A very good game despite the flaws
Mafia 2 is the sequel to the highly rated Mafia:The City of Lost Heaven. initially the game is set in 1943 before moving on later to 1951 and tells the story of Vito Scaletta, the son of Sicilian immigrants. The story is well written and for a change doesn't glamourise the Mafia, in fact Vito comes across as the tool of those with real power, someone who will do whatever his masters tell him to without question. This makes a nice change from the usual rags to riches stories we're used to. Later in the game they do seem to run out of ideas and they start lifting them various gangster movies but they do those movies justice so its no big problem. I won't go into the story itself to avoid spoilers. Mafia 2 puts the player into a city sandbox, unlike other games this city is there purely as a backdrop to the story, it's not a playground. Those expecting another GTA game will be disappointed, those of us who played the first game will know what to expect.
Gameplay: A lot of the missions involve shooting you way through enemies using the cover system or driving around the city,
there is enough variety so you don't get bored. The gunplay is good and the cars handle in a way you'd expect cars of that era to. Enemy AI doesn't just stand there and trade bullets with you, they will take cover and on occasion the sneaky bastards will try to flank you. Unfortunately some of the AI in other parts of the game is piss poor, cars drive into each other and just sit there and the less said about the police AI the better. There's nothing game breaking but it could be better. The save system is also worth a mention, the player has to rely on a poorly implemented autosave system that doesn't save anywhere near often enough. I failed a mission because the AI car I was following got stuck, the game sent me right back to the start of the mission, I wasn't amused.
Graphics: On high settings the graphics are well above average, textures are on the whole decent and the lighting effects in places are excellent. There is a horrible blurring at distance that does spoil things slightly but it's nothing like GTA4s post processing nastiness. The game runs well on my i7920@3.40Ghz/6Gb DDR3/ATI 5870. The game also uses Nvidias PhysX, it will run off the CPU if you don't have an Nvidia card but the performance hit is horrific and really not worth it.
Audio: Guns sound authentic, the voice acting is top notch and the music is excellent. Those who know anything about the music of that era will be slightly confused by the choice of music, driving around the city in 1951 listening to music not released until much later that decade does feel a little odd. The radio chatter is also a little jarring, they keep talking about inventions of the future such as video recorders and cellphones, it just doesn't sound right. Oh and something else I noticed, the radio in the 1943 part of the game refers to the people in Britain singing "God Save the Queen", in 1943 the country had a king who wouldn't have been very happy with people calling him a "Queen". Not a big deal I know but a little research wouldn't have hurt.
Conclusion: Is this game worth your money? I'd have to say yes, it does have plenty of shortcomings but the overall package is good. It's short at around 10 hours but enjoyable enough to be replayed. This review may sound slightly negative but the games strong point is the story and I can't go into that without spoilers.
Comments are welcome, insults from idiots are not.
