Mafia 2 Preview - PAX East 2010

One of the last games I got a chance to play at PAX East was 2K Games’ Mafia II. This sequel to the 2002 open world game Mafia differentiates itself further from genre standards than its predecessor and moves a few decades into the future. The game chronicles the life of a World War II veteran returning to America and joining a crime family over the course of several years, specifically 1945 to 1955.

In my demo, I got to play through several different missions and spend some times traveling the streets and getting a feel for the world of Mafia II. I spent the beginning of my time in the game world pressing different buttons while standing in the back of a pickup truck in order to hand different color-coded cartons of cigarettes to people coming to buy them from my character and his mobster partner in a parking lot. If it sounds pretty lame, you will not be pleased to know that it was. It was very boring and very lame, and it was one of the worst first missions you could sit a group of journalists and other media members down in front of to play. Luckily, the rest of the available game area and missions were considerably more creative and more exciting.

I was soon relieved of my duty as cigarette salesman and allowed to go full gangster. While handing out cigarettes, my characters as well as his partner, a man a bit further inside the organization, were accosted by a group of rival gangsters in a muscle car. After taking a few shots at one another, the rival gangsters took off. I attempted to pursue them.

One of the primary differences between Mafia II and similar games like Grand Theft Auto IV is the fact that Mafia seems to be striving for a strong sense of realism and this first made its appearance to me while behind the wheel of a car.

The 1940s car I was driving didn’t go from 0 to 60 in 4.2 seconds and most certainly didn’t control like a dream. It was better than that. It felt realistic and it felt right, even though I’ve never driven a car from anywhere close to that time period. Due to this, I didn’t catch the gangsters making their escape in a clearly better vehicle. Luckily, the developers had planned out this likelihood. I didn’t have to restart the mission and try again. The story simply corrected itself, and I was directed to travel to a nearby payphone in order to contact the boss, informing him of the attack.

It was from this point on that I really started getting excited about what Mafia II was offering. As a gangster living in this realistic world, you have to know when to act like a stand-up citizen and when to get down to business.

After finding the phone, there was a man inside the booth talking on the phone. I waited for a moment but he kept talking. In this situation in real life, a normal citizen would simply wait until the man in the booth was finished, but I was coming into the game with a more Grand Theft Auto mindset. I pulled the man out of the booth, threw him down onto the ground, and gave him a swift kick to the side. He got up and a brawl ensued across the bustling city sidewalk. Citizens ran off in all directions while one woman quickly directed the nearest policemen our way.

The cops ran up with their batons and I, looking to get into a bit of trouble, pulled my revolver and quickly pumped a round into one policeman. The shot hit him in the head and he quickly slumped to the ground. The guns felt powerful and realistic. Unfortunately for me, the remaining cop pulled his pistol and sent a round in my direction, clipping my left arm. I felt it, both in my character’s movement and in his health bar. Where you can normally take 10 or more rounds in many games, I felt like I could go down after as little as three shots which was actually a very refreshing change of pace. It added a lot of tension to all of the altercations between the player characters and enemies (police and mobsters alike).

I proceeded to steal a police car, go on a high speed chase (or two), and get both my partner and myself killed. The whole time it felt tense as if I only had a slight advantage over the police and that even the citizens would, from time to time, be out to get me if they had a chance. It was an absolute blast.

My time with Mafia II was very much a breath of fresh air. Where Red Dead Redemption takes the Grand Theft Auto mindset and moves it into a different world, Mafia II keeps many of the aspects of the modern and open world but severely alters the mindset, forcing you to act less like a mad gunman and more like a made man operating in a society that values laws, morals, and justice above the personal greed you are exhibiting throughout the story. Playing the part of the straight citizen while smuggling contraband or making your way into an apartment building preparing to whack a mark to death with a baseball bat is absolutely riveting and made me feel more like a criminal than any of my experiences throughout the Grand Theft Auto series. 2K Games, you’ve got my attention and I want in. I want to be a made man.