The original Mafia game from 2K was set in 1930’s America and was a huge success selling over 2 million copies and winning a whole host of awards. The sequel, aptly named Mafia 2, hit the shelves last week with expectations high. Set in the 1940s and 50s, boasting a sprawling, fully explorable city and with storyline to match, Mafia 2’s ambitions match anything coming out of Hollywood; but is this latest instalment any good?

Set in ‘Empire Bay’ – a fictional city sitting on the east coast of America – and drawing its influences from a number of real-life cities including New York, Chicago and San Francisco, it feels instantly familiar while, at all times, reflecting the style of the era through its fashion and soundtrack.

It’s a living city too, its inhabitants going about their daily lives be that waiting at traffic lights, arguing with their spouse or buying a newspaper. Of course, there is also a fully working police force to enforce speed limits, etc. Speed and they’ll issue you a ticket, kill someone and you’ll have the full force of the law bearing down on you.

As is usual with sandbox games the graphics do tend to suffer slightly in the face of such scale, particularly on PS3 where grass textures and other fine details are somewhat lacking. However, in general and on all platforms Empire Bay looks stunning; catching the sunset behind the city skyline as you cruise over the Brooklyn Bridge clone in your convertible is a moment of gaming beauty.

The story tells the tale of Vito Scaletta, a young Sicilian immigrant who arrives with his parents on the shores of the USA, his father hoping to build a better life for the family in Empire Bay. As seems to be always the case with this kind of mafia story, he finds a job labouring docks – back-breaking work which turns him to drink and eventually death. Vito, determined not to end up like his father, starts to pull small petty crimes with his buddy Joe to make some money.

Not proving a very good thief he gets caught and, given the option to go to prison or to sign up for the war effort, Vito chooses to go to war and is posted to Sicily to help in the war effort against Mussolini. This is where the game starts off, an unexpected baptism of fire which also acts as a tutorial for the control system, weapons and cover system.

Released from duty after sustaining an injury, Vito returns from overseas to find his mother and sister have been lumbered with a massive debt to a local moneylender. Desperate to find the money to help his family he again teams up with his friend Joe who is now mixed up with some local mobsters, this is where the game proper begins.

Joe slowly brings Vito in on his antics and before long both find themselves getting deeper and deeper into the world of the mob, climbing the ladder toward becoming made-men. In true Godfather and Goodfellas style their’s is a tale of violence, women, cars, money, back-stabbing and double-crossing; what did you expect?

Although billed as an open world game and while technically it is, the story does follow a very definite linear mission tree lasting about 10 hours. While that sounds quite short the full story is stuffed into the 10 hours; the developers favouring solid story telling over silly side-missions and those other time wasting devices employed by other games to buff them out. This has its advantages in that you don’t get taken away from the story while trying to take part in pointless races etc., but at the same time the game ends just as you are getting into the swing of things. Suspiciously quicly released DLC is available – on Xbox Live Arcade and PSN – but everything ends on such a cliché that you can’t help feel a little short changed.

It’s also fair to say that large similarities can be drawn between Mafia 2 and GTA IV. The open world-ness, the driving mechanics, the living city, high-jacking cars, the story line and even having a chubby side-kick for comic relief are all reminiscent of Rockstar’s magnum opus.

But while borrowing a lot, they have taken it a step further and improved on some of the faults that dogged GTA IV. As I remarked earlier, the game is nowhere near as long as GTA IV and while this may be disappointing it does condense the story meaning more people are likely to finish it – when I look at my copy of GTA IV still only 50% complete sitting on my shelf I can’t help but think maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Other improvements involve simple things like a slightly more realistic approach to your characters health. Really nasty car crashes will kill you, one of two shots to the head will do the same and you’ll have to make sure you stick to the speed limits or risk the wrath of the cops. OK, you can usually loose them quite easily, but if the car you’re driving has a dead body in the boot it’s a hassle you might not want to risk.

Luckily an engine limiter can be employed to ensure you stay at the correct speed, a nifty tool when staying on the right side of the law is called for. While the city seems to employ an absurdly large amount of police, they have tamed the AI down since the original – so often ruined by cops constantly chasing you for minor incidents such as running red lights – now a serious traffic violation will draw their attention but minor ones they’ll let slide.

The other big improvement is with the combat system.2K have implemented a cover system, not too dissimilar from that use in Gears of War, it works well and is needed in fire fights as rival mobsters can be pretty accurate. The aiming system works well too although can suffer a bit in the larger shootouts in tight spaces later in the game. It’s generally best to take in a number of guns and the game allows you to do so; even allowing multiple machine guns to be carried if needs be.

Early on in the game missions have check points, so if you die you don’t have to go all the way back and sit through a boring drive or cut scene again, but in the latter stages of the game they seem to just drop this right when its needed which is particularly frustrating. We know it shouldn’t be too easy, but to expect the player to make it through some of the games’ toughest sections with the added pressure of knowing they’ll have to replay the whole chunk over if they die is a bit much.

Still, these issues aside Mafia 2 if a game worth persevering with. The 1940s and 1950s are captured perfectly – I found myself just cruising around listening to the music and the comical adverts – while just enjoying the city around you is immensely entertaining.

Sure, the storyline is nothing new, borrowing heavily from almost every Hollywood mobster film at some point, but it’s nevertheless enjoyable and encapsulates everything you’d want from a gangster story. Our only problem is its brevity, the game ending pretty quickly, which has a whiff of a developer or publisher keeping content back for the ubiquitous DLC. Call us old fashioned but we prefer our games to release with the full game on the disk.

• Bookmark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Recommend on Facebook
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet about it
• Subscribe to the comments on this post