I may have been a victim of the worst headache to ever exist in the history of mankind, but I’m a Gamer, and as a Gamer I feel it is my duty to play through and complete games such as Mafia 2, and then write about them for some reason. It may also simply be because I’m incredibly stupid and pushed on through the part where my room was spinning around me and I felt like I was going to vomit all over my keyboard. But I didn’t, and that’s the most important part of this dramatic retelling of recent events. Plus I imagine if I were about to vomit everywhere, I would turn my head to the side to avoid my keyboard.
So hey, what about that Mafia 2, huh? Well, it seems quite average, sometimes fun, and sometimes tedious, but if I said more than that I’d probably be writing a review, you can read those elsewhere on the Internet. Instead I’ll write about the cool things Mafia 2 does, or at the very least, the things I enjoy about said game. Be warned though, despite me now saying I’ll write about cool things, there could also be uncool things later on in the article as I allow my fingers to flow freely.
Back in nineteen ninety-nine when I was much younger than today, I found things fascinating in oh so many ways. One key childhood memory is playing the original and rather excellent Driver, in which I spent most of my time admiring the suspension as I continually drove over kerbs holding down the side view button.
Ten-years later Mafia 2 evokes similar feelings of joy, only instead of watching the suspension jump up and down over a kerb, I was instead compelled by the tyres on my motor vehicle majestically flexing to adapt to the road surface beneath them. Perhaps it was just the confused state in which I was forced by the illness gods, and I am fully aware that games have had tyre flex before, but there was something about the way it happens in Mafia 2 which I found far too appealing.
On the subject of wheel based movements, it’s also worth pointing out that should you exit the car with the wheels are turned to the side, they will stay in this position until you re-enter the car. For unexplainable reasons I happened to notice this and think it was brilliant. It does mean I can finally live the dream of being the idiot too lazy to straighten their wheels thus making it slightly harder for those around me to park though, all without being a bother to anyone in the real world. Take that, anti-video game people. And since I just brought up parking, I did successfully attempt a video game parallel park – a key feature to perfect for any open world game with vehicles parked by the side of the road.
Oh, and hub caps can fall off. That’s also pretty sweet.
It is probably for the best that they included these little touches to distract me from the actual open world gameplay – there is very little of it. The only two real dangers you’ll face when not taking part in a mission are death by crashing your car at high speed, something I quite enjoy as it adds an element of risk, or angering the police with your daring video game driving skills.
Thankfully the police are quite forgiving with what they will let you get away with. Driving across pavement, cutting across traffic, ignoring red lights, and driving on the incorrect side of the road are all so minor the police will turn are blind eye to your antics. Don’t you dare go slightly over the speed limit while they’re watching though, because then you’ll be frowned upon. Still, there isn’t really anything they can do in this situation. Cars take so long to accelerate that should you happen to get caught speeding, chances are by the time the police have a chance to get up to speed you’ll be well out of their sight, at which point your video game bar of ‘oh no you done a bad thing’ will rapidly deplete and you’ll be off the hook.
Unlike the police, passengers in your car will be far more upset with your failure to stop red lights. This amuses me, especially after we just spent the day murdering a selection of virtual humans, and my AI buddies throwing random insults in their direction. But Jesus flipping Christ, did you see that red light‽ Yeah, I just used an interrobang.
The open world is really only used for getting your character to his linear story mission of the day, then back home again at night. Most of these missions involve driving quite a distance to reach your objective, then shooting some people. If I now went on to complain about a game having loads of shooting I’d have to go on to say I also hate Gears of War and similar games, which isn’t true, so I’m not going to sit here and tear it apart for having more gunfights than I originally expected. The shooting and cover mechanics feel solid enough that the amount of shootouts taking place is never really an issue.
When you do return home from your daily murdering you’ll discover that much like most open world games your save point is helpfully placed in your apartment, which sits atop of several flights of stairs. I am desperately seeking a person to explain this design decision to me, is it not possible for me to have a ground floor apartment for a change? On the plus side, the character movement is no where near as clunky as it was in GTA4, so navigating those stairs is no where near as tedious.
Story-wise Mafia 2 is solid, and has a decent voice cast, but is far from the most interesting. It’ll often want you to either care about characters it has killed off, or go and ask you to kill someone who was at one point nice to you, but ended up acting like a bit of a bastard anyway. Both of these situations fail to have any impact, typically because you’re not given enough time to even gain the slightest attachment to the characters, or simply because they’re not even slightly like-able.
You do get to play through the whole story wearing a James Bond style tuxedo (assuming you bought the version I did), or alternatively a suit and trench coat combination, so that’s cool. It is also possible to complete pretty much every mission simply by using your pistol. These two features make it possible to pretend you’re James Bond infiltrating the Mafia, which is exactly what I done, and I’m fairly sure my imaginary story was far more unique and intriguing than the one I was actually playing through.