Mafia II (PS3/360)

[baumy300]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

http://e3.gamespot.com/video/6212131/

[countryboy]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-09-mafia-ii/52913?type=flv

15 minute video of Mafia II. I cannot wait for this game to drop. Its a shame that it has been delayed until the beginning of 2010, but judging from this video and the others, its going to be well worth the wait.

[Jgainsey]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

Ughhh.. 2010!? That's a bummer.

[countryboy]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

Has an end of January release date right now according to Gamestops website.

[SPTO]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

2010?

DAMN

Oh well, at least it looks a million times better then the original game. I can't wait to try it out. I'll watch the video in a bit.

[jmood88]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

Yeah everything about this game looks great.

[rock85]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

Game is looking sweet, to bad it got pushed back

[SPTO]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

Watched the vid a while ago, it does indeed look sweet as hell.

[Flawless]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

Eurogamer Preview

By contrast, in today's demo of Mafia II, wannabe gangster and player-character Vito Scaletti pays off a prostitute, saunters to the fridge in the kitchen to collect a beer, wanders through his apartment in vest and slacks, and meanders to the phone in the hallway, where he receives instructions. Then he strolls off to get dressed, admiring another working girl showering fairly decently in his bathroom in the meantime, and walks downstairs from his apartment - observing a man beating on a front door, pleading with his wife for leniency over some perceived infraction, and a woman scrubbing the tiles - before heading outside to his garage to chew over which car to get into. It should take a while for an impatient gamer such as myself to adjust to the deliberate pace, but in practice the world is so rich with detail that my senses are no less pampered by Empire Bay's painstaking craftsmanship.

Where other open-world games compartmentalise, constructing frameworks in technology and mechanical routine and then allowing you to bounce between the story and the funfair stalls of side missions, confident of their foundations and happy to leave you to your own devices within them, Mafia II appears obsessed with your suspension of disbelief and unwilling to leave anything to chance.

The game is capable of a full day-and-night cycle, and I experience most of it in the half-hour demonstration, but the time of day is set to follow events. It will be night-time when Vito torches a protection racket later on, because that's when Vito would torch a protection racket, but it's broad daylight right now for a chance encounter that leaves nothing to chance: some schmo rear-ends the hooker from earlier's car at the traffic lights down the road from Vito's apartment, and starts harassing her. Vito rolls up and intervenes. "Hey pal, knock it off." "And who the f*** are you?" "Someone who doesn't like hearing you talk to a lady like that." Before long his head's on the road with a car door-shaped dent in it, and you're being invited to the young lady's house later "for coffee". There are no loading screens between any of this - nor will there be anywhere, says 2K - and the transition between canned cut-scene events and gameplay is rendered moot by how quickly and easily the smart animation, smooth delivery of the dialogue and unhurried spectacle invest you in events.

A similar scene unfolds after Vito arrives at Giuseppe's workshop. As he's about to enter, a mafia associate is exiting, and the two exchange greetings. The latter, it turns out, has a job for Vito - one of his colleagues is having difficulty getting ahead in the protection racket. "Some *******'s been giving him competition, and that ain't good for business," drawls our new acquaintance. Vito pauses. "You want me to...?" "Nah, nothing like that. Not yet." Your goal, if you want, is to torch some cars in Millville under cover of darkness and without anyone winding up dead. You can accept or decline the side mission - the point of us being shown the scene is so that 2K Czech can emphasise the fact that it is a side mission, and that side missions will be no more surrendered to menus, stat screens and mechanical routine than anything else.

Back to business, and inside the workshop Giuseppe strikes up a conversation. He's got some papers for Vito - they're a gift, for reasons to do with the story which aren't explained - but he also sells guns, ammo, Molotov cocktails, lockpicks and other useful items. Vito says goodbye to Giuseppe, but as he leaves he's accosted by a couple of muggers, who want all his "dough", inevitably. He pulls a gun. "Oh okay... wrong guy, wrong guy!" As they beat it though, a beat cop rolls up and threatens to arrest Vito unless he can produce a firearms licence. That's one option (assuming you have one), the others being to try and bribe the cop (which might work), or, for the purposes of the demo, to simply leg it.

2K Czech says the police system will be aggressive, but that the goal is really to enforce realistic behaviour; to get whoever's controlling Vito to act like a real wiseguy. By this stage the explanation's almost redundant. Vito races off down the street, pursued by the cop, who's by now hurling abuse and tooting on his police whistle, before leaping over a chain fence and ducking down behind a dumpster. The police, 2K points out, only have a physical description - one of the game's degrees of wanted rating - so getting clear of them is fairly easy, and then losing them completely is simply a matter of switching outfits at any store or apartment.

The combat system is simplistic - light and heavy attacks and an evade button - but together with context-sensitive finishing moves it settles things quickly and convincingly.

Taking a hit isn't immediately fatal, but like the police system 2K has been aggressive here, and warns us that getting shot at all is extremely bad news, and once you're more than a little outnumbered getting shot is pretty inevitable. Likewise, shooting a cop is the game's ultimate crime, and will result in an increased police presence on the streets, a firm description of Vito in their minds, and little chance of proceeding simply.

In a sense it's no wonder that Mafia II was delayed until next year (something 2K Czech simply puts down to the fact it isn't finished), because the developer isn't merely constructing an open-world playground into which you can pour out your frustrations by running people over, firing rocket launchers at helicopters and dressing up ridiculously. It's constructing a life within The Life, no doubt grading itself by the authenticity of the behaviour it can elicit from you, rather than the authenticity of the sort of world into which we're used to marching and then behaving absurdly. Doing so is about mastering the details, and that takes time. The fascinating thing to discover won't necessarily be whether the developer achieves that, but what kind of story it then brings you to tell by the quality of your actions.

[jmood88]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

This is yet another game that I have to get.

[Flawless]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

Wow

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[BlueNGold]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

Wow that game is looking amazing. I love the realism they're going for.

The faces look photo realistic. A lot of nice little details too like when the guy turned the lights on and the other guy got shocked. I love how you can take your cars to the body shop and customize them too.

This needs to drop soon man, I want this. Thanks for the vids, Flawless.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

When is this supposed to come out?

[BlueNGold]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

When is this supposed to come out?

At the end of Page 5 CB says that Gamestop's site has it listed for an end of January release. Hopefully that's the case because this game is looking amazing, IMO.

1 thing I did notice in that video though was that cop chase in the 3rd video, it seemed like 2 of the cop cars intentionally went ahead of the main character because it was scripted that they were supposed to crash. I could be wrong.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: Mafia II (PS3/360)

I was reading an article (maybe in the last GI) about this and they were talking about the cop chases and how its based on a line of sight thing. It went on to say that police would remain in an "aware" state where they would be on the look-out for your car and your appearance when you were being chased.