Mafia II (2010)

This title is a third-person, story-driven crime drama set in the fictional city of Empire Bay, a richly detailed world inspired by post-war America from the 1940s to the 1950s. The MC is called Vito Scaletta, a Sicilian-American war veteran who returns home after World War II, only to find himself entangled in the criminal underworld in search of money, power, and belonging. The narrative is the game’s greatest strength. It’s mature, cinematic, and grounded, focusing more on loyalty, betrayal, and family than over-the-top action. Vito’s journey, along with his hot-headed best friend Joe Barbaro, feels authentic and tragic, making the story feel like a playable gangster film.

The dialogue is sharp, the pacing is tight, and the voice acting, especially from Rick Pasqualone as Vito, is top-notch. Visually, it remains impressive for its time. The attention to detail in the cars, fashion, and architecture of Empire Bay captures the era’s mood perfectly, if you are a car enthusiast you'll fall in love with this game solely because of it's driving experience. The licensed soundtrack, featuring artists like Buddy Holly and Dean Martin, adds a ton of personality and helps immerse you in the world. In many ways this title has a similar quality level to the GTA titles, despite it's scale being very small in comparison, and also not having as good of a sandbox, it still retains the world building and mainline plot quality level.

As for the gameplay, however, it definitely shows its limitations. The gunplay is competent but formulaic, and the open world, while beautiful, is surprisingly empty. There are no side missions or meaningful activities beyond the main story, which makes Empire Bay feel more like a backdrop than a living city. Still, the tight structure ensures that the narrative stays focused, avoiding unnecessary filler. Overall, this title stands out for its storytelling, atmosphere, and cinematic presentation rather than its mechanics. It’s a game that values mood and narrative depth over sandbox freedom. This title is a stylish, emotional crime saga that feels like a love letter to classic mob cinema, beautiful, moody, and unforgettable, even if it’s more linear than open-world.

The story is the clear highlight of the game. Good characters, fun & well written dialogues and a great atmosphere.

Driving through the city with radio playing 40’s and 50’s music feel nice and gives a good vibe. Compared to the Mafia 1, the combat is an improvement. It feels smoother and more polished. You can’t compare it to newer titles but for an older game it works okay. This Definitive Edition is just a remaster and not a remake. Visually it’s slightly better but I think the game could use some overall improvements to make the gameplay better.

On the bad side, there is still some bugs in the game. Seems a lot more on PC but I encounter some on PS5 as well. There is no side mission in this game either, same as last Mafia-game. I would love some more interesting side stories to play through. There is a couple of DLC with other characters but they don’t look interesting.

It’s a solid experience thanks to its story. It’s definitely worth playing.

Rating: 🌲🌲🌲+

(Disclaimer: I am only reviewing one aspect of the game, if you want a full review, this is not the review for you)

When I collected one of the Playboy magazines for the first time, I thought that it was a cool collectible that enriches the setting of the game and gives an authentic idea of this era.

And although it sounds like a funny idea to have a cooperation with Playboy, it was too much. There are 50!!! Playboy magazines you can find in the game.

I didn't know how to feel while collecting those Playboy magazines. It's a good collectible in theory, but it is extremely overused. Just like the 160 Wanted Posters (189 if you count the remastered version).

Collecting these only two types of collectibles has an effect only the first time you collect them. After that, it gets boring and repetitive really fast. Because you know that you are going to collect the same collectible every time.

It would have benefited the game to have a much bigger variety of collectibles. They would have given the world more identity and collecting them would have been fun.

Besides, having 50 naked women as collectible objects is weird and feels male gaze-y.

Thank you for reading my review. 🖤

Ricci

Waited and waited and waited for the definitive edition to on a deep sale, and it was finally 5 bucks, which I could stand to pay for. I'm happy to say this is still an absolute masterpiece. Haven't played it in a decade, but it holds up better than most new games.

That being said, I do admit to feeling a little cheap when replaying and thusly regaining achievements for games I've already gotten achievements for. It just feels...like cheating, in a way? Padding my gamerscore with remakes and remasters.

It's one thing if a remaster or remake is a game that was released on an older console and didn't have achievements, like Voodoo Vince for instance, or the Battle for Bikini Bottom and Spyro Reignited releases, but when it's just another version of a game that already had gamerscore and achievements that I've accrued...it just feels cheap, man.

I made myself a promise that, except for the Alan Wake remaster, the only "remasters" I'd do on the xbox One would be trilogies; Bioshock, Mass Effect, etc, and so Mafia is a trilogy and thusly fits into that category, and it's great to be able to play Mafia 2 again, even if it doesn't seem all that extra polished from its original release, but I really do hate the idea of getting the exact same achievements I've already gotten. It just doesn't feel fair.

Maybe I'm just weird that way.

