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 Post subject: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Thu Oct 28, 2010 11:04 pm 
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Well after Blokey told me to go make my own review, I did, sort of, I just reposted this from other sites. Bear in mind this was back when the game came out, from a fan of the original perspective, and was more of a hit on ignorant console gamers who never played the original, or grew up with the ground breaking title that was the first one. Without further a due, my view on Mafia II.


Well after eight long years Mafia II finally reaches the eagerly awaited fans. The only problem? Too many uneducated console fanboys who never played the original are comparing Mafia II to GTAIV. My main issue here is if any one bothered to read up on Mafia, they’d know it was a linier experience and not a sandbox game, sure, you could drive anywhere you liked but there wasn’t any real reason to do so, consequently why would Mafia II be any different? Oh right, to follow the “GTA Clone” crowd.
Nowhere in the development of the game did anybody associated with the project say there were going to be side missions or a GTA Style sandbox world, so called 'reviewers' are using this as a negative point when being critical of the game. It’s like criticising Burnout Paradise for being unrealistic when compared to Gran Turismo 5.

The story begins with Vito returning home on leave from World War II. Vito had joined the U.S. military as a way of avoiding jail time for a botched robbery. The story then follows a linier fashion from there on, progressing from 1943 to 1957. The aim of the game is straight forward, to progress through a small time criminal desperate to pay off old man debts to becoming a Made Man.
The structure is simple, but executed superbly in terms of script, timing and cut scenes. The story does disappointingly play it’s cards straight and leaves nothing to shock you, in fact it’s almost a homage of famous gangster films like Mafia I except a few years after most the films were based.
Although there are no real shocking moments, the game does manage to pull you in and feel involved with the characters, albeit none of the characters are original but the disappointing thing here is the longing to know more about certain characters such as Henry or Frankie.

From the experience of playing on PC I can safely say Mafia is a solid title in terms of graphics. Many textures on main characters are very vivid and detailed, however on smaller character roles and generic NPCs textures begin to dwindle and become far less impressive. Another problem is the over use of the same NPC models used, if you spend even just an hour driving around you’ll quickly notice how many people all have the same character faces just with different clothes on, it distracts you from the immersion, especially when you see women all looking like your sister!
Beside character models most of the game looks great though with no major complaints, cars look like the authentic models of the age, gun textures and various others all shine well too.
When playing with PhysX enabled on an Nvidia card the destruction physics are truly spectacular, Vito is perfectly capable of busting into a random Diner and shooting up the place to smithereens, from glasses on tables to the chandeliers on the ceiling, everything can be obliterated! Attention to detail like that really adds fun on random killing sprees you may par take in in your spare time.

Sadly this is where Mafia II truly stumbles, before going on I’m going to reinstate what I already said at the beginning and refrain from comparing it to GTAIV as it simply is not the case. I am however going to make comparisons to Mafia I. Now, many people have criticised Mafia II for having an almost empty world outside of the missions as there is nothing to really see or do beside collect Playboy Mags and Wanted Posters, although this is true you’ve got to realise that Mafia II and I are linier games like Uncharted for example, but instead of just going from mission to mission you are given the chance to drive around places and chose when and how you’re going to get to the next mission. Empire Bay only serves as a means to an end, to get you from point A to B.

Moving on from that people have also complained about the way car handles, this seems to be a recurring theme in many TPS that include being able to drive from GTAIV to Red Faction, however the case is not bad controls but rather adjustments to different games, since 2K were after the authentic feel of late 40’s and early 50’s cars they achieve just that. Not every car handles like Sports cars but when you do gain a luxury car suddenly the car will be able to drive at faster speeds whilst maintaining control. The problem with driving is however the lack of ability to shoot out of the car is, this will become a major issue when you can’t lose the cops and they are hammering down on your car with Thompsons, it really becomes unfair on hard difficulty when you can’t fire back. As for an AI buddy like Joe shooting, you’re out of luck, Joe or Henry will never fire back against random cops but only scripted ones.

With the mention of AI I’ve already set myself up for the next issue, the AI. Mafia I had a sense of realism in its A.I, police were capable of stopping you but had their limits, they wouldn’t open fire at you and would only fine you if you went over the speed limit. The police in Mafia II however don’t seem to care. You can speed past at 80MPH on most occasions and the cops won’t take notice of you, if however you lightly bump another car whilst less than 30MPH then suddenly every cop nearby will be throwing fines at you, it really becomes silly when moments like this happen.

