn’t skewed that much other than a few minor things here and there that in all reality meant very little to the overarching plot and were nothing more than transitional material for when the game became too stale. Which it does very quickly.
Speaking of the word stale, man are the characters like bread that’s been left outside all day. None of them have a standout personality that separates them from the others. Even worse, the main character, the focal point of this story, the reason we are here, is the most boring, dried out, cookie cutter of a mobster I’ve ever seen! I hate Vito Sceletta! If Vito showed up to a party everyone would leave! There is absolutely zero flavor to what is supposed to be the main dish of the game. Throughout the entire game Vito never learns from his mistakes, is everyone’s yes man, never thinks for himself and only does what he’s told, and then runs around and talks like he’s some big shot! At certain points in the game you get to a montage of events narrated by Vito, in these cut scenes he talk about how him and Joe have hit it big and are a force to be reckoned with, yet never in the game does the player feel any sort of worth.
The other characters are just as plain and dry, cut from the same mold. We get it, we know that mobsters are tough, foul mouthed, bad asses who wear designer suits, but for the love of godfather, please give them some personality. Often times throughout the game I found myself forgetting key characters because they all blended into one blob of clicheness.
But Rambling Giant, I simply don’t care about a game’s story, in fact I skip most cut scenes because all I want to do is walk around with a Tommy Gun and bast any rival mobster or cop that gets in between me and my money. Fair enough, I’ll respect the honesty, and lucky for you Mafia II defiantly provides the type of game you’re looking for. Walking into a room, barrel drum Tommy at your hip, watching the blood paint the walls is a great deal of fun and this game will give that feeling to you. With once catch. Not nearly enough of it.
In a game that takes roughly ten hours to beat depending on how you play it and assuming you don’t skip cut scenes, only about a quarter (maybe even less) of that time is spent actually in combat. The rest is spent driving from set mission to set mission, with each mission being strategically placed on the exact opposite side of the map as the one you just completed. This is done to make Mafia II small map seem much larger than it actually is. After about an hour into the game you will have explored a nice chunk of what the map has to offer. Factor in that the game has little to no side quest/missions to complete and only a handful of activities to earn money. These include pawning stolen cars, selling lesser value cars to a chop shop, and robbing burger joints. That’s essentially all there is to do outside of the main story, with one of them being cut off after story progression. Now by itself this isn’t a game ending problem, it just takes away from the replay-ability of the game and the amount of hours that will be sunk into it and certainly not every game has to have lots of replay-ability to be good, just look at Tomb Raider, after beating that I uninstalled the game but was left with a satisfied feeling that my purchase was worth it.
Couple all of those flaws with terrible pacing of the game, and you’re left with something that at times feels mundane. At one point in the game, you’re arrested for stealing gas stamps and sent to prison for six years. While is prison the player is shuffled from fist fight to fist fight as you try and survive the brutal life style. You are then brought into the secret prison fight club, where you get to, you guessed it, fight some more. This wouldn’t be a terrible problem if the game made fist fighting fun, but it’s just not. It consist of holding the A button (I played the PC port but used a controller) and then timing a B button to counter your opponents. While you’re blocking, you dodge every swing and can’t be knocked down, so there is no real point in doing anything other than waiting to counter. I’m not holding the plain fighting mechanics against Mafia II, other games like GTA and Saints row that are similar have boring fighting mechanics, but they don’t force the player into an hour and a half scripted, nothing but fist fight scene. That’s the problem I have with the game in this regards.
Mafia II did not leave me with that feeling in the slightest. True to it’s criminal theme, it left me feeling empty and robbed. The poor character development, lack of side quest, and cliche plot just made the game not fun. 90% of the time a person could walk in the room while I was playing the game and they’d find me behind the wheel of a car, not because I liked driving in the game, far from it, the driving is one of the worst parts (more later). I was often found in a car because I had to be. I was nothing more than a chauffeur with an itchy trigger finger. The game felt like nothing more than a series of check points followed by a few minutes relief in the form of a quick gun fight then back behind the wheel. And before you jump down my throat, I understand that a mob on mob fight isn’t the same as the gun play in a military shooter, but this was the game’s saving grace and it was too quick and too far and in between.
As I stated before, the game’s map is very small for the Grand Theft Auto type game it’s attempting to be, and the developers made up for this by placing every mission on opposite sides of the map. This forces the player behind the wheel in nearly every situation since non the the NPCs with you know how to drive yet insist that you take their car. And let me tell you, the games driving mechanics are rubbish. Some of the worst I’ve ever seen. The “traffic AI” in the game is nothing more than set script pieces with drivers who’s licenses should have been revoked years ago. Mafia II attempts to set it’s self apart by having most games of the genre don’t, traffic laws. However the variability in which the laws are enforced are constantly making the players question whats allowed at whats not (much like real life, I guess. Well played 2K). One time you can go flashing by 4 cop cars going 80mph over the limit and nothing will happen, you can turn your vehicle into a weapon of pain and mount the sidewalk and the cops wont bat an eye. But don’t you fucking dare, and I mean it you piece of crap, you better not get rear ended by another driver who’s car you can’t control or see coming, because in Empire Bay the police are authorized to use lethal force on your dumb ass.
This variation in what the cops do led me to some frustrating game play. I simply wanted to drive my shitty beat up car that can’t steer for shit to the next mission so I can’t finally shoot someone in the dome with my magnum pistol. Que random person that pulls into an intersection on a red light and T-Bones me, suddenly I’m wanted by the cops for a hit and run, followed by a shotgun shell to the chest. Back to the last checkpoint. If you’re going to add mechanics like this into the game, you better make sure they work to immerse the player, not make them actually rather go and study because they simply don’t want to put up with the game’s crap any longer.
Now with all that being said, I would still recommend the game but under very, very, and I mean strict circumstances.
- The game is on sale for less $6 (This is what I picked it up at and I would say I can justify the cost but anything more would have felt like a loss to me).
- You know what kind of game your buying. A cliche mobster game, with your only intention being to blast a few heads in and blow off the minute trace of a plot that is there.
- You have a weekend to kill, say you’re sick or it’s a weekend off and all you want to do is sit on the couch and play a game you haven’t played before. That was the case for, finals had just ended and I wanted nothing more than to just sit my but down and beat a game. (I beat two in the time, the other being Bio Shock Infinite, much better game).
If you really understand that what you’re buying isn’t going to become your new favorite game, or even one that you talk about next week, and you find the opportunity to pick it for cheap, go for it. But if you can’t find it cheap or can’t justify buying a game with a lack luster plot, boring characters, and annoying game mechanics I wouldn’t say you’re wrong for thinking that way. Mafia II falls into a very strange category of games as in it’s not great but not the worst thing you could spend time and money on. Making it a weird game to talk about negatively yet still recommend.
That’s my Ramble, what’s yours?
Scroll of Rambling- 