Brain Hood

Game companies have been trying to make a good retro gangster game for consoles for quite some time.
The idea makes sense. Gangster movies have been popular since nearly the beginning of film, and the lifestyle has been romanticized.
The “Grand Theft Auto” series shows that solid gangster games are possible.
But when the game is set in the first half of the 20th century, the games just aren’t very memorable.
2K Games has now taken another crack at the genre with the release of “Mafia II,” a sequel to the 2002 PC game that was later ported to the Xbox and PlayStation 2. The PC version of the game was very good, delivering an epic mobster game with depth. The console versions of the game were terrible. Perhaps it was asking too much to port the computer version to those two systems, which were limited by technology at the time.
However, technology no longer limits developers in this current console era. We’ve seen that with “Grand Theft Auto IV” and “Red Dead Redemption.”
Despite fewer technological restrictions this time around, “Mafia II” still falls short of the promise exhibited by its PC predecessor.
“Mafia II” is the story of Vito Scaletta, who emigrated from Sicily with his family as a child, and his life in the crime world of the fictional Empire Bay.
“Mafia II” is clearly influenced by mobster movies, but that isn’t a bad thing. There are some pretty darn good gangster flicks out there. Scaletta joins the army as an escape from a crime a la Michael Corleone in “The Godfather.”
The cut scenes and cinematics are the highlight of the game, although they do fall into the cliché mob movie category. If you’ve seen it in a gangster flick, then it probably has found its way into this game.
But while the cut scenes are well done, the rest of the game falls short.
Gameplay is a mess. The game relies on a cover system for battles, but that cover doesn’t always provide protection. and the controls aren’t the easiest to use.
The worst part of the game, however, are its limitations. Don’t buy this game if you’re expecting an open-world game. You can travel throughout Empire Bay, and you can visit various businesses to shop for clothes and weapons. But there are no side missions. There is only one mission at a time, and it works to advance the story.
The developers should have decided to make a sandbox game or not, rather than going halfway. You can’t offer some elements of a sandbox game and then restrict the options heavily.
It makes for an uneven game, and “Mafia II” is certainly uneven.

CHICAGO – It is not uncommon for major awards season contenders in the world of film to come off more like very expensive paintings with all the right visual flourishes and technical elements but lacking the soul or the heart to make them truly effective. It happens every year. 2K Games’ “Mafia II” is the equivalent in the world of gaming. The developers have created a truly stunning experience in terms of graphics that nonetheless feels hollow where it counts.

“Mafia II” looks like a sandbox game, but it’s not really. Sure, there’s a gorgeously-rendered city clearly inspired by the world of “Grand Theft Auto” but it is a much more linear title than you might first believe. The game is divided into just over a dozen chapters and while most of them include at least one variation on driving from one part of town to another and you do have the freedom to visit body shops, weapons stores, and more, there are no side missions and very little freedom within he story structure. “Mafia II” is essentially a straightforward third-person shooter with some of the more annoying elements of the sandbox world grafted on top of it.

Despite disappointment at the lack of control over almost any element of the story (other than what you’re driving and wearing), the plot of “Mafia II” is actually pretty entertaining (and enhanced by excellent voice work, screenwriting, and sound design). The player takes on the role of Vito, who we meet in World War II, fighting for the Americans but in his home country of Italy. After the War, Vito returns to Empire City, one of the most remarkably-conceived gaming worlds in the history of the modern console. With elaborate architecture and an incredible amount of space, Empire City is a game designer’s dream come true — a fake urban landscape that often feels strikingly real. The most impressive accomplishment is in the depth of field. When you’re standing on a rooftop (or a window-washer platform as you must do in one chapter), don’t forget to merely look around at the skyline. The effect is breathtaking.

The game primarily takes place in two time periods, the one right after the war in which Vito gets drawn into petty tasks for the mob and then in the ’50s after your guy has done some time in jail and is now rising up the ranks. The first half features some mind-numbing missions like selling ration stamps to gas stations or loading crates on to a truck. It’s not hard to see players getting incredibly frustrated at the lack of action in the first two hours of “Mafia II.” Who knew life in the mob could be so dull?

After Vito earns his stripes, the action of “Mafia II” gets a bit more intense with some notable shoot-outs, but it’s here where the game falls a bit too deeply into cliche. And the title never loses its sense that unnecessary action was added to give the impression of user control when there’s really none there. For example, you can turn on the faucet in your bathroom. Why? Why not? You will walk up and down the stairs to Joe’s apartment so many un-entertaining times that you’ll have counted them by game’s end.

