Absolutely not. The game is hot garbage, beyond just being inferior to its predecessor.
Tommy Angelo was a relatively (by low ass video game standards) well done character, as he actually earned the audiences attention. Vito? worthless piece of shit who comes back from the war to get back into the same shitty habits he tried to avoid in the first place. Through out the entire game he rarely fucking takes times to learn, improve, or show any sign of how much of a scumbag he is, or noticing how it effects those around him. I mean the dumb shit will act like Joe is a dumb influence and then still do the shit the idiot says. It be one thing if they were creating a monster ala Michael Carleone becoming his father in The Godfather, but it isn't that. It's not even close to that. The plot line comes down to the most generic fucking mobster story ever: crime doesn't pay.
The open world aspect makes very little sense in the context of that game. Yes from a superficial standpoint it provides atmosphere, but purely as a game it adds nothing to the experience. What the **** is it even there for? In other open world games that hub serves the purpose of providing you the ability to do shit out of order, do side shit when you don't want to participate in the main plot of the game, "escape" and do other shit and just play around in the world. In mafia 2? you drive the fucking speed limit. Nevermind the ridiculous amount of times the game uses the driving as a fucking crutch to pad out the game. How many fucking missions are the following? wake up, pick up the phone, drive from A to B, now we gotta drive to C, probably tail someone to D, do some shit. Drive friends we picked up at B and drop them off by going from D to B, maybe now and then make a stop at C, because we have to make 2 fucking stops as the mob taxi driver, and then we drive back to A, to go to bed. To pick up the phone when we wake up to start the next fucking mission.
That's not immersive, that's not art. That's just bullshit.
Most of the missions in general are fucking garbage. I had to watch a fucking montage of these assholes just shooting people up and doing stuff, meanwhile what did I get to do? Sell Cigs like i'm fucking black market 7-11, make laps around gas stations, punch dock workers in this totally unsatisfying way where I bash 2 or 3 buttons, and they give me the response i want and they don't fight back. Go to prison and fucking scrub toilets. Most of the prison itself was either me following a fucking guard who is berating the player the whole time, like I give a ****, or i run around the prison yard needing to kick start the next fucking piece of exposition or story. Or you play this nonsense melee segment that is nothing more than punch, punch, punch, counter, strong punch in like this bare bones fighting game mechanic that is to be insulting to the player as very little thought, effort, or any of that shit is necessary to be successful, so boom zero excitement. And you think this is about casuals not being able to handle it? Bitch the fucking gameplay is casual. Which brings us to the shooting
Eventually here and there the game will have shooting segments, but where as the original Mafia went out of its way to have some realism to its combat and have some ridiculous recoil with a less forgiving health system, Mafia 2 is any other cover shooter with regen health. Here is the extra problem it's not as smooth animation to animation or as fluid as an Uncharted or Gears of War. The gunplay itself is basically average, with very little recoil outside of one rifle, and how do you engage in combat? wack-a-mole. cover shooters have this issue inherently, but it's amplified in Mafia 2 because the AI in general sucks. They do nothing other than find their one cover spot, and hang there back and forth and keep shooting. In Uncharted they move around a bit, in Gears they get more aggressive, and in the sequels they have more enemy variety. It's why wack-a-mole is more tolerable in those games. In Mafia 2 that's all the shooting is, and it's fucking easy. Again that's not depth, that's not complex, that is baby's first third person shooter.
There is nothing to the game, a bunch of mundane reject Grand Theft Auto missions isn't fun, it's poor man's GTA. The original was like a wildly different take as opposed to all those GTA clones and that's why it was special as an action game. But modern open worlds? have gotten so far up their own ass to be believeable. Shit Rockstar themselves took that route.
So what you get is a game that isn't fun to play, because the shooting is painfully average, the driving just pads out this experience and makes it tedious as ****, the stealth/melee stuff is insulting in how simple and pointless those segments are. And a fucking mob story, the only way you enjoy this are the following.
A: you will tolerate any mother fucking thing so long as it has mobsters
or
B: you have never fucking seen a mobster movie in your fucking life, and that's how you enjoyed this fucking generic, poorly written, poorly directed, with the most cookie cutter crime drama characters piece of crap.
I mean **** it's bad enough it's a video game story, working in a medium that is so pathetic it's probably outclassed by fucking billboards in story telling. But you settled for this shit, because you were allergic to better things? Get some standard please.
The game sucks, on so many fucking levels. It's not underrated, it's a cinematic, uninspired piece of shit that deserves more fucking blame as the original was legit interesting.
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