This game sits in a peculiar position. At the time of its release, it was a massive improvement over its predecessor in virtually every way - Story, graphics, gameplay, open-world, etc. At the time it was released, going from the original Mafia to Mafia II must have felt like taking a giant leap forward. Now, after playing the completely remade from scratch Mafia Definitive Edition, going to Mafia II feels like a step back - but a step back that I can't in good consciousness fault it for.

In my review for Mafia: Definitive Edition, I admitted I never played the original Mafia, but after playing the remake I watched a ton of gameplay to get myself familiarized with it because I was so enamored by its remake and I wanted to see for myself how much it truly improved over the original.

Going forward into the franchise, I was mentally prepared to take the unusual step-back in graphics with the sequel (as the original was remade from scratch, but Mafia 2 was merely just 'remastered'), but I never considered that I'd be taking a step back in terms of gameplay smoothness & just overall story presentation as well. It's just really unusual to more "forward" in a franchise while simultaneously moving "back."

To be clear, I did genuinely enjoy Mafia II. I love narrative focused games and it delivered in that regard, but whereas the remade Mafia slightly re-wrote and re-shaped the narrative slightly to make the story incredibly tight, Mafia II's story is presented as it was in 2010 and it just feels slightly...unfocused and not as trimmed down as it could be.

Overall I enjoyed the plot and overall story more than the first game (and Joe Barbaro is my favorite supporting character in the franchise so far), but it wasn't presented nearly as fluidly as its predecessor. Again, this is an area where the remake has an advantage as they touched up the story a bit. Mafia II doesn't have the advantage of someone going back and polishing up another draft or two of the story.

Overall, I really struggled on whether to give this game a 3 or a 4. I've loved both entries in the series so far, but under my system a 3 is still a damn solid rating. My approach to ratings goes like this:

1 star: Terrible. Not worth your time

2 stars: Below average, but still some fun to be had. Worth your time, but it can sit on your backlog for a bit or you can wait for a sale.

3 stars: Average to above average (but since I love video games, an average game is still a great experience!). There's no shame in being a 3 star. It means you delivered and satisfied.

4 stars: Above and beyond. A classic I will definitely return to at some point.

5 stars: All time classic. (I very rarely give out 5 stars) A near perfect game. It has flaws sure, but its flaws are so insignificant or so overshadowed by everything else that pointing them out is just nit-picking for the most part.

Additional Review of the Adventures of Joe DLC I loved the base game, but this DLC sucked and I included this bit at the end because I need to spread the word about how terrible it is. A definite 1 star DLC.

Since I bought the definitive edition, all 3 DLCs were included. I started with the Adventures of Joe because I love the character and it was the only DLC that added to the base game's narrative. It was so bad, I decided to forgo the other 2 DLCs as I heard gameplay wise they were pretty much the exact same, but had a much more silly & non-canon story.

Where to start? This "story" DLC was the most lazy approach to DLC I've ever seen. There's hardly any story at all. It's supposed to bridge a 6 year gap that happens in the main game, but apparently all Joe did during this 6 year gap (being vague for spoilers) was to run around doing completely random odd jobs. There's absolutely nothing narratively compelling here.

The missions have no cutscenes and no real story. You run to the markers on the map, read a short paragraph from a boss telling you to do some completely random job, do the job, and then move onto the next mission until they're al done. That's it. That's the DLC. There's a cutscene at the beginning of the DLC and one at the end that contain all the "story" (which isn't even that compelling) but everything in the middle is just random busy work.

And the missions themselves are incredibly "meh" and often unfairly difficult. It's like they didn't even play test them. One mission tasked me with finding a truck, and driving it to 3 different gun stores around the map to sell the stores some goods. After delivering to the first store, a vehicle full of rival mobsters shows up and starts shooting at me. However, they are on me literally the moment I drop off the goods and they kill me almost immediately. I'm still in the truck when this happens. So if I try to drive off while they're shooting me, they kill me before I can get up to speed to get away. If I try to get out while they're shooting at me, they kill me while the animation of me getting out of the truck plays out. I did this mission over 20 times, each time getting killed literally instantly after stopping at that first store until one time I got lucky and they missed me enough to allow me to get the truck up to speed and get away with literally a sliver of health left.

This sort of problem happens frequently in these missions. Guys show up out of nowhere and kill you before you can do anything because they show up when you're stuck in an animation or something. So you essentially just have to play the mission 20-30 times until you get lucky enough for them to miss you long enough for you to either escape or kill them first with flawless, 100% accurate shooting.

All this for a DLC that's just a collection of story-less, random odd jobs that the mob bosses want you to do. The shame of it is that some of the missions were actually kind of fun concepts. One tasked me with taking a car from point A in the map to point B, but the catch was that it would explode if I dropped under 35 MPH. The problem is, you kind of have to slow down once you reach the drop off point, which the instructions say is a garage. I exploded trying to park in that garage so many times before I realized the game intends for you to not park in the garage - like you would for countless other similar missions - but to drive into a small floating token on the other side of the garage (which isn't even marked on the game map. You literally have to drive AROUND the garage to even see it).

