Our demo was only fifteen minutes long and we were already quite drawn in by the convincing landscape. Mafia II does a pretty good job of putting you in the setting and into the mood of the characters with which you're controlling and interacting. There'll be no cushy three-square-meals-a-day penitentiaries for these criminals. Maybe it seems an unjust solution, but this is street justice. We stop off to riddle one of their businesses with bullet holes, and then it was time to whack about two dozen of their guys. If they were rational, they'd be on our side, right? This event, of course, leads to retribution, and since we're the guys on the scene, it's our job to take revenge and teach those no-good greasers a lesson.Īfter meeting up with some of the other members of our gang, we drive over to their headquarters to teach them a lesson. It seemed a bit over-the-top, but hey, they're the bad guys. After a moment of disagreement, the greasers toss a molotov cocktail into the bed of the truck, incinerating the cigarettes and of course, ruining the car. It's not long, though, before the greasers show up and demand that we leave their turf and stop taking away from their business. In the beginning, the main character is sent to go help a friend sell a truckload of cigarettes, stolen or legal, we're not really told. Our entire demo of the game seemed to be essentially a long battle against the "greasers". This game, however, seems to be much more cliché-driven. Everything from the cinematography of the cutscenes to the exaggerated accents drips with the invisible sway of Martin Scorsese. The influence of these kinds of films can't be understated.
This time, however, we're in the 1950s and 1960s, in much the same world as Godfather 2, Goodfellas, and Casino. This same influence is obviously apparent in the sequel. The last game was something of an homage to the early era of the 1930s, and it's aesthetic and culture was clearly defined by the movies, which makes perfect sense considering the team in the Czech Republic would most likely have been influenced most by American films.
In both the real world and the game world, time has moved forward quite a bit and everyone has had to adapt to new conditions.
Nearly eight years later, the gaming world is readying itself to finally get a sequel that 2K is putting their full weight behind.
In its time it was written off as a Grand Theft Auto 3 wannabe, but 2002's Mafia delivered fairly well on the relatively brand-new genre of sandbox action games.
Granted, the console versions weren't amazing, but the PC version, when played on a suitable rig, was actually quite good. ApThe original game in the Mafia series was actually a somewhat underappreciated title.