The Sicilian mob culture extends far beyond simple gangs of criminals. Mafioso refer to each other as “Men of Honour” as opposed to the ruthless criminal thugs that most of us have come to think of them as. But it is about honour. Sure, it’s a skewed perspective on the concept but the rigid rules and archaic customs are clearly defined and must be obeyed. Your word is your bond and if you break it you are nothing.
2K Czech have successfully captured that air of mystery, custom and intricate, time-honoured dogma. Unfortunately, that seems to be one of the few authentic things about Mafia II.
The game tries to set itself in a time, 1945-1951. The collectibles are pinups from a magazine (Playboy, which really did have some of the best writing on newsstands back then) which wasn’t founded until 1953. The soundtrack also includes at least a few songs (Long Tall Sally and Lucille by Little Richard and Smokestack Lightnin’ by Howlin Wolf from a quick scan of the song list) which weren’t released until 1956 or 1957.
Mafia II tries to set itself in a place, Empire Bay. The city is clearly intended to be a loose imitation of New York City but there are some landmarks which are almost identical (The Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge) among some almost desolate streets and what feels like a relatively small map for an open world game (or for a bustling New York City).
And there we have another case of awkward juxtaposition. Mafia II seems like an open-world game of a similar ilk to Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, et al. The map-markers, waypoints, mini map and route divergence are all there but the mission progression is entirely linear. That little trick that Rockstar are so fond of where they give you several different characters, all offering you missions which intertwine, and you choose which order to do them in? It’s not here and it feels like it’s missing. In Mafia II you have a mission and you go and do it and then you get another mission. No messing around in between.
Sure, there are a couple of minor tips of the hat to the sandbox staples like the old “selling stolen cars at the scrapyard” schtick but it never feels like part of the world you’re playing in. It doesn’t feel natural and there’s barely any incentive to do it.
All of this may seem overly critical, and there certainly is an element of nitpicking here, but understand that this game is proud of its authenticity. Mafia II claims its attention to the detail of the period is impressive when it is actually rather obviously flawed.
There are moments of joy to be found among the linear mission progression, most revolving around all-too-brief sections of play involving the cover mechanism and gunplay (which are adequate but certainly nothing revolutionary). For the majority of your mission time you will be carefully driving (another element of the game which is merely “adequate”) from one point to another.
A typical mission might be to drive from one side of the map to another, watch a two-minute cut-scene. Drive, with a new passenger, back to the other side of the city. Work your way through a linear path shooting enemies and using the cover mechanism. Watch a two-minute cut-scene. Drive back to the place where you picked up your passenger, watch another brief cut-scene and collect some money. There is entirely too much travelling and not nearly enough action. That’s not all though, in many missions your final objective is simply to “Go home”. This involves more driving with little-to-no purpose.
Wouldn’t it have been just as simple, within this clearly lineated mission structure, to end the mission with the payout, fade to black and have you start the next chapter back in your bed at home (as most chapters of the game actually do start)?
There are even entire sections of gameplay which involve you following someone, on foot and at a locked walking speed (no matter how much you want to run in order to speed the process up), to meet another character for a cut-scene. And then you have to follow the person back before the game moves you on to the next section. Sometimes you’re allowed a one minute fist fight before you’re sent back to follow your guide.
The regularly tedious nature of the gameplay, punctuated as it is by enjoyable action sequences, may have been saved by the game’s narrative. Unfortunately, the effect seems to have worked the opposite way, with the narrative (which is immediately familiar to anyone who has seen the Godfather movies and Once Upon a Time in America) being hamstrung by the dire exposition.
The problem with this type of story is, that in order to sympathise with a protagonist who regularly murders people simply because they don’t hand him money, we have to understand why he is in this life. The main protagonist in this kind of story usually falls in to the life thanks to a corrupt police force, an abusive father, a family bereavement or simply because this is the life they were born into and have no way out. We need to sympathise with a character on some level. Vito, the protagonist in Mafia II, is in the life simply because he was a thief who was too lazy to work for a living.
