Nobody Said Mob Life Was Exciting
Mob stories are cool. Or at least, at one time they were, when they weren't just rehashes of those that were spun 10-20 years ago.
Mafia II opens in a World War II Italy with Vito Scalleta, a mischievous wiseguy from America who chose serving in the military over jail time after some youthful debauchery. You play through a small scale shootout in a village, learning the basics of taking cover and shooting and following waypoints. It's pretty good that they teach you how to do that early on, because you will spend the next several hours of Mafia doing only that. At the end of the firefight, things seem grim for Vito, until some Don of a Sicilian Mafia rolls in on a tank and demands that everyone sets down their weapons. Sure enough, all do -- Nazis and Allied forces alike. And thus begins Vito's obsession with mob power.
The early beats of the story are fairly predictable, following Vito and his friend Joe's rise through the mob ranks towards positions of greater power. Hijinks ensue as they find themselves in hot water with the violent rise of the drug trade in America, rival mob bosses, undercover government agents, the triads, Irish hooligans -- you name it, and the duo has to shoot it, punch it, steal it or blow it up.
You have your run ins with your standard sleaze balls and stereotypical mob bosses. The first stays to the old ways, despises the drug trade and any who wish to get involved with it. The next is the violent entrepreneur, utilizing any means he can to advance the position of his family to one of prominence. And the last, the sleazeball who disregards the rules of the family and schemes in the dirtiest of fashions to grab any scrap of power he can. You bounce from working for one boss to the next until by the end game, you are working for none other than the old school family. Because really, it can't end any other way than that.
The back half of the story is where Mafia II seems a bit more inspired. The plot twists are plentiful and painful, though sometimes not the most subtlely foreshadowed. As you play through the campaign, you are witness to the downward spiral that is Vito Scalleta's life, as literally everything he has built, every shred of success, is set on fire and burned down before his eyes. To go on would be pure spoilers (and we're likely past the statute of limitations), but suffice it to say, the story gets dark. Honestly, a bit oppressively dark. The last half, though brilliant from a story perspective, was a little soul-crushing to play as a video game. It was a bit of a chore to sit down and play through that back half, which can be attributed to both the power of the story that they were telling and to the poor design of the game.
It's the playing of this game that is so frustrating, boring and chore-like. The missions can be a bit of a frustration at time, involving a lot of repetitive actions, such as grabbing cigarettes. After retrieving one carton from the back of a truck (of the right kind), it quickly dawns that there is very little point to being made to do this as opposed to just setting it in a cutscene. It's that very design flaw that Mafia II suffers from most. It's a mission-focused cover-based third-person shooter that is set in the incredibly empty, pointless open world of Empire Bay. Side missions are non-existant, diners and bars are pointless, clothing stores serve little to no purpose and gun stores are easily robbed and jacked for all their ammo. Or you can choose to just buy your ammo. Frankly, if you're robbing stores frequently (and really, that's about all these is to do if you're not on a mission), money should never be a problem and serves little purpose.
For all of it's flaws as an open world game, Mafia II excels as a shooter. The controls for shooting and taking cover are tight and shooting enemies feels appropriately right. Shotguns have a longer range than that of your forearm, handguns are often inaccurate and Thompson submachine guns make quick work of anything or anybody in the game. Enemies react appropriately when shot, keeling over and taking fairly realistic damage. The downfall to this style of gameplay is that you take fairly realistic damage yourself. One shot to the head, and you're down. Unfortunate, but true. I never found it to be a true problem, but I can see how for an approriately inexperienced player, Mafia could be frustrating.
It's really the spaces between missions though that are so oppressively boring though. The objectives in the missions coupled
The back half of the story is where Mafia II seems a bit more inspired. The plot twists are plentiful and painful, though sometimes not the most subtlely foreshadowed. As you play through the campaign, you are witness to the downward spiral that is Vito Scalleta's life, as literally everything he has built, every shred of success, is set on fire and burned down before his eyes. To go on would be pure spoilers (and we're likely past the statute of limitations), but suffice it to say, the story gets dark. Honestly, a bit oppressively dark. The last half, though brilliant from a story perspective, was a little soul-crushing to play as a video game. It was a bit of a chore to sit down and play through that back half, which can be attributed to both the power of the story that they were telling and to the poor design of the game.
It's the playing of this game that is so frustrating, boring and chore-like. The missions can be a bit of a frustration at time, involving a lot of repetitive actions, such as grabbing cigarettes. After retrieving one carton from the back of a truck (of the right kind), it quickly dawns that there is very little point to being made to do this as opposed to just setting it in a cutscene. It's that very design flaw that Mafia II suffers from most. It's a mission-focused cover-based third-person shooter that is set in the incredibly empty, pointless open world of Empire Bay. Side missions are non-existant, diners and bars are pointless, clothing stores serve little to no purpose and gun stores are easily robbed and jacked for all their ammo. Or you can choose to just buy your ammo. Frankly, if you're robbing stores frequently (and really, that's about all these is to do if you're not on a mission), money should never be a problem and serves little purpose.
For all of it's flaws as an open world game, Mafia II excels as a shooter. The controls for shooting and taking cover are tight and shooting enemies feels appropriately right. Shotguns have a longer range than that of your forearm, handguns are often inaccurate and Thompson submachine guns make quick work of anything or anybody in the game. Enemies react appropriately when shot, keeling over and taking fairly realistic damage. The downfall to this style of gameplay is that you take fairly realistic damage yourself. One shot to the head, and you're down. Unfortunate, but true. I never found it to be a true problem, but I can see how for an approriately inexperienced player, Mafia could be frustrating.
It's really the spaces between missions though that are so oppressively boring though. The objectives in the missions coupled
All in all, Mafia II isn't a bad game. It's just an incredibly boring one. The story is decent, the characters are fairly believable, even if some are nothing more than required tropes of a mid-1900s mob story, there's just too much slogging through slow, boring travel in a dull, empty world that makes this game so unapproachable and hard to finish. But hey, on the upside, hi-def Playboy magazine collectibles.
