Mafia II – 2
Playtime: 3 hours (7.5 hours total)
Personal Rating This Session: 6 - The story is still so-so; I'm not a fan of the latest narrative transition and I ran into a lot more issues this session. Still fun to play, though.
Not much has happened in the past 3 hours other than story-based missions, so this post is going to be shorter. First, the good bit: it's refreshing to see a game's neutral-tone objective ticker have some personality.
The bad bits start off with the latest narration shift. Immediately after I became a made man in a mafia family, the game cut into a minute-long montage of all kinds of ridiculous shit I did the next few months. Robberies, explosions, car chases, extortions -- all kinds of fun things. It ended with me buying a house, and then gave me back control just in time to get into the dredge of story missions again.
It's like the second disc of Xenogears, where gameplay was substituted by a bunch of cutscenes showing you doing things instead of you actually doing them. The game teases you with all this fun you could be having, then gives the game back after it's all over. Like I said in my first post, I don't mind the linear structure of the game, but I admit this was one time I felt a little sad. The montage made me want to go wreak havoc for a bit, rather than do another long drawn out story-based mission with no freedom.
The game's world layout annoyed me a couple times, too. Once, I missed my turn on the highway and thought casually, "Ah, I'll just take the next exit", until discovering there are about 3 highway exits on the entire map. After 4 minutes of barreling down the road, I eventually had to just turn around and go back to the turn I missed. Also, I was asked to find a phone booth during a mission. Although there's an icon for telephones on the map legend, they aren't shown on the actual map! So I spent 10 minutes going up and down streets looking for a goddamned phone booth before finally found one.
I was in love with the music of the new 1950's era as well, until I realized that each of the three stations only had about 3 songs each, and of those 9 songs, there's only about 2 good ones. They just play those two early and often. So so often.
Now, the piece that pissed me off more than anything. After my "see all the fun you could be having" montage, I discovered a hot sports car in my driveway. I got in it and lovingly drove it to a mechanic to get it kitted out with the works: five separate engine upgrades, including tuning and race-car performance and all kinds of stuff. I painted it bright cherry red, and had a nice obscene vanity plate. All in all, I spent close to $4,000 on this car, and considering the most I ever had before this point was $600, $4,000 was a lot of dough.
What happened to this godly creation, you might ask?
I started a mission inside of it; I had to go pick up my friend at his house. Arriving there, my friend would only ride in his own car, not mine. I couldn't park my current car in his garage, and my other garage was locked since I was in a mission. "Well," I reasoned, "I'm sure this car has been saved to my garage or will be here when I return."
I think you can guess what happened after that.
The thing was completely gone, and because the mission took about 30 minutes to complete (typical for a main mission), there was no way I was reloading a game and getting it back. I dejectedly went back to my SEXBOT car and tried not to think about why you'd want to customize your own car if you can't take it on missions, considering missions are the only thing you can do in this game.