There are a few early efforts to make it seem like he was trying to help out his family with a debt, left by a recently deceased alcoholic father, but even that pressure consisted only of a quick punch-up with a man who was shouting at his sister in the street a little bit.
Ironically, the game goes to some lengths to explain that Vito works with the Mafia in an effort to make his life more exciting than the drudgery of daily work at the docks. It then goes on to present elements of Vito’s life which are nothing but drudgery. Drive here, pick that up, go over there and talk to him, follow this guy, clean that floor. With the exception of an occasional visit to the cat-house, a few scuffles and the odd gunfight Vito’s exciting life in The Mob isn’t very exciting at all.
Pros:
- Characters are enjoyable, familiar stereotypes.
- The action sequences are often tense.
Cons:
- Linear gameplay is littered with tedious mission progression.
- The authenticity is simply missing in a lot of places.
- The city feels lifeless.
- Nothing stands out as a reason to enjoy the game.
Mafia II is a waste of a tried and tested concept in storytelling which fails to hit many of the right notes with the narrative. The gameplay has moments of pleasure but they are far too rare among the tedious drudgery of repeatedly completing mundane tasks without much of a pay off, either within the game world or without. Everything about Mafia II is average. From the tepid driving controls and the standard cover mechanism to the staid narrative which could still have been enjoyable, had they put a little more thought into it. This game is not terrible but it is some way from being good.
tactical20
Might pick it up when it’s £12 in about a months time. Did think it was pretty shit from the demo though.
SpikeyMikey23
same here, if its cheap as chips in future i might pick it up to get me to the next game i want, but i thought the demo was shit too. one play then delete
tonycawley
Reviews are an odd thing aren’t they? You’re never going to get everyone agreeing with a review, but it’s funny how scores can vary so drastically with some games. I personally find red dead redemption to be a little tedious. I love westerns, and thought i would love it, but i’m just finding it a chore. Why it’s gets 90%+ in all reviews i’ll never know. It’s just a dusty Gta, a series which got boring a long time ago. I played the demo for mafia 2 and quite enjoyed it, so may give the game a go. I’m unsure as to how linearity is a negative point, what’s so good about about a totally open world? It’s 2 different types of game, one open, one not, i wouldn’t necessarily say open is better than linear, just different.
bunimomike
I’m guessing it’s to do with the genre of game. Sandbox games probably suffer from the developers then trying to nail the entire game down and forcing this linearity upon the player. Equally, with most FPS games you see linear styles being adhered to as a more open-world approach is bloody difficult in comparison (or at least takes more time to develop).
colossalblue
I’ve just been reading some of the higher scored reviews I found via Metacritic.
Genuinely, at least two of the really well-known outlets that scored this game quite highly don’t seem to have played it past the first couple of chapters. One has opening paragraphs almost paraphrased from the press release that came with the review code and one of them got dates completely wrong.
The linear nature would have worked fine if the narrative had been something new (or something imaginatively implemented) but it wasn’t. You know what’s going to happen for several scenes before it does happen.
I get bored trying to do the multiple side-missions in Rockstar games too but the main story missions are intertwined, even if you ignore the side-quests, in a way that makes it feel more organic and intelligently pieced together. Mafia II is one story that you’re brought along to watch, which is fine if that story is interesting and clever but it’s not. It’s like a poor man’s Once Upon a Time in America with very little of the style and subtlety that made that film an absolute classic.
Beelzie14
I would disagree with this score personally. Some of the points are valid but the game is NOT a sandbox game – it is linear and the sooner you adjust whilst playing, the more enjoy6able it is. I get tired of GTA where I always get sidetracked by mini-missions – I like being led sometimes. 8/10 from me
colossalblue
I didn’t have a problem with the linearity of it, I had an issue with how little there is to do and how much of that linearity is tedious filler just there to take up time between cut-scenes in a narrative that has been done before and in a much more intelligent way.
