PREVIEW - Mafia II
- Written by Rick Wallace 7/20/2010 |
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On Thursday, July 15, 2010 2K invited us to San Francisco to get some hands on time with Mafia II. The event was held at the Mezzanine SF Nightclub located in downtown San Francisco. We had the opportunity to sit down with the game for about four hours and I honestly don’t think I even scratched the surface of what the game has to offer.
Mafia II takes you into the life and struggles of Vito, his family and friends during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Vito returns to Empire Bay after a stint overseas serving his country in World War II. Quickly he is greeted by old friends and some of which have some shady ties. You’ll lead Vito through his next 20 years or so through ups and downs. As I said, we played through about four hours of the story, and I can’t wait until I have the chance to play through the rest of it.
Graphically, the game is very well presented and truly embraces the 1940’s and 1950’s time period in which it takes place. The automobiles are not licensed, but are true representatives of the era as well. You will also notice that as the decades change, so does everything else, from new vehicles to buildings and to the signage you’ll find around Empire Bay. The game is powered by 2K Czech’s Illusion Engine which was built specifically for Mafia II. The game showed off impressive visuals when it came to the environment and destruction. Gun battles will result in diminishing cover as bullets pound away at concrete pillars or shattering glass walls. |
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Following in the same footsteps as the visuals, the sounds in the game also represent the era perfectly. You will be treated to a wide array of licensed music from the time period as well as many artists who were influential during the glory days of the mafia and the mob. The voiceover work is exceptional and really gives each character a distinct personality. You will quickly find yourself truly immersed in each character, especially Vito. The developers had set out to really make you become attached to the games key characters and they accomplished this completely.
The game is very much story driven and is broken into many individual chapters, but you can also choose to play it as an open world too and go at your own pace. You can complete tasks such as stealing cars, purchasing new equipment, clothes and more to further immerse your character. You will also have the opportunity to search for collectible items, such as officially licensed Playboy magazines. It’s pretty amazing how much detail and even research has gone into this game. At one point while I was in one of the local bars I even had the ability to sit and play some tunes on the jukebox for a penny a piece. All of these things add up to what is a great experience whether it’s the story, exploration or just some fun gunplay. The more you explore though, the more you will find all kinds of little hidden gems.
Basically, when it comes to gameplay, you will have a variety of things to do. There are driving sequences, third person shootouts, one on one fist fights, and as I mentioned plenty of exploring to do. You will always have a mini map located in the lower left that will direct you to your objectives, shops and alerts you to police presence. Your health is represented on the outside of this mini map hud. At times when you are wanted by the police it will show you that as well, along with the severity of the wanted status. If you do decide to pull over for the cops you’ll get an interesting sequence and a few choices on how to handle the situation. Sure you could just shoot him dead, but that won’t help things much. So maybe he’ll take a bribe, or maybe you just pay the fine. That is completely up to you. |
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At anytime you can bring up the full map of the city which will reveal places of interest you have discovered during the game’s story. You’ll find a variety of shops from weapons to clothing where you can purchase new items. You’ll also find places to eat and drink as well which will replenish you health. Be sure not to drink too much alcohol. I’ll just leave it at that and let you check it out for yourself when the game ships in August. As I mentioned, you’ll find all sort of places using your map. You are represented by an arrow on the map and your destination will be highlighted.
Some of the very interesting things I found to be a lot of fun was the lock picking as well as the hand to hand combat sequences. They are simple concepts, but truly feel like they belong in the game. I found myself wanting to pick locks to steal cars more than smashing the windows and just hopping in. You will have the option to do whatever it is to your liking through a simple button press.
The hand to hand combat basically gave you the option of defending yourself, taunting, hard hits and light hits. A button is assigned to each maneuver. The key to fighting is to work a combo of light hits in order to be able to land the knockout punch or finishing move. When I say finishing move I am referring to a quick animation that ends the fight. Some instances it’ll be a knee to the head and other times it could be an uppercut from hell. I didn’t get into too many hand to hand fights so I am not sure how many different ending animations there are.
The controls throughout the game are very simple such as left trigger to aim/brake for driving, right trigger to fire/gas for driving and all of the face buttons correspond with on screen options. The one thing that did bother me was the inability to jump. You can leap up on things by holding a button as you approach the item, but I still felt the need to jump even though it’s not necessary anywhere in the game. But other than that the game is easy to control and I never really experienced any bad camera angles or malfunctions in the 4 hours I played. |
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As many are aware, 2K partnered up with Playboy for the game. As I mentioned earlier, while roaming the city and completing the story you’ll run across official Playboy magazines lying about the environment. Be sure to pick them up as these are collectibles. When you pick one up you’ll have the opportunity to open it up to the centerfold and take a gander at the beauty before you as well as some facts regarding the centerfold. So yes, there is so nudity in the game in regards to the Playboy mags but nothing over the top. In my opinion it’s a classic piece of American history and the pinups can be compared to as art as they are not vulgar in any way and depict beautiful women of the era in only a way Playboy could accomplish. These should be a lot of fun to collect.
Mafia II is going to give gamers hours of enjoyment and while some may want to be quick to compare it to a GTA IV clone, it’s far from it. The team at 2K has done an outstanding job creating an in depth story with characters whom you will care about, laugh at, and even hate. For those that are wondering, this is only a single player experience which may tend to turn some gamers off, but they’ll be missing out on what seems to be shaping up to something special in the story telling genre of games. Mafia II ships to retail on August 24th so be sure to head on out and preorder your copy. At this point it’s a game I would highly recommend just from the time I had playing it. Now I can’t wait to get my hands on the game to finish out the story completely.
Be sure to check out XXLGaming in a few weeks for our full review. We’ll be opening up a Mafia II Q & A thread in the forum as well for folks to ask questions. There are a lot of things that I did not cover in this preview only because it would go on and on and on. So if you have a question, head over to our forum and ask away. We'll answer what we can and if we don't have an answer we'll see if we can get one.
Q & A: CLICK HERE TO VISIT FORUM THREAD |
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SUGGESTIONS |
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I guess the biggest suggestion is that I hope the game gets fully supported with lots of DLC content. New missions, chapters and more would be great. Sure, multiplayer would be nice but I don't know if its necessary with this great storyline. |
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