Mafia II
There never has been a game for me that has started so strong, lasted so long as strong and then crashed quicker then Mafia II. I mean that whole heartedly. If the last four chapters had not existed then this game would have been a four out of five, if the last six hadn’t existed I would have given it a five out of five and with out qualms put it on any game of the year consideration list I might be building. However over reaching, over extending and plot holes created by these two problems bring this game down to what I have given it.
Most reviewers seemed to have played Mafia II as some sort of GTA clone. Expecting it to provide you a sandbox filled with pizza delivery quests and a story lacking cinematic conventions due to the need of the game to be open ended. They tried to put the square peg that is Mafia II into the round hole that is the GTA formula, and I find fault with this. If you actually role play this character, walk places instead of sprint everywhere, talk to anyone that hails you and not car jack everyone you see or go on random shooting sprees you will actually see that this game, up until Red Dead Redemption (and until around chapter 9 in Mafia II) blows any of Rockstars previous cinematic elements out of the water.
The beginning of the second chapter, when you are heading home to your mother exemplifies this. I would explain it, but I think the entire beginning of the game here is a surprise that will leave you wanting more, and if I spoil it, it might take some of that impact off the moment. To be truthful I went into this game expecting little, and maybe that also has a lot to do with this. I will give one example though. Later in the game you are driving with two drunks in your car, the banter and conversation of this entire scene amazed me just because I had yet to see it done this well before. Because I was role playing this as if I were a real person and not a sociopath, when one of the guys exclaimed he was going to be sick and I needed to pull over, I slammed on the brakes and pulled to the side of the road, expecting nothing at all. To my surprise he ran out of the car and started puking on the side of the road, with my other passenger yelling about it.
Its tiny little moments like this, when added together that make this game something so close to amazing. However, as the story progresses they start adding in more and more Mafia clichés, more and more tried and true Mafia-tropes that when cobbled together start to overwhelm the cinematic quality of its presentation. I can forgive a game pulling from a couple movies and books, as long as the story they create from it is compelling, but when that number hits all the movies and books things get disjointed and feel un-genuine. It is almost as if they just couldn’t trust them selves to make a good short compact story.
To compound that mater when the story starts to sag under its own bloated weight 2K Czech decided to up the difficulty on the last three fights by creating a long progression of you fighting to the boss, and if you die, you are sent to the one and only check point, the beginning of that level. I had, on the games hardest difficulty died around three times up to the second of these fights, and then I died and respawned forty two times. Literally killing all enjoyment I had of the game.
Its hard for me to sum up my feelings for this game, graphically, cinematically and technically it shines as well as any game I have played this year, however I can only recommend the first chunk of its story and playing its chapters up to around nine. After that everything starts to fall apart, I guess the best I can say is rent it and enjoy most of it, then spend the rest of your time looking at vintage playboy centerfolds. Its all the back half of that game really was good for.
