Mafia: The city of Lost Heaven is for me the greatest game ever made. It has everything, from great missions to incredible storytelling and some awesome quotes from the main character.
That being said of course my expectations to Mafia II were high and I mean extremely high.
In the minute I started to play the game, I was simply stunned by the graphics. It's almost like your controlling a real human. A great idea which I had been missing from sandbox style games was winter time. This also looked amazing.
Game play was pretty good as well. Nothing bad can be said about the action. Driving was also made pretty fun, especially great was driving with a lorry, which was made very hard to stop. Similary to last GTAs, you could climb which made the game more enjoyable.
The story gave me mixed feelings. It was a good one but not that great as I would have expected. It was slightly darker than Mafia I, had lots of betraying etc, but this brought quite a big downside for the game as well, which I am going to talk about later. Many videos made were great but in the end gave the game too much of a film feeling which didn't feel very great.
The really bad thing was that Vito only wanted to improve his life and he really didn't care for whom he was working and so did Joe. This made the couple disloyal and not much of a mafioso type. They were rather just thugs. This converted the game into a GTA style game, but it sticked to Mafia I roots where you had to complete the missions linearly as well. I felt like a GTA was stuck in Mafia style of plot if you know what I mean.
Also an ordinary routine, which was all over the game, started to get annoying. Even though it added some realism, you can't say it was very interesting.
GTA influenced clothing and gun shopping wasn't bad. The car work shops topped that which were made way better than in GTA series.
But there's more negative. Some things what made Mafia I incredibly realistic were left behind because of an unknown reason. These include running through red lights penalty, limitation of how many weapons could be carried and lost bullets when reloading a weapon.
Also I felt Mafia II somehow unfinished. Nothing really came out of an relationship between the girl who had winked Vito sometimes and was once saved by him, or what happened to Vito's sister.
Missions could have been more interesting as well like they were in the first game. In here you mostly only listened to your assignment, then drove to the place and whacked all the bad guys. Nothing really interesting wasn't; for example in Mafia I: You lucky bastard where Sergio Morello always managed t survive different attacks or when you shot a man at his birthday in public.
Of course we all miss freeride and the thing that made Mafia I a very special game - freeride extreme.
And of course the game was too short as well. Some TLCs have been released, but the main story should be still far greater than it was.
So to conclude - I believe this game could have been better, although I definitely don't regret playing it. It's still a good action game, bringing in some innovation to the genre but failed to be as exciting as Mafia I for me at least. I would recommend it to play once, but the high expectations will likely be shattered by doing that.
So all in all I give it 7 out of 10.
That being said of course my expectations to Mafia II were high and I mean extremely high.
In the minute I started to play the game, I was simply stunned by the graphics. It's almost like your controlling a real human. A great idea which I had been missing from sandbox style games was winter time. This also looked amazing.
Game play was pretty good as well. Nothing bad can be said about the action. Driving was also made pretty fun, especially great was driving with a lorry, which was made very hard to stop. Similary to last GTAs, you could climb which made the game more enjoyable.
The story gave me mixed feelings. It was a good one but not that great as I would have expected. It was slightly darker than Mafia I, had lots of betraying etc, but this brought quite a big downside for the game as well, which I am going to talk about later. Many videos made were great but in the end gave the game too much of a film feeling which didn't feel very great.
The really bad thing was that Vito only wanted to improve his life and he really didn't care for whom he was working and so did Joe. This made the couple disloyal and not much of a mafioso type. They were rather just thugs. This converted the game into a GTA style game, but it sticked to Mafia I roots where you had to complete the missions linearly as well. I felt like a GTA was stuck in Mafia style of plot if you know what I mean.
Also an ordinary routine, which was all over the game, started to get annoying. Even though it added some realism, you can't say it was very interesting.
GTA influenced clothing and gun shopping wasn't bad. The car work shops topped that which were made way better than in GTA series.
But there's more negative. Some things what made Mafia I incredibly realistic were left behind because of an unknown reason. These include running through red lights penalty, limitation of how many weapons could be carried and lost bullets when reloading a weapon.
Also I felt Mafia II somehow unfinished. Nothing really came out of an relationship between the girl who had winked Vito sometimes and was once saved by him, or what happened to Vito's sister.
Missions could have been more interesting as well like they were in the first game. In here you mostly only listened to your assignment, then drove to the place and whacked all the bad guys. Nothing really interesting wasn't; for example in Mafia I: You lucky bastard where Sergio Morello always managed t survive different attacks or when you shot a man at his birthday in public.
Of course we all miss freeride and the thing that made Mafia I a very special game - freeride extreme.
And of course the game was too short as well. Some TLCs have been released, but the main story should be still far greater than it was.
So to conclude - I believe this game could have been better, although I definitely don't regret playing it. It's still a good action game, bringing in some innovation to the genre but failed to be as exciting as Mafia I for me at least. I would recommend it to play once, but the high expectations will likely be shattered by doing that.
So all in all I give it 7 out of 10.