Open...I Mean Linear-World
Mafia II is the somewhat awaited sequel to the enjoyable, but flawed, Mafia.
You are, as expected by the title, a member of the Mafia. You start off serving in Italy during WW II (ya know, the Italian front is basically ignored in gaming. Sure, the Italian military was a pathetic joke, but still, lot of ugly fighting there. Bob Dole had his hand mangled there). You come back home and try to make something of yourself and, as a young Italian, apparently the Mafia is your only viable option. I'm guessing if he were Irish, it'd be based in Boston and run for office...so I guess no appreciable differences.
You then engage in...well, every mafia movie cliche you've ever seen. Its like a hack writer read Mario Puzo and decided that changing names was enough to make the story "original". You climb up the ladder, get targeted by other gangs, and have betrayals by friends.
The game is amazingly brief for a (marginally) open world affair. You have a startling lack of missions (15 missions with no side ones, unless you count "collect stuff" as a mission) and the world itself is devoid of life...OK, people are everywhere and traffic is annoying, but you have thousands of buildings of which maybe 1% can be interacted with. I acknowledge all open world games have this issue...but this seems to be a more extreme manifestation of the problem.
You drive and shoot a lot. Driving is tough...but feels realistic based on the cars you drive. I assume 50s cars fishtail if taking turns too quickly. Other drivers are terrible and will be a recurring issue for you. The police are irritating as all hell. They are toned down from the original, but they cross the line from "providing a challenge" to "bugging the heck out of you" with remarkable aplomb.
Its a shame that so many parts of the game are flawed because the game itself is stunning. It is a gorgeous game. The world is stunning...which makes the cliched story, lack of missions, and lack of interactivity all the more noticeable. Why spend so much time creating such an amazing world and then give you nothing to do?
More than anything else, Mafia II is a missed opportunity. As a rare challenger to Rockstar's dominance in the field of dramatic open world gaming, they had a good chance of, bare minimum, forcing Rockstar to further tighten up their game design. Here, though, they utterly failed to make their game compelling. Shame as the game had raw potential to spare.
