Eyes-on - Mafia II
July 21st 2009 21:27
- Paul Frew
You can find the video for Mafia II on our Facebook page located here
The first Mafia game didn’t interest me a great deal. I saw trailers and the cars looked slow and sluggish and it just didn’t look like the game for me. I saw the teaser for Mafia II and was impressed by the CGI trailer but I wanted to see some gameplay before I decided I was going to hand over some moolah for this one.
Fortunately Take 2 were kind enough to send us the walkthrough demonstration that was shown at E3 and the game now has my full attention.
The game is set in between the 1940’s and 50’s in the fictional Empire City – which is influenced by New York City and San Francisco. The demonstration showed a very cold and bleak place and this was the intention of the developer as the main character, Vito, is a penniless soldier returning from the war. There was snow covering the sidewalks and the roads were very slick making driving a little bit of a chore – although the player didn’t seem to have a lot of problem controlling the car.
The player was on their way to a mission to “take care” of a brewery owner who owed the boss some money. A couple of guys were waiting in an apartment across the street with machine guns perched on the window sill. When meeting up with the other goons, the game went to a cutscene that looked stunning. Facial animations were incredible and at a distance the graphics looked incredibly lifelike.
When the boss arrived at the brewery business picked up. Vito had his hands wrapped around the machine gun and proceeded to destroy not only the vehicle that the target was in but also several barrels of good booze. The explosions looked fiery and some of the enemies did get airborne during the firefight. When Vito had emptied the machine gun he pulled out his pistol and headed downstairs to finish off any stragglers. By this stage the target had made his way inside with some goons blocking the path.
The game then turned a little Gears-of-War like where you did a baseball slide into cover and then popped up or out to fire. We’ll be honest - the targeting demo didn’t look great. The reticule was a small white dot – similar to the Hitman games. We couldn’t tell if the player was locking on to enemies or just knew where to fire. There was also no HUD to tell how many bullets were left in a weapon or how much health was left. This could have been just for the demonstration but it’s something I hope to see in the final version.
After executing a few goons you met up with your target. Unfortunately the video was censored so we didn’t get to see what you and your crew were doing to the target but judging by the blood curdling scream it wasn’t a simple slap and tickle. The target did get some revenge though by popping a cap in of your guy’s leg. The mission had now changed to an escort mission and your job was now to get out and ditch the cops. Of course, the slick roads didn’t help anyone and the demo ended with a road block ahead with Vito wondering what he was going to do to get out of this sticky situation – I can’t wait to find out.
Mafia II is set up drop early 2010 for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
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