Mafia II

[Nappi]

Finished the game today. I still don't think it is not a good game. The soundtrack, both the licenced songs and the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra's original score, was fantastic and really fit the overall tone of the game. The city was beautiful and mostly functioning. As mentioned before, the fact that you can't constantly drive 180 km/h and the place is not full of ramps made the city feel much more real than that of, say, every city in GTA franchise. The fact that there was nothing much to do besides the story missions didn't bother me more than it bothered me in GTA IV (I didn't like any of the minigames in that game and even drunk driving got boring pretty quick). Could have used a couple of optional side missions, though.

The story, while possibly full of mafia clichés, was interesting enough to keep me playing till the end; again an improvement, for me, over GTA IV which I completely lost interest in before I even unlocked the last island. I had a hard time relating to the main protagonist, but it wasn't too bad. Majority of the characters throughout the game were interesting and well voiced with convincing dialogue.

And I actually liked how they tied the story to that of Mafia I.

[miffy495]

And I actually liked how they tied the story to that of Mafia I.

Agreed. That was easily my favorite moment. When I realized what I was doing, my mind was blown.

[toblix]

What a terrible, terrible disappointment this game was, and what a waste of fantastic technology! The game loads up so fast, the quality of the assets and level of detail is astounding, the amount of work that went into everything is amazing, and then they make a mediocre game out of it. They could've made such an incredible game with what they had, and instead it's this weirdly paced thing where you spend half the time on the phone and running up and down stairs, and the other half on mostly terrible missions.

[Frontporchbabies]

Playing game online is getting more fame with the expansion, availability and spread of internet. The speedy connection of internet brings blessings to the people as they can get entertained with the various racing games virtually. Most of the virtual games can be played with out cost and much effort.

[toblix]

Good point.

[elmuerte]

Where have I heard that line before?

[Orv]

Worth 7.50, I take it?

[Nappi]

Yes

[Orv]

Okay, this game has "Sing, Sing, Sing" on the radio and my license plate reads

"EU-TU1"

I'm happy so far.

[miffy495]

I still stand by my really liking this game. Totally worth the $7.50. People should buy it now.

[Kolzig]

So yeah I completed this on saturday. Clocked around 13 hours propably, and three hours of that were cutscenes.

It was actually better than I thought, but still I agree on most of RPS's Wot I think article of last autumn.

I loved the city, it looked amazing and still kind of alive, even though there wasn't much anything to do there. Eating food was useless as was the gas stations and there were no shops to go to with the exception of clothing stores and some restaurants.

The music fit the game perfectly. I had not heard for example Bill Haley & The Comets in a long time. Also voice acting was top class.

The driving was pretty much fun, just annoying to drive long ways again if you happen to die at interesting points.

It was interesting that even though it was advertised that the cutscenes would be in engine and not pre-rendered video. Still some were pre-rendered where Vito is always wearing the leather jacket. That was quite bad decision. I don't know any reason why all cutscenes couldn't have been in-engine rendered like most were.

All in all even though they worked on the game for like five or so years, it still looked really unfinished. Like they had the tools ready, but didn't have time to put actual content so much.

Also true that Vito is really not a good protagonist like Tommy Angelo was.

Though the mission to kill Tommy was awesome, interesting that they decided he was hiding in Empire Bay the whole time.

Now I have decision to make whether to get and play the Jimmy and Joe DLC contents or just forgetaboutit. I don't like DLC in general so maybe I'll just skip it. Is either of the DLC's worth it or are those waste of time and money?

Another thing, there were working trains and trams in the original game, which could be used by the player as viable means of transport. I believe they even forced the player to use them in one of the missions. There are visible train tracks around the city in Mafia 2 but no trains, not even AI trains. Just empty train tracks. I know it's a weird thing to complain about, but I was expecting features from the original game to be maintained and built upon, not cut entirely.

I actually found some trains just staying still on the tracks, but those were never moving. This was during some later mission when I just went driving around on the train tracks with a car instead of doing what the game told me to do.

The cops were pretty annoying, I could even drive through red lights and the was a cop at the lights waiting and no chase followed from that.

Edited March 28, 2011 by Kolzig