As I was ushered into a velvet-looking couch to check out Mafia II, I prepared for a brief synopsis of what may be going on in the latest foray into the seemingly-flooded-but-not-really-genre of sandbox crime “simulators.” Instead, I was informed that this game features various vintage 1950’s Playboys throughout and I can find one sitting on the counter in the main character’s house. Cue the music.
Mafia II opens with a gritty yet familiar scene of Italian dudes with stogies discussing some sort of heist and/or murder. Cue the phone ring. After wandering throughout the house at a pace that no man should wander through his own house, I found the goddamn phone. A guy with a thick accent told me I should do something outside.
Once outside, I noticed that the surrounding environs seemed realistically quaint. There were cars driving by, people walking down the street. The surroundings seemed quite authentic. Quite possibly, the 1950’s had been recreated in electronic form. The demo told me I could select one of three cars from my one car garage. The selectable cars were old timey like car should be in old timey times. The car handled quite well as the mini-map guided me to my first mission as the young buck trying to make his way up in the mafia. The tunes playing in my car were quite period-appropriate. A gunfight broke out at some point, and I was instructed rather forcefully to look for something or someone in the building across the street. Personally, I was looking for something intuitive.
After busting into a flaming distillery with my mafia buds, we started shooting at a bunch of guys in suits. Aim, fire, cover, run, cover, aim, fire, run, cover. The cover system was very responsive and I never got stuck on a corner, but I found myself drifting into the state of mind where one does not actually remember which game he is playing. Not that I wasn’t having fun, but for how many years have we been hiding behind something on fire trying not to get killed by guys in suits? Too many.
As the story progresses, my mafia homeys and I found the fat man who wronged us or took our honor or whatever mafia enemies do. A gun found its way in his mouth and more words were said. The story is gritty, the gunplay is gritty, and the car chases are gritty. Mafia II has great potential. No previous game has ever attempted to capture the style of the period in quite this manner, but in terms of gameplay, somehow I couldn’t set foot out of the demonstration without feeling like I had seen this one once or twice before.
