Mafia 2 is a beautiful game, but it's failure to innovate pushes it into mediocrity.

User Rating: 6.5 | Mafia II X360
By Jbul | Review Date:
Mafia 2 is a strange beast. It's an ultra-linear action game masquerading as an open-world crime sandbox title. It's also a beautiful game in an aesthetic sense; a surprisingly gorgeous and detailed gameworld with terrific voice acting and an amazing orchestral score. But it's also a game full of haphazard missteps; a blatant lack of mission variety, a cookie-cutter design philosphy that makes it very bland in the gameplay department. Yes, the shooting (pretty much all you do in the game aside from being a taxi to every character in the game --more on that later) is solid and feels pretty good. But it's also nothing that hasn't been done much better, and many other times elsewhere. The mechanics are adequate, but not great. The driving is one of the worst culprits in the game. You are ALWAYS in your car, on long drives, with no ability to move quickly throughout the city. What's more, you cannot fire weapons in your car, at all. You always drive. Always. Sometimes I almost felt like I was a chauffeur for the mafia, rather than a real violent criminal myself. The mechanics and handling of the cars are good but this is NOT supposed to be a driving sim. Why can't I be a passenger in the car once or twice, on a hit? And why the hell do the cops pull me over for speeding, but not running red lights or running over a human being?In other words, there's some inconsistencies that draw you out of the game. And Mafia 2 is great at reminding you that you are playing a videogame and not having an experience.

One of the worst examples of the above mentioned flaw is the very 'gamey' nature of the missions. In some instances, you are required to go kill a single person -- but you must destroy 100 or more of his henchmen in a long, drawn-out shootouts before you can reach him. This is a big problem not only because it's not realistic to mob life, which the game goes to great lengths to convey, but it's also tedious, and more importantly, it's just not fun. Why not fill that space with character developing dialogue, and a violent execution scene where I could choose how my subject dies (which is ultimately handled in an unplayable cutscene, by the way)? Another example is when you're on a mission to kill someone, you FIND THIS PERSON, and instead of coming up behind them and blowing their head in half with a shotgun and running off (which is what would be true to mob life), you instead tap him on the shoulder, have a discussion with him as to why you are going to kill him (no, seriously), then get in a long firefight with his henchmen before you reach him. Again, this is very videogamey, and competently contributes to steering the game into mediocrity. It also kills the immersion factor. I must've killed almost 200 men in the last chapter of the game, all by myself. Ugh.

While the story itself is likely the game's highlight, the ending to Mafia II is a monumental disappointment. Without ruining it for the few of you who will actually play this game, it's the ultimate cliffhanger, bull**** ending. It resolves nothing, and doesn't even set up an interesting sequel. I actually ended up beating the game again immediately because I thought I may've skipped the ending cutscene on accident the first time (because there is none).

All in all, Mafia 2 may be worth playing on a rental if you are a huge mob-film nut, as there are some nice touches that can be appreciated by fanatics, but for most, it's an average action game in a beautiful wrapping, and very little else.


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