Speaking of cops the system for how they determine how to handle Vito is an interesting concept first explored in Mafia I. Its return to Mafia II is welcome but doesn’t bring about everything well. The Wanted system whereby Police hunt down Vito based on description is flawed when you can shoot down an officer who’s all alone with no other witnesses but somehow the police know a rough idea of who shot him. Other times the Police will also instantly know you’ve stolen a car and will also know the exact license plate even though there were none in the vicinity. Moments like that will easily bring a look of “Wtf?” on your face.

Once you get past the driving and Police chases all you’re left with is gun fights, and boy Mafia II has a lot of them. Gunplay in Mafia is sadly a weak point in terms of today’s standard TPS. You can snap into cover and smoke down all the goons with ease, but it’s a shallow form of killing as you’re either glued to a wall in cover or running to the next crate or wall, especially on Hard mode. There’s no option to blind fire, limiting the combat again, and within a few missions you’re given the best machine guns to use anyway, so the difficulty never increases regardless. Most of the environments you have shoot outs don’t allow for much flanking techniques for you or your enemies either, so a lot of the time you can kill everyone just by sticking to a pillar for ten seconds or so.
Last negative mark about the gameplay has to be the actual length of the game, with the linier story you can complete the game in just over 10 hours depending on difficulty and how long you spend free roaming, the problem there is there isn’t simply enough to see and do in missions, if you take out the two hours’ worth of cut scenes and always drove straight to your objective it can be breezed in almost a day if you really fancied a speed run.

Finally, an aspect of Mafia II where it hands down is outstanding. Voice acting is superb amongst the main characters, and in many cases the voice actors are almost perfect for their characters (Henry’s voice actor is in my view one the best, and suits him perfectly). This is really one of those games that could easily had renowned actors from big movie franchises and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

Music score is superb too, the orchestra music that appears in dramatic scenes along with the main menu and pause menu are great too. Then you have all the 50’s music ranging from Louis Prima to Little Richard with three different radio stations dedicated to Rock & Roll, Jazz and Doo-Wop. With the amount of licensed songs from the time it really does make driving more enjoyable, with in its limit of how much you enjoy 50’s music.

As for game sounds from gunfire and vehicles it’s all top notch, no complaints. However a certain someone makes an unwelcome appearance (in my opinion) to the game that is of course Nolan North. This is where the game does lose marks on the so far outstanding audio though, Nolan North pretty much voices every generic NPC male, from young white male to middle age black man to old age homeless white man. This leads to bumping into clones of Nolan around every corner and conversations being held between Nolan and Nolan. With the amount of time in development and money spent on the songs, you’d think they would shell out for another male voice actor for generic NPC’s.
Controls
Mafia I was renowned for how bad the controls were for driving, fortunately Mafia II is vastly improved. Although many people still find the controls difficult they are solid and far more responsive, once you get out of the 40’s and start driving the grand automobiles of the 50’s in better road conditions it becomes easier. Outside of driving running around on foot and getting into gun fights respond well, it’s easy to move from cover to cover and Vito can snap onto any suitable cover with ease of a flick of a button and just as easily remove once you’re done.
Overall Impressions

Mafia II is a mixed bag, it has the great story along with strong Audio but flaky gameplay. It falls short though as the gameplay is somewhat lacking in many places, more work should have been done, it’s disappointing for fans of the original to play the sequel to a game that pretty much brought new depths of innovation the genre on PC, only to find that it’s no longer the case in the sequel. It’s just a shame that after 8 years of waiting we were treated to just 6 hours of gameplay (A few more hours if you want to shell out a few bucks on DLC that should have been in the game to begin with – thanks 2K).

If I was forced to give a numeric score for this game I’d probably give it a six or seven if you’re a fan of the first, I avoid giving numeric scores though as it seems to be the general conception that a six or seven in most “professional” reviews means the game is average. This is not the case though, Mafia is a fun experience, but it’s lacking in too many places to hold you in for any longer than it needs to be, which is a sad thing for the fans who’ve been waiting for eight years now, but otherwise check it out, especially if you love gangster films (except God Father III).

