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Launch Player

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Preview

Mafia II

Format Xbox 360

Developer 2K Games

Publisher 2K Games

Genre Adventure, Action, Shoot 'em Up

17-May-2009 The only thing missing is a man called Spats. But it's still relatively early days...

1 Comments

Nobody mentioned the giant cockroach. There it stood, utterly motionless, a 50-foot-tall carapace lurking in silence behind 250 uniquely modelled citizens.

The man demonstrating the graphical fidelity of Mafia II's pedestrians ignored it too, instead zooming right in on a lady's eyelash and rotating the camera about for a while.

The giant cockroach's menacing head would swing into view for a bit, and then swing back out again. And nobody would mention it. "So," we asked, "what's with the giant cockroach?"

2K Czech's Jarek Kolar, senior gameplay producer on Mafia II, laughs. "It's the final boss," he joked, acutely aware of the fact that it was just such a comment that sparked the rumour that the Loch Ness monster appeared in the original Mafia way back in 2002.

The building-sized cockroach is in fact just a means of showcasing exactly how detailed Mafia II's world is. Our oversized insect friend appears as a regular-sized cockroach in one of the main characters' apartments, his scuttling feet and festering antennae rendered in all their glorious minutiae. And that's just a cockroach; pulling the camera back to reveal the entire apartment, Kolar flips the game into debug mode and reveals the astounding number of needlessly interactive objects in the room.

Taps can be turned, doors can be opened, light switches can be played with, TVs can be watched and crockery can be shot to bits.

We then sail out the window and into a densely populated city street. The camera pans along the sun-drenched asphalt; lootable shopfronts run alongside the road; period-authentic cars line up at traffic lights and bleat their cutesy old-time horns.

Those 250 flavours of pedestrian bustle along sidewalks with the sort of sartorial accuracy afforded only by the piles of yellowing Sears catalogues piled up about 2K Czech's studios.
Detail, atmosphere and authenticity are at the forefront of the experience here.

Empire Bay City will be a believable and engaging mafioso world in exactly the same way The Godfather II's cities weren't. 2K Czech is wary of some of the more obvious comparisons, however...

"This is not GTA," states 2K's product manager Denby Grace. "We have a high-level goal of creating a minute-to-minute feeling of realism in this world. You're a mobster, and you won't be going around doing un-mobster-like things. That's one of the key things we're trying to communicate."

While there'll be distractions scattered about the city - autoshops, clothes shops, short side-missions triggered by events in the city - the game's narrative will follow a tight, highly defined path from start to finish. You are, essentially, always on a mission.

And that's fine, Mafia II loses nothing by being so absolutely plot-driven - you just have to look at the highly positive reaction to the original game to see that. The scripting and acting here is rock solid, and the rich and varied city acts as an ideal backdrop to it all.

Grace gives an example of one of these mini-quests. "It happens early on in one mission," he begins, "when Vito, your character, is leaving his apartment.

He witnesses a hit and run - a joyrider mows down an old woman and speeds off - leaving her screaming for help in the street." What follows is a decision to either help the lady out (bizarrely, she wants revenge rather than some basic medical attention), or to ignore her, play the 'heartless mafia bastard' card and just leave her to die in the street.

Option three, the more nefarious among you would've sussed by now, is to finish the hag off yourself.

These side-missions are placed carefully and deliberately between you and your objective, and while they often give no explicit reward they usually serve to flesh out Mafia II's characters, and give an insight into their personalities.

Drive time
Car handling's the most immediately noticeable difference for fans of the original. Gone are the rickety autos of old, replaced with sleek mid-century motors capable of much faster speeds and a far more exciting ride. The odd ramp or two hidden around the city hammers the point home: driving in Empire Bay City's going to be fun rather than doggedly realistic.

Gunfights have had something of an overhaul too, with hugely destructible environments falling to pieces around you as they're peppered with bullets. A cover system (they are so in right now) delivers the usual hiding-behind-stuff-then-popping-up-to-fire tricks, but with that unique mobster twist: the ability to pounce to your feet from behind a bullet-riddled bar and fire a Tommy gun from the hip while screaming profanities.

We're thinking this is probably cool enough to sell the game alone.

Police here are slightly more lenient, turning a blind eye to all but the most reckless traffic violations. Should they pull you over for a ticket and spot a gun, they'll ask for a gun licence - later, they'll realise who you are, apologise, turn on a dime and head back to their car.

Becoming a made man has other perks too, we're promised. Restaurants will forget to charge you, car repairs become complementary, and low-life thugs give you a wide berth.

Whether Mafia II's style, atmosphere, eyelashes and pomp is backed up by any real substance remains to be seen, but there's little reason to doubt that 2K Czech can produce anything less than a worthy successor to the stellar original.

At best, we're looking at a game that could raise the bar for narrative-driven open-world shooters. At worst, we'll at least have the most detailed cockroaches ever seen in a game. How can that be anything other than a win-win situation?

OXM Staff

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Reviews:

Mafia 2

Previews:

Mafia II

News:

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Mafia II demo hits Marketplace

Mafia II demo on August 10th

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