inselaffe on 25/8/2010 at 15:17
Thing is, illusion always had a reputation for crushing realism in their games, even if it was not always fully developed. It was part of their style and charm.
I can't help but think that take 2 has watered them down much like irrational into just another studio.
Did they leave in the options for alternative driving physics? And how does it compare to the original in that regard? A lot of videos i've seen make the driving look boringly thoughtless.
mothra on 25/8/2010 at 20:49
there is a "simulation" mode where the car handles worse but you only need the driving to get from A to B, there are only about 3 missions were you have to chase someone. You can steal cars for money but you don't need it. I finished it already, on hard except one "get there in 30seconds" mission where I suspect on normal/easy you have more time it was easy as pie. had about 20 guns in my inventory without ever spending a dime. the ending was ...... petrifying in a bad way. I don't like Vito and Joe certainly became the worst sidekick in a long time over the course of the game. those guys are serious retards. nevertheless the city, atmosphere, setpieces and pacing are topnotch, bummer about the mechanics and the way the story turned out. Not that it was not expertly presented and thought out but it didn't grip me. what certainly does NOT work is the melee system which - like in AssassinsCreed - turned over into easy pie once you learned the countermove. besides that I only was fully wanted / shoot on sight two times and had to shake the police. they are not a big problem. All in all I'm gonna replay it, it's good enough for that. But they didn't reach the high points like M1 did with their brutal healthsystem and legendary "docks/trainyard" mission.
Avalon on 29/8/2010 at 01:03
I've started playing and I think I'm about 3/4 of the way through.
So far my only gripes are that there is too much "downtime" between the action sequences - driving from home to a mission point and back again, which is extremely boring in a game where the police will chase you if you drive too fast). You spend more time between interesting gameplay moments than you do having them, and when you do have them, they're typically very short and straightforward (literally straight forward, run a line straight forward and shoot people in the way).
Also, there are more fist fights than there are gun fights.
Thirdly, the story does not seem as engaging as the first game. I don't particularly care for any of the characters.
However, it's keeping me entertained so far.
Undead Gamer on 29/8/2010 at 01:58
So far the game is good but i know alot of people that posted on the 2k forum aren't happy at all due to alot of stuff that was cut from the game
Cons
Can't supercharge the car engine :tsktsk:
No side missions
Game story is all over the place
Pop in textures is quite bad
Only 40 cars and yes the DLC does add more
Pros
Graphics
Driving mode on simulation is great
mothra on 29/8/2010 at 13:07
after playing it 2 times it is already showing its "age".......
I still can't get it that it's the same writer, those scripts are leagues apart.
Jason Moyer on 30/8/2010 at 01:44
The driving is great (as it was in the first game), the story seems ok so far (hard to compete with the first game here, since it hit every square on the mafia bingo card), and the gameplay is fun. I've seen people complain about the Playboy tie-in and the profane dialog, but the vintage centerfolds are great and a lot of the incidental dialog has made me chuckle so far, particularly Vito's snide remarks during the crate-moving mission and the idle chatter of the guards in the first stealth mission. I wasn't really expecting it to be as good as the first game and it's not, but I still prefer it to anything GTA.
Sulphur on 30/8/2010 at 06:10
I dunno why anyone would complain about the profanity. What people have been talking about, though, is that the story simply doesn't measure up. Vito's a whiny jerkface that makes for an unsympathetic protagonist, which is fine as far as I'm concerned as there's only so many ways to spin Mafia's Tommy Angelo character -- but the plot is apparently pretty standard or worse.
Also the RPS review had some griping to do about the scale of the missions and the menial shit you had to do most of the time -- how's that pan out?
redface on 30/8/2010 at 17:48
There's just too much driving, from your apartment to Joe's, then to the mission area, and then back home. That's a bad design decision, it really makes the game a lot less fun than it could have been, and I suspect it's there just to make the game time reach those 10 hours.
The actual missions are sometimes really great though, like the hotel or slaughterhouse one, but generally there's just too much filler to get to the good stuff. A good game with wasted potential. Maybe the DLCs fix some of it.
Jason Moyer on 30/8/2010 at 18:46
The driving was my favorite part of either game, so I can't really complain about how much you have to do. If the entire game were nothing but driving 30 minutes to a 30 minute stealth mission, repeated over and over, I'd be in heaven.
Sulphur on 30/8/2010 at 18:50
uh
Okay. Leave out the masochism, and keep the missions varied, and you and I might just have the same conception of heaven.
Which is to say, not at all.
