| 19 August 2010
Mafia 2 is the story of Vito Scaletta. He's just come back from the war to find that his family is broke and he turns to the mafia as a way to earn back some debt. The story forms the soul of the heavily-inspired sequel taking players into the underworld of 1950's America.
The demo begins in your apartment as you get a call from one of your comrades. The voice acting is particularly good as the pair go back and forth, complete with proper accents and 50's wordplay. The apartment feels equally in place; it looks like 2K Czech has been doing plenty of research in getting the aesthetic down pat - or they've been watching a lot of Mad Men.
The conversation quickie leads the "Fat Man" - your next hit. While you're urged to get to your car, there's the little issue of the vintage Playboy sitting on the kitchen countertop, that needs to be read ASAP. With a quick button press, the cover enlarges to fill your screen with classic womanly goodness. With that distraction successfully fulfilled, you're ready to start your mission at hand.
You'll head to your garb to pick up your choice of vintage cars, each differing in stats which are helpfully illustrated to you. I picked up a snazzy blue number and proceeded to my destination. You're given 10 minutes to explore Mafia 2's city of Empire Bay - at least a part of it of anyway. A countdown timer appears the the top right hand corner of your screen, during which you can grab a burger, run over pedestrians and what not.
Once you do reach your target's destination, you meet up with your sidekick, Joe Barbaro and Henry Tomasino, a tall, dark and handsome-type who appears to be a power player in the mob scene. The cut scene quickly establishes the characters; Henry's backstory seems particularly interesting, one I'm sure will be fleshed out.
As Fat Man's convoy arrives, you take control of a mounted gun and liberally spray the scene with bullets. In true videogaming fashion, the Fat Man gets away and you quickly move to chase after him. You cross the street, picking up some extra weaponry on the way, to a distillery. It's a relatively straight-forward sequence from here on in. The combat exemplifies any cover-based third person action shooter out there. Take cover, pop out, smoke some thugs and move to the next guy. It's nothing special, but it's also nothing truly offensive either.
After a couple of floors, you'll finally the have the Fat Man cornered (he's actually fat!). The confrontation folds out in a cut scene with the sharply suited Henry taking charge. Things make a turn for the worse though (I won't spoil it) and it quickly becomes apparent that you need to escape the building, that seems to be exploding for some reason.
The obligatory car chase that proceeds follows usual protocol once again. The driving controls are in no way perfect but they do an acceptable job in mimicking controlling an old 1950's clunker - if you want to be a believer that is. The game has a neat speed control tool that when toggled on, will automatically limit the speed of your car so as to not attract the attention of police. Obviously, I needed to turn that off while I was being chased through the streets of Empire Bay.
Your escape will eventually lead you to a bridge blocked by a brigade of police cars. You're surrounded and there's little in a way of escape. The screen fades to black and you're left on the edge of your seat.
I was pleasantly surprised by the demo, even if it was a little run of the mill gameplay wise. What did grab my attention was the competent narrative and convincing backdrop. If they can maintain a steady momentum of interesting story telling and creative missions then Mafia 2 might set out to be stand out in the crowded sandbox genre. Mafia 2, on the 360, PS3 and PC, drops on the 24th August in the US and the 27th in PAL regions
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
