Mafia II
Playtime: 4.5 hours (4.5 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 8 - I really enjoy the narrative style and sandbox-lite feel, but if you have a game so dependent on its story, it has to be really good. The story is all right, but the atmosphere is the real lifesaver here.
Mafia II is one of those games I wanted to play on Xbox, but it's always been too pricey. When Steam ran an insane holiday deal during Christmas that included the full game and all DLC for a sickeningly low price, I had to snap it up. I've heard all kinds of things about the game - mostly negative, and mostly regarding the fact that it isn't really a sandbox game, even though it kinda pretends to be, like the scrawny kid in school that stuffs his t-shirt to look bigger so he doesn't get picked on (not that I would know anything about that).
I like the game so far. It's odd to see what looks like a sandbox game stripped away in favor of an incredibly linear narrative, but it really actually works. It's kind of nice to have a small(ish) open world that isn't filled to the back teeth with side missions, stunt jumps, assassinations, collection quests and other diversions. Those markets have been filled quite nicely. This game is basically Grand Theft Auto in the 1950's, if you followed exactly one main mission story strand. With boobs.
By doing it this way, the pace of the story is never lost, and it allows them to pull some pretty big game structure changes as it goes on. Plus, I am way more likely to finish Mafia II than I am to finish GTA IV (of course, I am also more likely to give birth to a litter of alien puppies than finish GTA IV). Sandboxes can be as overwhelming as they are fun, and I like having the opportunity to have the feel of it without the tedium.
When I first started playing, I was so happy to see the game supported Xbox controllers by default (it's sad my first instinct on playing PC games is to plug an Xbox controller into it). There is one thing that bothers me though, and that's the button images in the game and menus. In Alpha Protocol when you plug in an Xbox controller, it automatically recognizes it and changes all the menu prompts to look like the proper buttons on the controller; a red circle with a B in it, yellow with Y, LB on a bumper picture, etc. It works great, and it feels exactly like I'm playing on a console (ha ha, bite me PC).
With Mafia II, it's like they didn't pay the royalty to use Microsoft's button images. The controller mapping clearly has an Xbox controller shown on it, but every menu in the game shows a picture of a generic colored circle with B1 or B2 or B3 or B4. Or the left bumper as just 'L' on a grey rectangle. It's just enough that I can tell what button they want me to hit, and just enough that it makes me unsure of what button they want me to hit. And it makes an otherwise polished game look kind of amateur.
The game itself, as I've said, is more like a narrative simulation than a real game. You play a dude going from map-marker to map-marker. You can hop in a vehicle after picking the lock in a realistic fashion and take a leisurely drive; listen to the radio (which gets fantastic later on), tune up your car and rims, or personalize your license plate (I chose SEXBOT). You have to keep an eye on how fast you're going if there are cops around (thankfully there's a button that automatically locks and unlocks your car to the specific road's speed limit), and right below the speedometer is your gas gauge.
Yes, you have to fill up your virtual car at virtual gas stations, complete with light banter with the attendant while you're waiting. You can even get your car washed there. Speaking of; each car has its own specific weight, power, gas mileage, and individual saved stats. So it's easy to get very attached to a specific one, something I never did in any other game like this. I actually got upset when an NPC drove my car home, because when eventually got back there, he had scuffed the shit out of it. I seriously wanted to pistol whip him to death, you do not screw with my SEXBOT.
It might sound stupid and pointless just by reading, but so do The Sims and Minecraft, and they sell billions, for good reason. Personally, I would much rather spend my time with little in-character elements like casual drives, eating, sleeping, picking out what suit to wear and wanking off to Playboy magazines than hunting down 100 pigeons to shoot in a city the size of New Zealand.
It's dorky, but you end up wanting to do more things in character. It feels out of place to be running around with my pistol pointing at everyone, so I always holster it. I have an urge to turn off my lights and shut my door before leaving the house for the day. I feel some shame for the main character's subtle more-than-a-sibling attraction to his sister, and I plan on driving to a psychiatrist my next session to get him some help.
The game also switches up the style a lot, which is another reason it wouldn't work as a sandbox. The first stage, I was fighting in Sicily in the second World War. After that, I returned home circa 1945, and spent a few missions getting acquainted with the city and breaking all kinds of laws. Then, I got thrown into jail for 6 years (in true Capone fashion, I got busted for the single least morally-offensive and most government-offensive crime), part of which I played through, before I returned to a very transformed city, complete with overhauls in buildings, shops, music, fashion and people. With nothing stable in the game world, it adds a feeling of genuine uncertainty and anticipation over what's going to happen.
It's also interesting to see the game tackle one of the biggest questions of crime games...what makes someone do all this screwed up stuff, especially if they seem pretty decent otherwise? The main character's torn between his debt-laden mother's wish for him to have an honest crappy dock job, and his own wish for a far higher-paying mobster life to help her out, and they do a great job highlighting the differences.
Once I finished my first job for a Mafia underboss, I had to try the dock job to appease my mother. After the previous 15 minutes of car chases and fist fights and shoot outs and wads of cash, I spent the next 15 moving crates into a truck for ten bucks. I wanted to shoot myself from the monotony, and it makes it easy to understand the appeal that excitement and adrenaline has, especially for a war veteran like the main character.
I did run into some things that bugged me while playing, which I've bulleted for attractiveness.
- The checkpoints are so incredibly rare (usually maybe 1 per mission if I was lucky) that I had to replay full 15-20 minute missions over and over as I kept dying.
- In that vein, a particularly annoying and long quest (with no checkpoints) wouldn't let me finish because I wasn't in a car at the end (the mission had nothing to do with a car), so I had to restart.
- The main character, while not irritating, certainly isn't thought provoking or interesting.
- The game tricks you into thinking there isn't much to explore with its linearity, but there are a lot of hidden collectibles, mostly in the form of Playboy magazines. It creates a frustrating split between enjoying the straight-forwardness of the narrative, and trying to figure out which of the stupid goddamned painted-on doors are real so you can find that last piece of vintage porn. Err, and gun upgrades, too.
