Cliché story, stereotypical characters and does the biggest mistake, for a sandbox style game.
Story
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Vito Scaletta is your typical Italian immigrant who made it to Empire Bay, USA with his family. He gets a new friend called Joe, and slowly, they begin being involved in robberies and gets caught by the police, who says that he can either go to jail, or enlist in the army, so he does what every sensible man would do.... the army! Vito returns to Empire Bay, after fighting in the Operation Husky in Sicily, and getting injured. He returns to his family, where he finds out that they've gone into the usual loan shark problems. He also get's in touch with his best friend Joe again, who introduces him to the Clemente (Godfather reference) Family and he pretty soon becomes part of them.
The story is pretty cliché. It's got everything that you expect from a story about a guy who's in the mafia. While the characters are likeable, their typical Italian stereotypes complete with cheesy Italian accents. Vito's family is down played, the twists and turns are predictable, and the ending is kind of abrupt and is sure to make a lot of people mad.
5.0
Gameplay
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Mafia 2 is a sandbox style action game... or so the game tries to have you believe. Yea you can drive all over Empire Bay to your pleasing, and visit stores, but that's about it. The big surprise over Mafia 2, is that it's linear, very much so. You don't get any choices, and you can't do something else, if you don't want to do the missions. The missions do have some good moments, particular the skyscraper mission.
The shooting itself, for some reason, reminds me of Kane & Lynch 2, though Mafia 2 does a lot better than Kane & Lynch. Aiming feels a little inaccurate, but they are accurate. if that makes sense, and the cover system also works better, though there has been one or two moments where I was getting hit by a enemy, even when I was in cover, but it only occurred rarely. Of course, you have to drive cars, and the handling is.... ok. Not bad, it works, but it does have its small issues, as it's not perfect with sharp turns, but it all works, and it is, at least, entertaining.
There's not a lot to talk about with the gameplay, it's just a shooter, in disguise as a free roaming, and the lack of side missions is a huge mistake. If you aren't going to make side missions, then why even make a big city for you to drive around in? If there are no side missions, there are no reasons to explore the city. Well, it seems as if the developers knew that, and tried to remedy this, by adding playboy covers as collectable, and yes, most of them have nudity. It's one of the cheapest reasons to extend the replay value. And for a game, that tries to have a sandbox style environment, its short too. It only takes 10 hours to complete the game, and there's no multiplayer in sight, so there's no reason to return to the game... unless your that desperate for boobies.
7.0
Graphics
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At least, the game looks good. Empire Bay is very beautiful; one of the prettiest cities ever rendered in a game, and the characters looks pretty good. Unfortunately, the game also has some parts that just don't look as good, such as detailed grass and lack of psychics for clothes and blood pools under bodies, and the frame rate is bad at one or two places. The game looks good, but it has its short comings.
8.0
Sound
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While the dialogue is good, and the actors do deliver them somewhat well, the accents really annoy me. This is, as stereotypical, as Italian mobster people trying to speak English, as it gets, and the few Chinese men that are in the game, aren't sparred for the stereotypical accents either. At least the music is good, both the original score and the licensed music, which has songs from the 40's and 50's, though the radio announcers are annoying.
7.0
PS3 version
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Remember those short comings I mentioned with the graphics? Well that's all in the PS3 version folks! The developers removed them, all to improve the frame rate, which is a stupid excuse. At least the PS3 version comes with "The Betrayal of Jimmy", which adds arcade-style missions and a new playable character. It helps a little bit with the replay value, but only a little, because it's not any more fun than the main game, and it's plagued by the same issues as the main game.
Overall
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Mafia 2 looked good, but it's another one of those games, that fails to live up to the hype. The story is cliché, the characters stereotypical and it does the biggest mistake a sandbox styled game can ever make. Still, it's entertaining at least, so it might prove to be some entertaining 10 hours, but beyond that, there's nothing of interest here.