And it’s not just the small things but the big ones as well. Empire City is beautiful, but you can’t access 90% of its buildings and the few you can are merely repetitive, mission-based, or designed for customization. Body shops allow for car repair or customization. Weapons and clothing stores are pretty straightforward. There are people everywhere but you can’t talk to any of them or even start a random fire fight. The most interaction you have with Empire City is when you drive too fast during one of your “point A to point B” missions and the laughable EC police force chases you for about 2.5 seconds before giving up.

But what about the actual missions? Way too many of them are made up primarily of cut-scenes or drive-and-talk scenes in which it feels more like you’re watching the inevitable then helping craft a story. The incredible look of the game and variety of environments from snow-covered streets to prison laundry rooms to skyscrapers to a slaughterhouse help the title from getting too stale. “Mafia II” is too good-looking to ever be an extremely-frustrating experience, merely a regularly disappointing one. I loved looking at the game, but very rarely loved playing it. And the complete lack of multiplayer combined with the very direct-and-unchanging storyline makes for a title with very little replay value.

In an attempt to combat that last problem, the PS3 version of “Mafia II” includes an arcade-esque experience called “The Betrayal of Jimmy.” It takes place in the same world as Empire City and features the same controls and weapons, but it’s based around missions in which the player racks up points to compare against others on a leaderboard. For example, the first mission involves shooting up a couple of shops in Chinatown and getting back before your enemies or the cops kill you. Why not just add these as side missions in the real game? Why make them a separate experience that Xbox players can’t even access? The DLC is entertaining and helps with replay value (and makes the Sony version the obvious choice if you’re trying to decide between the two) but it reminds one of the variety that’s missing from the actual story.

From The Godfather to Goodfellas to The Sopranos, a romanticized version of the Mafia has been fertile fodder for TV and movies for years. So why not video games? What genre of entertainment is better suited to guns, gangsters, crime and corruption than games?

The problem is video games still aren’t entirely suited to telling rich, nuanced stories, the sort of tales that make mob shows so fascinating. Mafia II is the best attempt so far to blend the world of the Cosa Nostra with video game action, but it makes a few significant compromises along the way.

The game is set about 20 years after 2002′s original Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, but isn’t a direct sequel. Here, players take on the role of Vito Scaletta, born in Sicily and raised on the mean streets of fictional Empire Bay. After returning from World War II a hero, Vito is taken under the wing of his childhood friend Joe Barbaro, who gently draws him into a life of crime.

Mafia II follows Vito and Joe as they rise from mob underlings stealing gas ration stamps to made men carrying out daring daylight massacres of a rival family, with dialogue-heavy cinematic scenes interspersed between the car chases, fistfights and gunplay.

It’s a mix that works pretty well for the most part. The cinematic interludes in Mafia II are well-written and well-acted (the voice cast includes several actors who played secondary characters on The Sopranos), and it’s easy to like Vito and Joe, despite their homicidal ways.

Over its 15-chapter length, Mafia II does some interesting things with its approach to storytelling, like setting the opening chapter during the Second World War (what better way to learn the controls for running, shooting and taking cover?) and nudging the game ahead in time six years when Vito does a stint in prison (in which players must clean urinals and fend off a shower gang-rape. Seriously.)

The game is bursting with the sights and sounds of the late ’40s and early ’50s, from the songs playing on radios in the many vintage automobiles to the collectible old-school Playboy magazines scattered around the city, which include actual centrefolds from the time.

Where Mafia II runs into problems is with its pacing. At first glance it looks like a 1950s mobster version of Grand Theft Auto, but this isn’t a so-called “sandbox” game, it’s a linear narrative. While players are free to drive around Empire Bay and admire its architecture, there’s nothing to do outside of the main storyline – no secondary plots, no side quests, nothing. It is possible to steal cars to sell them to a couple of contacts, but that’s the sum total of optional non-story content.

It’s a deliberate approach the game’s developers took in order to keep Mafia II’s story focused and interesting, and it mostly succeeds at that. But it does make the game world feel oddly empty, especially when so many missions involve long, dull stretches of driving between locations.

During its best moments, Mafia II mixes great storytelling with intense action. But these moments end up being so few and far between that the game has a slightly sleepy feel. Grab an espresso, Vito – maybe it’ll help.

Bottom line: A solid storyline, interesting characters and detailed 1950s game world can’t quite save Mafia II from its uneven pacing and lack of variety. It’s good, but not an offer you can’t refuse.