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Thu Oct 28, 2010 11:36 pm 
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Regarding the cop AI, I listened to both the Game Informer and the Press The Buttons guys talk about this game, and there wasn't much discrepancy in their evaluations of the cop AI: there really isn't much of one. According to them, it didn't really take much for them to shake the cops, sometimes doing as little as making a sharp turn.

As for the linear/sandbox deal, people complain about Mafia not being like GTA because it LOOKS like a retro GTA. Making the comparison to Uncharted 2 is unfair, because everything about UC2 looks and feels linear, and that's just not the case with Mafia II. I mean, how many games as linear as Mafia II let you drive around the city on a whim? Just as Fallout 3 was an RPG dressed up as a shooter, Mafia II is a shooter dressed up as a sandbox game. Even if the complaints aren't deserved, they are certainly understandable.

With that mention of not being able to shoot back at cops shooting at you, think about it for a minute. You're playing a criminal. Criminals generally avoid notice by the cops. You might be getting chased by a cop, and he might be shooting at you, but how many more cops would be on your ass if you started shooting back? This is just a realistic thing. On the one hand, you chew out people that wanted this to be a GTA clone, but then you complain about not having a feature that's very prominent in GTA. It doesn't add up.

I simply can't understand the Nolan North hate. Why should 2K have shelled out money for someone else if that person was just gonna do the same thing North did? Why can't Nolan North voice act for games that aren't Uncharted?

I also don't understand why you find a 6-8 hour story to be inadequate. Does the game tell an interesting story? Is the story good? If the answer is "yes", then you have no reason to complain about the length of the story.

Honestly, a lot of the things you marked as negatives just seem to be bitching for the sake of bitching/"I don't like this perfectly good mechanic that the developer decided on".

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Thu Oct 28, 2010 11:48 pm 
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Smokey wrote:
Regarding the cop AI, I listened to both the Game Informer and the Press The Buttons guys talk about this game, and there wasn't much discrepancy in their evaluations of the cop AI: there really isn't much of one. According to them, it didn't really take much for them to shake the cops, sometimes doing as little as making a sharp turn.

As for the linear/sandbox deal, people complain about Mafia not being like GTA because it LOOKS like a retro GTA. Making the comparison to Uncharted 2 is unfair, because everything about UC2 looks and feels linear, and that's just not the case with Mafia II. I mean, how many games as linear as Mafia II let you drive around the city on a whim? Just as Fallout 3 was an RPG dressed up as a shooter, Mafia II is a shooter dressed up as a sandbox game. Even if the complaints aren't deserved, they are certainly understandable.

With that mention of not being able to shoot back at cops shooting at you, think about it for a minute. You're playing a criminal. Criminals generally avoid notice by the cops. You might be getting chased by a cop, and he might be shooting at you, but how many more cops would be on your ass if you started shooting back? This is just a realistic thing. On the one hand, you chew out people that wanted this to be a GTA clone, but then you complain about not having a feature that's very prominent in GTA. It doesn't add up.

I simply can't understand the Nolan North hate. Why should 2K have shelled out money for someone else if that person was just gonna do the same thing North did? Why can't Nolan North voice act for games that aren't Uncharted?

I also don't understand why you find a 6-8 hour story to be inadequate. Does the game tell an interesting story? Is the story good? If the answer is "yes", then you have no reason to complain about the length of the story.

Honestly, a lot of the things you marked as negatives just seem to be bitching for the sake of bitching/"I don't like this perfectly good mechanic that the developer decided on".


AI is flaky at times granted, but when it's mostly scripted it is good. Better than GTA even, when it's in the story and prompted to be good (If that makes sense). As for shooting back at cops, Vito shows zero morality towards killing people, killing cops shouldn't be a problem for him, and yes you'd want to avoid detection and/or gunfire, but bear in mind he's a WWII Veteran, bullets flying past him wouldn't bother him so much, especially when he's handling weapons more powerful than the police. Nolan North hate is a personal hatred for the lack of creativity he provides, he's just bland bland bland. As for 6-8 hour story, that's it, there's nothing more, not even a free play mode, something that was already in Mafia I and the story was around 12 hours depending on the player. Some how eight years for 8 hours of gameplay with no real point to playing again makes for a lousy wait.

