Mafia 2 has been a very long time in the making; seven years to be exact. And, as this means that the developers would have started work for consoles like the original XBox and Playstation this means that it has essentially enjoyed two games’ worth of development – the burning question for such a massively popular franchise (in terms of films and crap amateur impressions at least) is whether it has been worth the wait and whether players will benefit from such a lengthy development time. The honest, albeit entirely non-committal answer is “in parts, yes, and in other parts, probably not so much so”.
The first thing you’ll probably notice is that the graphics are incredible. Fortunately, gone are the days where you basically had a straight up choice between great looks or superio gameplay. Numerous titles have managed to combine both now so there’s really no excuse.
And, in all honesty, Mafia 2 does what it does quite well, it’s just that we as a collective group of gamers and we here expect more from a next-generation game than a bunch of linear based missions which tend to amount to nothing more than driving or shooting. There are some reasonable cut scenes in there too but again not all that much to write home about (unless you’re really stuck for stuff to write).
The game is also short which might mean that missions won’t become too repetitive but it also means that you won’t care about Vito by the time you reach the conclusion of the game. It also means that after 15 to 20 hours of gaming you’ll also be wondering whether it really was the best way to spend £40 of your hard earned money; we suspect the answer will be “probably not, but it could have been worse”.
Our Mafia 2 review in a Tweet? Looks stunning and has a great soundtrack but is way too linear, too short, and overall a little bit too old school.
You can follow GadgetsAndGizmos on Twitter, Facebook, or RSS Feed to stay in touch with the latest gaming news and other technology news.
