Mafia II flew far below my radar during its development, even the slick trailers they were releasing these past few months did little do pique my interests. So I find it rather funny that I found myself almost chomping at the bit for the game in the week or so leading to its release. And to my dismay, after digging into the game for a few hours and deciding to check out some reviews on it, they are pretty much across the board calling it a mediocre title. 
  
I make no bones about games I enjoy having issues, plenty of games I have found myself tossing away tens of hours with are some of the lowest reviewed titles on the market. Sometimes I can be a bit of a glutton for cheesy B or worse grade entertainment; hell, half of my thousand plus movie collection can attest to that. 
 
Mafia II is not a game without problems, in my ten plus hours with the game so far I have come across a handful of glitches and some other just downright odd behavior in the game. Think back on the last, lets say dozen, major game releases; every single one of them had some minor and probably at least one major issue. With something as complicated as modern games, I feel it is just an expectation to find oddities that slipped through the cracks.
 
What I am really having issue with in regards to reviews on Mafia II is the overall feeling that most of the people who have reviewed the game seem to have brushed it off as 'just another open world game with guns and cars but nothing to do'. and yeah, this game offers you the ability to roam the streets stealing cars and shooting up the pedestrians. What seems clear to me though, I feel has been completely glossed over by most people giving their opinion about the game: this game is a story driven third person shooter. Yes, you drive a lot, I fully accept that as a fault in the overall design of the game. They could have cut the amount of driving back and forth between areas in half and maybe still had a bit too much in the game. I can not defend that, but stop in some of the earlier missions and go off the beaten path, by making the world much smaller than most other 'sandbox' titles, 2K Czech has breathed a lot of life into the world of Empire Bay. A woman arguing with her husband over a broken down car, a couple fighting in an alley way wife in window, husband drunk below.  
 
Take a look at the little subtle things the world offers during those driving sequences, they can be more interesting than you may think. 
 
This game has some pretty fine action too. Cover is very rarely annoying and I never felt stuck to anything. Shooting mechanics are solid, if nothing especially unique. The guns are fantastic, almost every one feels authentic (or I assume, I have only shot a few of them myself). The story draws from a lot of classic mafia movies, but I find it hard to fault it for that, and the characters are well voiced and pretty good looking overall.  
  
The set piece locations! Come on reviewers, did you even look around these areas? Each one is very unique with a lot of attention to detail and with a lot of interesting things to find and see to the exploring type.  
 
Aside from a couple of issues in the game, that are all really secondary to what this game is actually meant to be, I think the reviews have been a bit harsh. I can rarely ever, and perhaps even never, give a game a perfect score. In fact outside of the five point system I hate giving a score to anything. If I have to though, I feel the game is a solid four out of five. Looking at that score you might notice it is similar to what many people have score the game as, but I take issue more with their complaints rather than their scores, outside of a select few that seem to be intentionally low to cause a stir. Hell, I guess I fell into that trap myself now, didn't I?