My impression is Smokey you never played the first one, which is required in my honest regard to understand how much of a let down Mafia II is to any one who ever played it, Mafia was our GTA III to PS2 owners, Halo for the Xbox users and instead of the sequel going all out in terms of improvements in every area when it was eventually released 8 years later we got everything held back with weak excuses and given overpriced DLC that was already included in the game and was hidden in the source.

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Thu Oct 28, 2010 11:51 pm 
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SmilerAl wrote:
Well after eight long years Mafia II finally reaches the eagerly awaited fans. The only problem? Too many uneducated console fanboys who never played the original are comparing Mafia II to GTAIV. My main issue here is if any one bothered to read up on Mafia, they’d know it was a linier experience and not a sandbox game

I have the original on my shelf but I couldn't give two shits about it. If Mafia 2 is a good game then surely it can stand on it's own two feet without the need to know all the background knowledge, that's like saying you need to have played Fifa 07 to know how Fifa 11 works :/.
SmilerAl wrote:
Too many uneducated console fanboys who never played the original are comparing Mafia II to GTAIV.

The original was out on consoles too. :|

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 12:03 am 
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Matthew wrote:
SmilerAl wrote:
Well after eight long years Mafia II finally reaches the eagerly awaited fans. The only problem? Too many uneducated console fanboys who never played the original are comparing Mafia II to GTAIV. My main issue here is if any one bothered to read up on Mafia, they’d know it was a linier experience and not a sandbox game

I have the original on my shelf but I couldn't give two shits about it. If Mafia 2 is a good game then surely it can stand on it's own two feet without the need to know all the background knowledge, that's like saying you need to have played Fifa 07 to know how Fifa 11 works :/.
SmilerAl wrote:
Too many uneducated console fanboys who never played the original are comparing Mafia II to GTAIV.

The original was out on consoles too. :|


Fifa is a bit different, it's always the same game, it's not going to take a change in pace of story, themes, gameplay or anything. Try GTA SA to IV jump next time. As for being able to stand on it's own, Mafia II does... for about six hours. Not quite what we expected.

As for Mafia I being on consoles, yeah, a real shit port that didn't deserve to see the light of day, it was badly port and didn't prove anything beside consoles were behind PC's.

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 12:04 am 
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SmilerAl wrote:
Fifa is a bit different, it's always the same game, it's not going to take a change in pace of story, themes, gameplay or anything. .

Bad dudes, good dudes, guns, cars, hats, suits. :P

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 1:31 am 
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SmilerAl wrote:
AI is flaky at times granted, but when it's mostly scripted it is good. Better than GTA even, when it's in the story and prompted to be good (If that makes sense). As for shooting back at cops, Vito shows zero morality towards killing people, killing cops shouldn't be a problem for him, and yes you'd want to avoid detection and/or gunfire, but bear in mind he's a WWII Veteran, bullets flying past him wouldn't bother him so much, especially when he's handling weapons more powerful than the police. Nolan North hate is a personal hatred for the lack of creativity he provides, he's just bland bland bland. As for 6-8 hour story, that's it, there's nothing more, not even a free play mode, something that was already in Mafia I and the story was around 12 hours depending on the player. Some how eight years for 8 hours of gameplay with no real point to playing again makes for a lousy wait.


Shooting back at cops isn't a question of morality, it's a question of practicality. What's easier to escape from, one squad car or ten? Shooting back at the cops would land you in "I NEED BACKUP" country in a hot minute.

There's never a set time for creating a good story. EVER. It's all done at the writer's pace. Besides, I highly doubt that they've been working on this game non-stop for those eight years. I'd imagine that the property wasn't being worked on until maybe a couple years ago.

SmilerAl wrote:
My impression is Smokey you never played the first one, which is required in my honest regard to understand how much of a let down Mafia II is to any one who ever played it, Mafia was our GTA III to PS2 owners, Halo for the Xbox users and instead of the sequel going all out in terms of improvements in every area when it was eventually released 8 years later we got everything held back with weak excuses and given overpriced DLC that was already included in the game and was hidden in the source.


Granted, I've never played the original game. However, I'm gonna take a guess and say that the story isn't based off of the original. If the events in the two games aren't connected, the second game doesn't have much business being held up beside the original. The only thing connecting these two games are the name and theme.