I only mention the linear nature of the mission progression to point out to people that although it might look similar in style to an open world game, it’s really not. The appearance conflicts with the actuality.
Burgess_101
i think it mafia is a great game i loved the driving apart from having to withere to the speed limit when police about bu thte speed limiter was a good touch i got attatched to the characters their story works and fits in perfectly the proper cutscenes are amazing and joe’s smartass comments make me laugh it adds to it i agree the world is lifeless but in the betrayal of jimmy pack its good thats its open but theres not much to do so its a bit of a backfire the shooting i found was average abit all over the place sometimes AI waas good overall apart from joe getting stuck once at the end :/ and i was sad when it was over i didnt stop playing it from start to finish so i give it a 7.75 / 10
tonycawley
Wow, you need to learn to punctuate mate. Reading that was difficult, i really had to think quite hard to understand what it was you were trying to say. Not a single full stop or comma in the whole, long wall of text. Madness!
TSBonyman
I didn’t like the first Mafia but i’m enjoying this one.
thedriffter50
Why are people so stuck up about Eurogamer and Sixaxsis’s reviews ? That their opinion and people need to stop thinking 7/10 is a average score its not, 5/10 is the average score so live with it.
It has mixed to terrible reviews because it has a deceptive open world. If 2k had just made it fully linear it probably would have reviewed higher.
gernboes
well, actually a 7 is a average score, 5 would be the middle of the score-scope, so to say, but the way games are scored, 7 is the average.
i dont say thats the best way to do it, i also would prefer if 5 would mean average, but once a standard is settled, its hard to change.
Colinbarr66
5 is an average score on the TSA review scale: http://www.thesixthaxis.com/review-policy/
gernboes
on the review scale, i think everywhere 5 is the average. but im talking about the average of the scores that are given. i you always see 6s, 7s, and 8s, you stop thinking of 5 as the average.
and the average of the given scores on TSA is 7.5
http://www.metacritic.com/publication/thesixthaxis?filter=games
(at least regarding PS3 games featured on metacritic)
to give a rather blunt example, if you are talking about the average age in a given country, you dont take the highest age and say that the half of that is the average age, just because it lies in the middle of the scale… you add up all the ages and divide it through the number of people.
(the middle of the scale would be the median, just by the way)
tonycawley
Which is exactly why the word average shouldn’t be used. There are 3 different types of average, mean, median and mode (aka modal frequency). Just saying average can be very misleading, as we don’t know which type of average you’re talking about. To get the mean, you would add up all the review scores and divide the number by the amount of reviews, this is the typical average that people usually mean when they say average. The median is the number slap bang in the middle of the scale, which here, would be 5.5, not 5, since 0 cannot be awarded. That leaves 5 numbers above, and 5 numbers below. The mode would be arrived at by looking at all of the review scores given by a site (Tsa), and looking at which score is the most popular. 3 different types of average. All very different indeed.
djhsecondnature
I disagree quite strongly with you on this one but won’t get into it now, you can read my review in a few days :-p
gernboes
is your review coming up on TSA? id sure like to read it. (i would give the game a 7.5)
mynameisblair
It’ll be on MediaKick.
Go on, click that bit under his name.
SmokeyPSD
youch, what I have been thinking with this all along, nice to see a no holds bar review with the very same opinion though.
Real shame too. The 1st Mafia is a real classic.
topgear
is the review for the ps3 version or xbox or pc?
I found the ps3 version pretty shit imo, the city was lifeless and there was no atmosphere to the game and the graphics were pretty shit.
On the other hand the pc version was pretty good as the graphics were superb and the city had more atmosphere
I don’t know why there was such a big gap in terms of gameplay experience, it might be just that we have met the limitations of the ps3 compared to a gaming pc
colossalblue
it was the PS3 version I played.
MiguelX69
Good Job on that review. The game is… Bad.