70

In the mood... thanks to the music

ccccp | May 9, 2013 | See all ccccp's reviews »

Mafia 2 is quite a good game in itself. The drag is, if you loved the first game (this means you're tasty), you will find it not that good. The town is the star of the game anyway. The characters are too much "hollywood bad boys style". They lack what you love in gangsters on TV : honor and humanity. Trash talking is overwhelming and useless. That's why I don't let my son play it for now. The soundtrack is amazing. Gunfights and driving sequences are so-so. You will miss real dangerous cops. The authors of the story made a thin but great link to the first Mafia game. You'll love it if you remember the first one.

The end is ... ridiculous.

78

Not as good as the original but still a good game

britishlad | May 8, 2013 | See all britishlad's reviews »

Simple Review

The Good

The Graphics on this game is fantastic. The amount of detail put into every corner of the world is astonishing. Posters cover walls. Windows on full display of the products in the stores. The Traffic lights and even the traffic is amazing. Rain and night scenes are beautiful with realistic reflections. It is just awesome!

The story line is good. It's not totally ground breaking, but it's a tested formula that works well for any Mafia game or movie. It's nowhere near as engaging as the first game but it's better than most games out there

The music and voice acting are both excellent

The Bad

It's actually not that great in terms of game-play. The amount of shoot-outs you have is really limited and can probably be counted on your 2 hands. You're stuck doing menial jobs like taking things from one spot to the nex which can get quite tedious very quicklyt. Killing a guy here or there (which is most of the times a cut-scene in which you have no control anyway.

No Side missions which is a bit of a missed opportunity for a sandbox game

So not really a great game to play, but the visuals all but make up for the lack of variety in the game. Also this game is so much easier than the first game and there is one AMAZING moment for fans of the first game

90

You're missing out

jimsteryo2 | April 29, 2013 | See all jimsteryo2's reviews »

The storyline of this game is most likely the best mafia story I've ever experienced. It blew me away. For me, the fun of this game wasn't the repetitive car driving missions or the bland shooting missions, rather for me, it was the phenomenal story which made this game absolutely perfect. With the radio system in the cars, it made me feel as though I was actually there. A must get for any gamer.

83

Great game with a few annoying flaws

georgecopos | April 29, 2013 | See all georgecopos's reviews »

Mafia II is a good example of a linear game that allows for open world exploration. Unlike Grand Theft Auto, Mafia does not allow you to choose certain missions to do. All the missions are done right after each other, with no "down time" except for the travel time between missions. This means that you can never explore the game world while not "in a mission", even if your objective is just to travel to a new destination. This makes the game much faster, but also allows for more hardcore gamers to explore and find collectibles (playboy magazines and wanted posters) and just cause some chaos. The guns feel great, and the cover system works very well. Friendly and enemy AI are both intelligent. Enemies will try to flank you, and friendlies will watch your back.

Now for the few annoying flaws. 1. You do a lot of driving. A LOT of driving. There isn't one instance in the game where you have a group of people in a car but you aren't driving. This can get very annoying, especially during long play sessions. You will be driving to a point on one side of the map to drop someone off, and then have to drive all the way back to go to sleep or complete another objective. 2. The police are too alert. They come after you for small things (hit and run) and large things (murder). But their response can vary so much. For example, you can murder a civilian in front of a cop, and sometimes them not notice. But if you hit another car down the street from a cop, they are on your ass in a second. This would all be okay if shaking the cops were easy, but in Mafia, it's not. First you have to get out of the "alert". This involves driving around to lose your pursuers. Then, while avoiding any other cops, you have to either change your license plate, color of your car, or get a new car. If the cops are after YOU, rather the car, you have to change your clothes. This gets quite annoying. You can bribe the cops by using a payphone, but they are hard to get to without being detected.

All in all, Mafia II is an exceptional game with a great storyline and great voice acting. The few flaws are easily overlooked by the incredibly gameplay mechanics and characters.

70

Life of a ganster (boring parts included!)

Forceflow | April 26, 2013 | See all Forceflow's reviews »

Now, here's a game which does a lot right: style, music, atmosphere ... it really puts you in that time period during your slow ascend to mob leadership. Cutscenes and voice acting only add to the experience.

Texturework and lighting in this game really shines, though the city is quite repetitive and hard to navigate just on visual cues alone.

It's hard not to compare this game to GTA4, but the comparison doesn't shine in Mafia's favor. Main problem: a lot of the (non-main-plot) missions are basicly just playing taxi for people, which is a bit infuriating. I also get the impression that the melee combat system really was designed with controllers in mind, since on PC, it consists of practicly throwing your mouse to the other side of the room. A pity. Shooting is your standard cover-based combat, and is meaty enough to entertain.

I sunk 18 hours into this game, had fun, but the replayability is severely limited by a couple of boring missions.

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