As for the DLC, I really don't understand why you didn't get the PS3 version with the exclusive free DLC. Besides, I don't think $10 is too much for the amount of content you're getting, at least with Jimmy's Vendetta. If it was just a couple of guns or a car, then yeah, I'd call bullshit, but it's over 30 more missions from a completely different viewpoint. That merits $10. I haven't seen anything about the DLC being contained on the disc, either. I've seen reasonable speculation claiming that it was completed alongside the retail product, but nothing definitive saying that it was already on the disc and that you had to pay to unlock it.

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 10:46 am 
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I think that what people are missing is that with sandbox games, the time spent on the game varies so dramatically. You may have had 6-8 hours of gameplay out of it, I ended up spending about 17-18 hours on it, just playing around with things, finding cars, exploring, etc. Same thing with Fallout 3, some people just blast through the story, then complain about how short it is, some people will spend many times longer than that, and be completely sated, even without the DLC addons.
Sandboxes are designed to give you the freedom to stray from the rails, so to just blast through them really doesn't do justice to the creation that goes into it. It'd be like taking a traditional RPG, and plowing through without realising the narrative, or by using a particularly overpowered group.


And about the police? Remember, this is supposed to be the 1940s and early 50s. Police resources were massively reduced in comparison to today. Also, this is the Mafia, in the midst of quite possibly one of the more corrupt eras of the US police. Having the police not follow you for throwing a gum wrapper out of the window is to be expected. No speed-guns, so speeding would be relative. I've had times were the police have flashed up when I've been going 50 in a 40 zone, and times where they've not bothered chasing me when I've been doing 130.

And in terms of it being a sequel?
Here's the crossovers...

Loading screen texts are taken from the trial of Ennio Salieri, and some references to Lost Heaven, the city from the first game.
Inside the story? One passing reference in a very quick and easy job. Vito and Joe are sent on a "quick and easy hit from one of the out of town families, with a message". The target? Tommy Angelo. The message? "Mr Salieri sends his regards..."

That's not enough to be a sequel. Mafia II's not set in the same city, the same period, or even the same organisation (Mafia families are separate organisations to each other). Characters are only referenced in passing, and it was only after looking the things up, that you see the link.

Zero morality? Several of the kills have seen had mentions in cut-scenes about things not feeling right about either the killing, or the job being done. It's then reiterated that it's not personal, it's just business. There's no morality in business, especially not in the Mafia. The don tells you to do something, and yo do it, regardless of how you personally feel about it. Because it's an older period, there's still a heavy emphasis on honour, and following the chain of command.

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 10:52 am 
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Smokey wrote:
Shooting back at cops isn't a question of morality, it's a question of practicality. What's easier to escape from, one squad car or ten? Shooting back at the cops would land you in "I NEED BACKUP" country in a hot minute.

There's never a set time for creating a good story. EVER. It's all done at the writer's pace. Besides, I highly doubt that they've been working on this game non-stop for those eight years. I'd imagine that the property wasn't being worked on until maybe a couple years ago.

Granted, I've never played the original game. However, I'm gonna take a guess and say that the story isn't based off of the original. If the events in the two games aren't connected, the second game doesn't have much business being held up beside the original. The only thing connecting these two games are the name and theme.

As for the DLC, I really don't understand why you didn't get the PS3 version with the exclusive free DLC. Besides, I don't think $10 is too much for the amount of content you're getting, at least with Jimmy's Vendetta. If it was just a couple of guns or a car, then yeah, I'd call bullshit, but it's over 30 more missions from a completely different viewpoint. That merits $10. I haven't seen anything about the DLC being contained on the disc, either. I've seen reasonable speculation claiming that it was completed alongside the retail product, but nothing definitive saying that it was already on the disc and that you had to pay to unlock it.


Why would I want to get the PS3 version? It's a mess.
And trust me, it was already on the download, you could run a mod to unlock the code to play it, as I did that myself.

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 10:59 am 
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Nubnos wrote:
Loading screen texts are taken from the trial of Ennio Salieri, and some references to Lost Heaven, the city from the first game.
Inside the story? One passing reference in a very quick and easy job. Vito and Joe are sent on a "quick and easy hit from one of the out of town families, with a message". The target? Tommy Angelo. The message? "Mr Salieri sends his regards..."

That's not enough to be a sequel. Mafia II's not set in the same city, the same period, or even the same organisation (Mafia families are separate organisations to each other). Characters are only referenced in passing, and it was only after looking the things up, that you see the link.

