Mafia 2 Definitive Edition - Review
When Mafia 2 first released, I was excited to play it for two reasons, one the first game had potential and I wanted to see where it would go and two, open world games were still trying to find their footing in the modern gaming world. Sadly, I was not able to play the game, as the PC I had, just couldn’t handle it, so with the release of the Definitive Edition, I jumped in with both feet, but with years of expectations behind me, how did it fair?
The story tells the tale of one Vito Scaletta, who emigrated to the United States with this family when he was young, in his youth he made friends with Joe Barbaro and as they grew up, they were constantly getting into trouble. Eventually Vito was arrested and given a choice, the service or prison and given that World War Two was happening, he choose to serve. The first level, which is set in WW2, is more of a tutorial, but also helps set the ground rules for honour and family, which is the core of the Mafia brand. Once back home, Vito quickly falls back into the shenanigans that got him in trouble, while his mother and sister tell him not to and Joe keeps asking for help with things.
While the first few chapters power along pretty quickly, the game does reach a break in the action, in order to pass time and help characters grow, well I say characters and the only one who does is Francesca, everyone else pretty much sticks their roles. Eventually six years pass, and we re-join Vito as he is attempting to rebuild things up, again and it was at this point where the story lost me.
The idea of starting from nothing and building oneself up is great, it is a tale that a lot of people can understand, the problem is that doing that multiple times in one game is not fun. Hitting the reset button, just to have the character meet new people is about the same as moving home, because you want to know more people, an extreme reaction to be sure. In addition to Vito having to restart things over, a lot, the bulk of the characters he interacts with never change and constantly appear, making the entire point of a reboot pointless. I understand that this is a remaster of an already released game, and as such extraordinarily little would have been changed from the original release, but I am sure that if I had reviewed the game back then, the complaint would still be valid.
Where Mafia 2 shines though is with its core gameplay, getting this out of the way, yes you can play the game like it is Grand Theft Auto, but in doing that, you would miss out on a lot of the fun that can had. Most of the gameplay elements of an open world crime game are here, from cars, to guns, locations and complex missions, but it is the setting itself that brings them together very few other games have done them. Taking the gunplay as the first part, there are only a handful of weapons that you can use, which make sense for the period that the game is set in, but rather then you being given access to high power assault rifles, your guns are slower and clunkier to use, which requires constant adjustments for their use. Running into a gun fight, it is easy to line up a headshot, but firing one gun, will expand the target reticule so much, that you have to wait seconds for it to be the size you need it to be for the next one, shoot again too soon and it balloons out even more.
On the driving side, the game offers up two different handling options, normal and simulation and while the latter is fine, normal is where I suspect most people will remain. Driving the cars is actually fun and a challenge, something that a lot of games are unable to manage to blend together, there are rules of the road that you need to adhere to, failing to so, will get the cops on you. If you speed, driving through a red light, crash into another car, basically become a destruction derby driver, the cops will start to chase you down, the worse you behave, the more forceful they become. There was a time when I didn’t make a turn as sharply as I had hoped and took out another car, with the cops right behind them, I was in trouble, but rather than drive off, I waited, got out of the car and paid the fine to the cop on the spot, it was something different for a change and I liked it, the problem though was with the other car.
More specifically, the AI in general, it falls to the woeful side of things, far more than the competent side, with characters behaving weird, in almost every task they are doing. When driving around, you will see cars just slow down and stop, in the middle of the road, whilst on the other side, pedestrians will just cross the streets, at crosswalks at least, without caring about any traffic coming there way. There are also times when they will, comedically, jump away from your car, but you are not near them at all, and while it is funny the first few times and remains funny for more times, it does eventually wear thin. The other side of the AI is that when you get involved in shootouts, a lot of the action revolves around you pushing forward and while most enemies will take cover, there are times when they will push forward, by walking right out into the line of fire.
Of course, as a remaster, there is perhaps one aspect that got the most attention and that is the presentation and there are a lot of goods and few bads to talk about here. First up is the characters, the main characters all look a treat, be it their faces, or animations, everything looks smooth, the secondary and random characters, not so much, they just lack detail. There are a few cutscenes where this stands out, you have your mains talking, with the background characters looking undefined in comparison and once you see it, it is hard to ignore. Looking at the world though, the textures have gotten a nice overhaul, resulting in some wonderful details, neon signs, posters and such all look great, especially with the time jump. The flipside to that though is that the draw distance is odd, there are times when trees and cars pop in a lot and they are very noticeable appearances, which is a shame. The only other presentation issue that I had, comes down to the details on the outfits, when the game was created, polygons were finite, so I suspect they went ahead and added details, like creases, to make up for that shortcoming, the problem now though, is we have more. What has happened, is that the creases that are on the clothes, don’t match with movements, instead, we get large triangle shaped folds in the clothes and the creases, well the don’t move.
On the audio side, things are better overall, the speech is clean and easy to understand, the games ambient music is great and fills in the void when not in a car. Speaking of cars, the radio stations in the game still provide the same soundtrack that they did before, but while there is the static and noise of changing a radio station, there is actually no static over the music, which is nice, but draws a little from the immersion. The level of sound when out in the world can feel sparse at times, but that fits with the aesthetic that city is coping with the effects of a war, but when you time jump the sounds of the city are louder and more everywhere, which helps sell that you have entered the swinging 50’s.
Mafia 2 Definitive Edition is a really great conversion, while not perfect, there upsides far outweigh any bad things that you might encounter. While the story is a bit of a joke, the gameplay is solid enough to carry the game, if you have never played it, then this is your chance to correct it. Anyone who has played the game before, will know what to expect here, but the overhauled presentation, makes it special all over again.
The Score
8.5
Review code provided by 2K
The Pros
+Solid gameplay, that while old, still holds charm today
+Lot of attention has been paid to the presentation and a few issues don't hold it back
The Cons
+The story holds no weight and with it 'resetting' every few chapters, holds less interest
+Some of the visual improvements have put a spotlight on the original design, in unintended ways
