![]() ![]() It now runs at a sumptuous 60fps and it’s incredibly smooth in motion. As is strangely the case with a lot of remasters, it looks like the game I remember playing in 2010. The main selling point of this remaster is clearly in its presentation and it’s safe to say that Mafia II has never looked better. It’s satisfying to hit the high gear across the Empire Bay version of the Brooklyn Bridge. The game’s opening act takes place during a miserable, cold winter with the slick roads wreaking havoc, whereas Vito’s post-prison resurrection has a more pleasant summertime setting. They’re characteristically on-point and they handle as expected, though they do walk the line between arcade and tank-like realism. ![]() For a game as old as it is now, the animation has held up as watching bodies slump after a calculated headshot is as disconcerting as it gets.įrom the Jefferson Provincial to the Smith Mainline, the care taken in recreating these stylish workhorses in all of their era-appropriate glory has long been an impressive task. Mafia II is up close and personal a lot of the time and focuses on Vito’s time in the nick, though at range the game is uniformly unflinching. Vito can duck and weave through the beautifully designed, tight arenas. Ten years ago, this game introduced a cover system to the Mafia franchise, adding a tactical element to firefights. Mafia II came at a time when these games were still in a stage of infancy and while the lure of scantily clad, classical Playboy centrefolds will have ‘horny on main’ type operators trawling Empire Bay, it’s not likely most will stick around once the twelve hour story wraps up. There’s a whole open world on offer, though it doesn’t do a lot to encourage exploration. Not every gangster needs to go out like Scarface, sometimes it’s enough to see another day.īecause it isn’t a rebuild from the ground up like the remake of Mafia, this definitive edition has plenty to offer despite sporting gameplay mechanics that feel a touch dated by today’s standards. ![]() It’s because it’s grounded that Mafia II’s plot lands harder than its contemporaries and, even a decade later, there’s value in that. The determination to make something of himself is a relatable baseline for Vito as a human being, though his methods are callous. There aren’t any heroes in this story and that, in itself, is a refreshing change. ![]() A no good crook, and this ‘pitfall of the selfish’ is the catalyst constantly driving Mafia II forward as Vito and Joe ceaselessly pursue more until the city has no more left to give. What started out as a means to clear his family’s debt grew with Vito’s misplaced ambition, and his mother died with her only son behind bars. What follows isn’t a standard tale of ascension free of consequence, Vito’s rise is offset by the alienation of those closest to him. For a crook turned discharged war hero like Vito Scaletta, anchored by his dead father’s debts, a life like this can look alluring. It’s a point-blank, stark admonition that the road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but it’s paid for in blood. Mafia II doesn’t romanticise the mobster lifestyle, nor the passage one takes to rise through the ranks and get made. Though it didn’t receive the notoriety of Rockstar’s sandbox of depravity, Mafia has managed to maintain an understated dignity, prioritising class over ‘Hot Coffee’. A couple of iterations later we, of course, had Grand Theft Auto III which made its bones as the veritable godfather of the modern, ‘orgy of violence’ simulator. A lowly thief, out to steal back a book of stamps soon led to Grand Theft Auto, a hail of gunfire at my fingertips. Growing up, my first exposure to a two-bit crook came by way of Tom Sizemore’s Milo Peck in the tremendously underrated comedy-drama Hearts and Souls. ![]()
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