Zero morality? Several of the kills have seen had mentions in cut-scenes about things not feeling right about either the killing, or the job being done. It's then reiterated that it's not personal, it's just business. There's no morality in business, especially not in the Mafia. The don tells you to do something, and yo do it, regardless of how you personally feel about it. Because it's an older period, there's still a heavy emphasis on honour, and following the chain of command.


Yes there's barely any references to the first one, probably because it was such a long time ago no one on consoles would even have the slightest clue to what they're on about. As for the morality of following what the Don says, yeah you're right, tell me though, who was actually the Don in Mafia II? Granted I know his name but it never actually felt like you were in the Mafia at all, the story flew by so fast and you didn't really feel part of the Mafia, you get the money and the nice house, then all of a sudden that's gone and every character that was vaguely established is wiped out.

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 11:55 am 
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You start off working with Henry, who is part of Clemente's family.

Get locked up, and work for Leo, who is Vinci's consigliere.

Get out again, and start working for Falcone.

Get approached by Leo again, and [spoiler]you bascally do Vinci's bidding, and kill Falcone.[/spoiler]


I didn't think it was that hard to follow, given that at each time you change loyalties, there's a massive slowdown of the story, so you get to take in the changes. Henry makes a point of explaining the Clemente family, when it's clear that you're working for him.

Leo tells you that he's Vinci's right hand man when you've gained his trust. Another massive slowing of the story to cover the time inside.

And when you get back out again, you have the huge slowdown and massive cutscene of boh Joe and Vit become made men in the Falcone family.

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 12:13 pm 
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This sounds fucking awesome. Might get it on PC...

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 12:45 pm 
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[quote="Nubnos"][/quote]

I didn't mean to suggest it was hard to follow, it was just very lacking, and nothing actually changed beside given a new task, you never actually feel involved with anything that goes on, there's hardly any time spent with Vito's family either, and judging by the trailers originally the story looked to be showing the terrible parts of joining the mafia and what it does to people, but in the actual game your sister just takes dirty money once, and you beat up her husband which doesn't really involve the mafia at all.

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 1:11 pm 
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And she tells Vito to get out of her life.

Disowned by his actual family, colleagues being killed by gangs of cleaver wielding thugs, arrests, gunfights, and a couple of near misses?

Sounds just like what being involved in the Mafia would bring to me...

Think about the journey that Vito makes through the game, he goes from being involved in a one-time botched petty theft, comes back from the war, with the intentions of working honestly for a living... Gets back with Joe, who causes him to lose some of his morals, and accept a life of crime...
He then carries on having to sacrifice his family, his personal and professional morals, until there's a shell of a man, practically a robot doing his masters' bidding to the point where he then makes one last professional sacrifice, and betrays his boss at the end.

He then [spoiler]goes on to (what we assume to) lose his best friend, and make no scene about it at all.[/spoiler]

The moral of it is that the Mafia took in an honestly-intended man, stripped him of that honesty and eventually of any free will that he might have had.

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 Post subject: Re: PC - Mafia II
PostPosted: Fri Oct 29, 2010 1:25 pm 
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Nubnos wrote:
And she tells Vito to get out of her life.

Disowned by his actual family, colleagues being killed by gangs of cleaver wielding thugs, arrests, gunfights, and a couple of near misses?

Sounds just like what being involved in the Mafia would bring to me...

Think about the journey that Vito makes through the game, he goes from being involved in a one-time botched petty theft, comes back from the war, with the intentions of working honestly for a living... Gets back with Joe, who causes him to lose some of his morals, and accept a life of crime...
He then carries on having to sacrifice his family, his personal and professional morals, until there's a shell of a man, practically a robot doing his masters' bidding to the point where he then makes one last professional sacrifice, and betrays his boss at the end.

He then [spoiler]goes on to (what we assume to) lose his best friend, and make no scene about it at all.[/spoiler]

The moral of it is that the Mafia took in an honestly-intended man, stripped him of that honesty and eventually of any free will that he might have had.


To cut that short, "Crime doesn't pay" yeah?

How many times have we had that told to us? Hell even the first Mafia did that, and much better. The difference here was Vito got out with his neck still intact, perhaps that makes his story more tragic? No, not really, the developers never intended for that, our interpretations are just by accident, fooling ourselves the story was far more compelling then it actually was.

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