In Mafia 2, you play WWII veteran Vito Scaletta, the son of Sicilian immigrants. The game will straddle a time period between 1945 and 1955, where having returned from the War (where he only joined up to avoid being implicated in a botched robbery), Vito finds that his father has died and left a large debt. In order to pay off this debt, Vito uses his military skills to reignite his life of crime as a means of getting fast money. Along the way, we’re told that he’ll incur the wrath of three separate crime families, and that the story is meant to reflect the New York mafia scene from that time period.
Ah, such an ideal time.
Set in the fictitious New York/Chicago/Detroit mirror, Empire Bay, we got to try out some of the open world play and one mission. We started off in our own house, where we got a phone call and were asked to meet at a certain place. There wasn’t much to do in the house, except go to the fridge and get food, which can be used to heal you, and pick up the Playboy magazine on the table. The developers managed to get a license to include actual images from Playboy magazines of the time, and you’ll apparently have a lot of these to collect and view through out the game.
Once outside, we were given a 10 minute time limit to get to our destination (for demo purposes). Just like the original Mafia, there were a lot of ‘real’ and time period specific aspects to the game. The cars handled just like they would have in the 1950s, the music on the radio was all from the 1950s (rock and roll classic ‘Rock Around the Clock’ was heard) and the locales were distinctly American suburbia from the 1950s. That, and Mafia 2 retains mechanics such as the speed limiter function on cars, because you will be done for speeding if you’re caught. We could enter phone booths in the open world, but at the moment we don’t know their function.
He's out in the open!
Upon reaching the mission, we had to teach the ‘fat man’ a lesson, mafia style. After eliminating his entourage via a well positioned turret, he takes refuge in a neighbouring warehouse. As we made our way up the warehouse, we were exposed to some of the mafia styled weapons, such as automatic pistols, shotguns and machine guns. Furthermore, we were exposed to the new cover mechanics. Cover worked fine in the heat of the battle, but they seemed rather basic and inflexible, as you couldn’t readily switch to another cover point or move out of cover easily.
Once you got out of the warehouse, the demo finished with us being trapped on a bridge by police with (seemingly) nowhere to go. At this point, Vito slams on the accelerator and the demo fades to black… It looks like 2K Czech has still retained their cinematic panache from the first title. The demo definitely left us wanting to play more. The visuals turned out to be something of a minor disappointment, but we’re convinced that this had something to do with them playing on NEC TVs. Why would you do that?
You shouldn't have resisted.
Two other aspects of the game stuck out for us. While stuffing around in the open world, we were pulled over by police. It seems that in most non-combat situations, you can react in one of two ways: standard or violent. Standard has you opening doors normally, violent has you kicking them open. Standard has you accept the punishment (e.g. pay the fine), while violent has you first refusing then resorting actions such as resisting arrest. It will be interesting to see how far this goes. Also, we noticed that the actions in the game are rather simple. On the plus side, it makes things so much less ambiguous and gives you a straight-up no-frills action game. On the downside, those expecting high levels of sophistication and depth may be disappointed.
Chances are, if you go into Mafia 2 expecting a revolution or one of the greatest open world games ever made, you’ll be disappointed. The reasons why the original was so good, were that it was polished yet understated and that it let the gunplay and story do the talking. And all the signs that we’ve seen so far point to a repeat performance with Mafia 2.
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