Mafia II – Reviewed

Ooo! Niko Bellic just woke up with a horse’s head in his bed, what’s going on here.

Mafia II has arrived into town and is looking to extort some of your hard earned cash. Does the game match up to the likes of Grand Theft Auto or do we give it a pair of concrete shoes and throw it in the Thames.

Like GTA, Mafia 2 is a third person open world game, the slight difference is, Mafia 2 is very linear. Exploration is not needed and there is a lack of side quests. However, due to the game being so linear, it helps capture the story of a young immigrant Vito Scalleta, from Italy who arrives into the town of Empire Bay. Living in the slums and struggling for money, Vito and his best friend Joe take to a life of crime, but sadly Vito is caught and is lucky enough to have his sentenced spared as they send him packing to Sicily to fight a war.

As time passes by, Vito eventually arrives home on medical leave after being wounded in battle by a bullet. He meets with his friend Joe who has been keeping busy and manages to help Vito by setting up for a false certificate to be made to show his injuries are to severe for future battle, excusing Vito from any further service.

This then starts the ball rolling on a good yet very clichéd mafia story, all the scenes you witness in Mafia 2

are scenes you have already seen from The Godfather, Goodfella’s and the Sopranos

But this does not take anything away. The graphics are pretty and Empire Bay looks alive, the only down fall is the lip syncing is very sketchy, but the voice over’s themselves are very strong

Games like Mafia will always be compared to the best out there in its genre, so how does it match to GTA. In my opinion very well, although it doesn’t have the lifespan of GTA and will probably only last you around 10-11 hours, the action is good, and the story is more compelling that that of GTA IV.

There are some collectable on the way, Playboy magazines can be found lying around, which adds to a gallery in your main menu, giving you some lovely pictures of topless Playboy models. Although not adding anything to the game, it does giving you something to look at for a moment.

The cover system during battle works fairly well and is very easy to snap in and out of, although aiming does not snap onto targets as easy as it does in GTA or Read Dead Redemption.

There are some moments when the World of Empire Bay seem a bit mad, drivers crashing into each other and pedestrians walking out on you.

In order to steal a car, you have two choices, you can either, smash the window, or pick the lock, most of the times I picked the lock, even though it wasn’t very challenging and if the police saw you, they would still chase you, so smashing the window seemed to be the quickest option as long as you don’t mind your character getting wet with the rain!
The cars also feature an option of a speed limiter, which prevents you from speeding , get caught speeding by a police car, they will come after you. This is all well and good, but they only seem to be interested in some of the law as running through red lights suffers no consequences!

All in all, even though the game is limited and very linear, the story helps drive through the game and give you an enjoyable ride. Any gangster and mafia film fan will enjoy the experience and is well worth the £20 I paid for it over the Christmas Holidays. It did come with a free add on, and more stories have also been added to the PSN and XBLA which will give you more bang for your buck.

So what should you do with your cash, fughedaboutit! And buy it!

The Good

• Strong Gangster story line
• Voice over’s
• Visual beauty of Empire Bay

The Bad

• Very short
• Very Linear
• Poor lip syncing