Mafia II

A few hours into Mafia II and it finally happens. It's the summer of 1951 and you've just been released from an eight-year stretch in Sing Sing. You're cruising around the wide, pristine streets of Empire Bay - the game's fictional amalgam of New York, Chicago and San Fransico – when all of a sudden you hear the unmistakable pow …

[Myopic Aardvark]

This obsession with....

...sandbox games is getting jarring.

Give me a game that either tells a good story or allows you to construct a good story in your head around the bare bones of the game.

Having to shoot 150 birds to get an achievement isn't always the best way to lengthen a game.

it's one of the reasons I loved Max Payne II so much - short, sweet and to the point, but it's like reading a graphic novel. I'll come back and play it every 6 months or so and enjoy it every time.

I'm enjoying Mafia II so far - don't let the obsession with having 1001 pointless tasks take away from the fact that the game tells an engrossing story.

It's not perfect, but it's much better than these "It's not GTA!" reviews make it out to be.

[DrunkJunkie]

Check out...

Either of the uncharted games for a good story and decent controls system.

The 2nd one got nice visuals too.

[tobyr]

indiana jones on ps3

hear hear, those 2 games are the way to go. Excellent writing and characterisation, stunning visuals and a fair dash of comedy chucked into the mix. Speilberg couldn't have done it better

[JP Bonello]

Swallow my load

Priceless

[RogueAdmin]

Driving doesn't have to be boring

I'm playing Mafia II on PC right now using an XBox 360 controller. I found a setting in the options menu to change driving from "Normal" to "Simulation" mode. This makes driving much more challenging, especially for the faster cars. Simply driving home at the end of a chapter can be quite a challenge, making it that much more rewarding when you do manage to elude the police and make it home.

[nick 30]

Mafia 2 gets 3 out of 10.

The game is very pretty but other than that its just boring. The story is average at best and theres nothing much else to do. There are only a few side-quests and they're dull. The only times there is a reason to do side quests is to earn a bit of cash but both times most of the money you need is given to you in the main quest anyway.

For a similar but much better game play Saints Row 2. Its not quite as pretty but there is a hell of a lot more side-quests to do with reasons to do them. More importantly most of them are great fun.

Mafia 2 fails on the most important way. They ignored gameplay to put more effort into how pretty it looks and that makes for a mediocre game. Even as an interactive movie/story it fails.

[Citizen Kaned]

for ultimate sandbox.....

play fallout 3. you can play it for days not even doing main missions. you really can do what you want on it. and once completed play it again as a baddie :)

[marschw]

I'm guessing...

Those empty, pointless, but pretty parts of the city are probably for DLC missions. I'm guessing they made a full sandbox game, then pulled out all the side-quests in order to sell them separately. Otherwise, why would they have bothered to model such large navigable-but-unused parts of the city? (Instead of, say, putting a lake there). It might become a proper sandbox game after its price again in add-ons. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

That said, they really did do a great job with the ambiance -- it really felt like the times/places in question, for a variety of reasons: The music, especially (and the news reports that play from time to time on the radio, describing things like the progress of the war), as well as the clothing, the buildings, the voice acting, the slowness of the cars, etc.