Overall, this DLC just reeks of something thrown together in a week with cutscenes added at the beginning and the end to justify calling it a "story" and random missions that weren't even play tested filling out everything in the middle. Worst DLC I've ever played in my entire life and It's not even close. I'd be livid if I'd paid extra for this.

If you play Mafia II, I highly recommend just playing the base game.

I just finished the first two Mafia Definitive Editions back to back over the last 10 days and this second installment seems worse in every relevant way:

1. The story. Sure, this one's subjective, but I never got as invested in Vito and Joe as I did in Tommy and Paulie. I still enjoyed it, just not as much as the first part.
2. The copious amounts of unnecessary driving. I loved Mafia: Definitive Edition but I thought there was too much driving. Alas, there's even more in this part, e.g. almost every chapter needs to be finished by driving home, which adds nothing at all from a gameplay perspective. The worst example of this is the end of chapter 6. After Marty gets killed you're in Joe's house. Watch a cut scene, drive home. Watch another cut scene, drive to the bar. Watch yet another cut scene, drop Joe home. Get rid of the body at Bruski's, drive home. A lot of driving for a few minutes of actual gameplay. I'd much rather just have seen all of this as one cut scene.
3. Gun battles are less fun. Not sure why, maybe it's because aiming was harder (I played both parts with a controller and low aim assist) or because AIs tend to get stuck in weird ways and you have to lure them out by exposing yourself, sometimes getting killed in the process.
4. On a related note, there are many bugs in this game. I almost couldn't finish a car chase mission because every time after the cut scene my car would spawn in mid-air, crash to the floor, and then have a damaged engine (chapter 13). It took me almost 10 tries to steal a different car quickly enough so I could still catch up with the objective. I also failed a mission because a police car came out of nowhere, did something incredibly stupid and unpredictable, then arrested me for crashing into them. On the other hand, you can abuse a bug in the game to make killing Derek easier: just drive into the water before you enter the warehouse. After you respawn the door to Derek's office can be opened (it can't before) and the opponents are a lot easier to take out from this position.
5. Random graphic glitches/framerate drops. I have a pretty beefy gaming PC that handles other games just fine. Yet this title repeatedly had problems.

Overall, I'm disappointed. With a bit more attention to detail, this could have been even better than the remake of the first part but like this it's a somewhat frustrating experience.

Com uma história bem desenvolvida, personagens cativantes e reviravoltas que prendem o jogador até o fim, o jogo se posiciona como um dos melhores do gênero; bem acima das falhas tentativas de se recriar nos jogos um ambiente como o de filmes sobre máfia, a exemplo de O Poderoso Chefão da EA.

Vito Scaletta é um dos melhores protagonistas de jogos em anos. O mesmo se diga de Joe Barbaro, o segundo protagonista e amigo de Vito. Todos os outros personagens são bem construídos, sem esteriótipos, o que reforça a qualidade do roteiro e enredo do jogo.

Contudo, o jogo peca devido alguns erros de desenvolvimento. O mundo aberto de Empire Bay é muito limitado, quando se compara ao mundo aberto de outras franquias sandbox, como GTA IV (um contemporâneo de Mafia II). A comunicação com o ambiente quase inexiste, exceto o fato do jogador poder comprar roupa, arma ou comer algo nas lojas espalhadas pela cidade. Por outro lado, a possibilidade de faltar gasolina no seu carro e precisar ir a um posto reabastecer é um ponto interessante do jogo, trazendo uma maior realidade à jogatina.

Os problemas com a câmera também não passam despercebidos. Embora quando dirigindo a execução da mudança de visão seja muito boa, quando a pé o jogador pode ter sérias dificuldades de mudar a câmera para o ângulo que lhe agrada.

O modo em capítulos como a história se desenrola é muito bom, mas prender o jogador e não permitir que ele salve em alguns momentos, fazendo com o que próprio jogo decida o momento de salvar, é uma funcionalidade que pode irritar muita gente. Os checkpoints no meio das missões mais longas são interessantes; infelizmente, ainda assim, essa funcionalidade também pode ser irritante, caso você esteja lidando com uma missão cheia de cutscenes ou "ações congeladas" - aquele momento em que a história se desenrola sem ser uma cutscene, mas você não pode se mover.

Apesar dos problemas, Mafia II tem conteúdo. Sobre a história, muito já se foi dito. A trilha sonora, por sua vez, é impecável. Abusando de muito jazz, do rock primitivo do início dos anos 50, o jogo consegue criar a ambientação perfeita da época, explorando ainda, inclusive, um pouco da cultura italo-americana.

Vistos os prós e os contras, Mafia II ainda assim é um jogo a se recomendar.

Chop-chop!