Mafia 2, my first v-g review.

[Failhorse]

Mafia 2 opens in Italy during World War 2. You play Vito Scaletta, a grunt trying to survive Mussolini's henchman. Don't worry then entire chapter is scripted, as long as you can hang around a corner you can survive to the cut scene. After the initial cut screen, you are taken to yet another cut scene. Followed by somewhat necessary introductions from your wise guy buddy Joe Barbaro. He'll give a brief lowdown of Empire Bay, and explain how you can have whatever you want if you work for the mob. Joe will pretty much give you everything you need in the game. Mafia 2 has no side missions, and no real reason to spend any money. If you're any good at driving that is. Joe will point out 2 places to go to for side missions, the junk yard, and the docks. But anytime you go there, they have no work for you. Quite disappointing.

Don't get me wrong, the story is quite compelling. The cut scenes, the first time through, are well acted and sometimes really funny. I finished the game in about 8.5 hours on the hardest setting. Timing wise, if you took out the cut scenes... and driving... you're left with only about 2 hours of actual game play. In Mafia 2 you will do a lot of driving. Considering the size of the city, and the lack of really anything to do. It seems the cities size is just to add about 4 hours of filler to the game. For instance most of the missions, when completed, you drive half way across the city, to your bed, to advance to the next day. There's no option to simply skip that last drive. And it's not like you can really do anything else... Well you could go and steal cars to make extra cash. But you don't need the cash. As I said previously, all the missions give you all the cash you will need. You could duck around a corner and start popping of pedestrians, but there's no gain to that either. Apparently no one in the game carry's any cash, and the "pigs" can be head shot from any distance, with any weapon. Another big disappointment.

The most fun I had in the game was the shoot out with the hot-rod gang. But the two previous missions, which took about an hour to complete, were almost unbearable to deal with. First, the entire strip club debacle... After watching a character having a cartoon woman's head bobbing up and down for about 5 minutes. You leave, find a decomposing body in the trunk, and must drive across the city to dispose of the body. At no other point in the game do you have to actually bury a body. Seemed quite pointless. Then, the next day, you deliver cigarettes to make 2 bucks a box. True story, drive half way across the city to stand in the back of a truck to hand cigarettes to Joe for 10 minutes.... Twice. Luckily this leads to the hot-rod gang mission. They torch your truck. (I would have done the same.) You now owe 2 grand and take it out of their asses. You kill about 40 of them, then steal their cars to pay back the 2 grand. But you cannot keep the best cars in the game. You have to dump them to advance. Considering how easy 2 grand to score. Steal and crush 5 cars at the junk yard. But no. You lose them.

All things considered it is a pretty good game. Reminds me a lot of PS1's Driver. As that's where most of your time goes. The story is great. The idea of taking cover around a corner is also great. Shootouts are really fun. The fist fighting, not so much. Very clunky... The fact that 2K decided to add 6 hours of filler to a 2 hour game is not great.

I recommend this game if it's a gift, or on sale. But a $50 retail is absurd for the content. There's little replay value in the game. Your money is better spent in GTA or RDR.

Overall 6.5/10

[VoltySquirrel]

Your money is better spent in GTA or RDR.

Words to live by. I have to agree with you. I played through it, and although the storytelling is top notch like GTAIV and RDR, the gameplay, amount of things to do, and playtime just didn't make up for it. I'm all about a movie-quality script in a game, but 50 bucks wasn't worth it to me. Speaking of which, Congrats to Rockstar San Diego for Game Of The Year. Sure, it was from the Spike VGAs, but it did beat out Mass Effect 2, another awesome game. This would make a great first post on that blog thingie....

[Maringue]

I was in Best Buy checking out some shit when I walked past the Tron game sitting there as a demo. I normally don't stop to play these, but I like Tron so I gave it a shot. Maybe it was the shitty stick I was using, but damn the gameplay is horrible. They made it fairly idiot proof, the right trigger does pretty much all the movement based moves you will need. Only problem is the movement stick is sooooo twitchy that it's a pain in the ass to just control where your character is walking.

I only played for about 5 minutes, but it pretty much looked exactly like a prince of persia game, only annoying.

[Repoman]

Most newer games are shit nowadays.

I prefer certain peoples like Bethseda, and the Total War makers, or many many indie games.