I remember playing Mafia 1 on the PC years ago and being amazed at the quality of the city of Lost Heaven and the scale of it, i do remember it being quite hard to play and i do remember never actually finishing it because it got very hard after a while. Despite these things, i was still somewhat looking forward to playing Mafia 2 to see what 2K could do with this gangster series in a post-GTA4 world but in the end, this game has all the signs of it being delayed so much that these days, it doesn't cut it as an open world action game.
Basically, if this game was released before Grand Theft Auto IV then maybe i would have had not expected as much from the game, which is a shame because it seemed promising from the start. For a gangster game you wouldn't expect to start off in Italy during World War II in the middle of a battle where your character, Vito Scaletta, gets injured and then sent home to Empire Bay. When he gets back his friend, Joe, sorts it out that he won't ever have to go back to the War (with some fudged injury papers) so in payment you end up working with Joe for one of the gangster families.
From there you end up doing typical mission types which have clearly been inspired by every gangster films you've ever known of. There's many Godfather references (the guy's name is Vito for starters) lots of Goodfellas references ("Joe" being your partner in crime, as in Joe Pesci ... yageddit???) and i'm pretty sure there's a few Sopranos references in there too. (there are a couple other ones i picked up on but they are plot sensitive so i'll skip those for now)
The weird thing about the game is that it's got an open world but there is absolutely nothing to do in it, each 'Chapter' is simply a mission and all you do in the game are the chapters and each one is broken up by you being woken up at home by the telephone, doing your mission (which involves lots of killing and a bit of driving), coming home from your mission and going back to bed. You don't go to multiple people and work missions for them, you do one mission per chapter and all that does is advance the story. You could take this two ways, you could take it as 'at least they get to the point and they don't pad out the game with annoying missions' or 'this is nothing like a GTA game which normally involves working missions for people to advance the story' - I took it the second way since i expected it to be a mafia-gangster version of GTA. There are NO side missions to speak of, and the only collectables to speak of are booklets which are Playboy branded (neat touch since it involves a lot of boobs, but it comes off a bit pointless since it is simply obvious product placement) and these are scattered around in missions and in buildings you visit.
The setting is one thing that stuck out at me, the game is primarily set in 1951 and doesn't go beyond that. The game itself doesn't look like it is set in 1951 but more the mid 1960s with all the fashion and the indoor decor and the cars that are available. The music was something else that stuck out to me, as the game has a number of songs that will be instantly recognisable that are period related, but i am positive that they weren't around in the year the game is set and they are late 50s/mid 60s songs. This was something i somewhat forgave since i could drive around to songs that i know. Even the Playboy posters aren't from the 50s, they are from the mid 60s (i read up about this) which is again a bit bizarre, but 60s boobs are still as nice as 2010's boobs so all is good
The story in the game starts off really good with interesting characters which end up messing things up in typical gangster movie ways, there's interesting bits of honour amongst friends themes in the game and that carries on way till the end of the game. There was some things that made it a little bit 'soap opera' for its own good (the bit about your fathers death mostly had me thinking this). The game itself doesn't do anything that hasn't been seen before, it's third person, you can semi-lock on with LT and shoot with RT, you can duck behind cover with the strangest cover mechanic where you have to press A to go into cover and then press A yet again to get out of cover. This took a while to get used to as we are all used to just pulling down on the analog stick but it's no big deal after a while. The shooting and aiming i found to be quite weak, you lock on with LT but it very rarely locks on an enemy properly and even with the lock-on on, you still find yourself aiming more to get a shot on your enemy. The best thing about the shooting is the Shotgun as this is the first game in a long time that gives you a Shotgun that has a long range and it makes the shooting a lot more fun for a while.
The driving is good considering the game is set in 1951, the cars were built like tanks and in other games that is set in the 50s (The Godfather series most noticeably) they control like tanks too, but in Mafia II they don't feel like tanks and they feel good to drive about in. Like in the first Mafia, you cannot just speed around from mission to mission and if you speed over 40mph you run the risk of getting fined from the Police (which i have always considered to be a nice touch) and there are a decent range of cars. The majority of them are big and slow but there are a few sporty looking ones in there.
The most disappointing thing about the game is the length and pacing of the game, for 2/3 of the game it is still plot building and meeting all the characters and doing minor work for the mob, it's only in the latter third were things kick off into overdrive and plot-wise, lots of twists and turns happen. The ending was pretty weak if you ask me and i do think it leads the way into extra missions via DLC, which considering i completed the game in 9 and a half hours, i find it extremely disappointing that a game that's been in development for nearly 6-7 years and is branded as a open world game is this ridiculously short. I would have happily played it a bit more of the game if the plot didn't go a bit silly towards the end or if there was something else to do besides the missions.
All in all, it was a disappointing game but still one worth playing on a rental, as it is possible to complete in very few sittings (i did it in 2 sittings).