![]() ![]() A later mission, selling firearms to gun stores, puts you in an unwieldy boat of a pickup truck and sics a car full of machine gun-toting goons on you. I just said the hell with it and started shooting, suffering no consequences for that choice. The game then tells me to equip a grenade. (I then grenaded it for laughs.) Another mission, I'm advised by my NPC partner to infiltrate a train yard quietly. I finally just parked an obstacle (a big truck) across its known driving path, got out and machine-gunned everyone while the escort car stupidly waited behind. Tailing it to a hideout wasn't the objective, it just drove forever. Trying to run this thing off the road got me shot to death every time. Car combat in Mafia II is impossible - you can't shoot from your vehicle. The van has two gunmen aboard and an escort with the same firepower, all of it automatic weapons. The best example was "Smuggler's Luck," an early mission in which you're tasked with commandeering a van loaded with stolen goods. But the missions are in many cases trivially easy and in others, bewildering as to what the designer intended for you to do. Looking back I think I logged about 7 or 8 hours in this. Henry Tomasino, the best character of the original game, is wasted in a cameo at the beginning and never heard from again. There's some indication he took the fall for the Clementes, but this is all about Joe, Joe and Joe, underlined by the fact he's working with a minor character from the main game, Tony Balls. I was under the impression Joe's Adventures would reveal more about why Vito was sent to the big house. It's a cop-out.īut doesn't this in fact add to the Mafia II canon? Barely. Here is 2K Games' third attempt to convince us that replacing cutscenes with loading screen text, offering up the same batch of templatized missions and calling all of it "arcade-style" is some sort of experience that is either fun or consistent with what the first game delivered. They were quite tedious, in fact, but at least there was a story, some well composed cinematics, and strong acting to motivate you to complete the game. Mafia II's strengths, comparatively speaking, were not in its mission design. What were they holding back? Could or should this have been included with the full game, which many felt was too short? It was plainly content developed alongside the main game. Not two weeks after its release, Mafia II had paid DLC ready to go, telegraphing 2K Games' intentions for this franchise. Mafia II diehards with cash in their Sony wallet or Microsoft points to spare are the target as 2K slaps another $10 worth of paid content into a game that was disappointing at $60. ![]() Two dozen missions are included with several new settings. This time players will be Joe Barbaro, Vito's impulsive and violent sidekick from the original game. Mafia II: Joe's Adventures is a flashback to the 10-year period during which Vito Scaletta went to prison for selling stolen gas ration stamps. Can its 24 new missions carry the game forward, or do they dwell on what made Mafia II a good-but-not-great action game? Mafia II returns to Empire Bay with "Joe's Adventures," the game's second paid DLC extension. Mafia Victim Families Fight Increasing Violence, Brutality in Video Games The fact Mafia II was released in August and this concerns a game most people have already rented or returned smacks of a publicity grab.īloomberg has a longer and more thorough story whose net effect is to intellectualize whining. No offense to Alfano or anyone hurt by organized crime this is still another one of those arguments where someone assumes their victim status gives them the authority to say what is and isn't appropriate for the rest of society. It doesn't matter that it was 18 years ago, her wounds will always be fresh. "We can't allow this to happen, our wounds are still too fresh." Her father was murdered by the mob. "It really, really hurts," Alfano, recently said in an interview. Sonia Alfano, the MP in question, also is president of Italy's association for the families of Mafia victims. I have a better strategy: STFU about banning bad games, and they'll eventually fade away. A European Parliament member wants it banned because it trivializes mob murders. Italian-Americans wanted Mafia II banned because they said it portrayed offensive ethnic stereotypes. ![]()
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