I bought this for $20 used and I still feel ripped off. The first thing you should know is that this is not a sandbox game. Oh, you can deviate from your route, but there's no reason to do so. You can customize your car, but only in terms of colors and license plate numbering. You can change clothes, but there are maybe 10 outfits in the whole game. You can get car washes and fuel up your car, if you really think that's what you want to spend your gaming time on, and you can buy weapons for missions. That's the extent of the non-story gameplay.
Even if you like cover based shooting, you'll find that here, 90% of your time won't be spent shooting. It'll be spent driving. You have to follow traffic laws. Drive too fast? You get a ticket. Barely scrape another car? You get a ticket. Don't even try running over a pedestrian. If you do, you get 3 stars and the cops shoot you to death. So it's basically a sitting in traffic simulator most of the time and cover based shooting most other times.
There are some annoying as hell stealth sections which you'll either find too hard or too easy. I found them too hard. I mean, most of the time I could just take cover and wait for my health to regenerate. But oh no, not in these stealth sections. You get found, you either die or the mission auto fails anyways. None of these are really used to any effectiveness and really, these could just have been more shooting sections. Really, the stealth here is just completely pointless and only there so the game can pretend it's full of variety.
And the missions. Oh god the missions. I'm not kidding here, I've had fucking missions where I had to drive drunk friends home from the bar. Also, chapter 6 is a prison section, so I hope you like hanging around a gray and bland prison for an hour and cleaning toilets. No, seriously, the game actually made me clean toilets in prison. I could have been playing vice city and actually becoming my own boss and taking over a city, but no, I had to clean toilets.
What's worse is that immediately when I got out of prison, I had to bury a body. I mean watch my character bury a body. Once again, the chapter was nothing but driving. Only, not the kind of driving I had gotten used to, where I had control of my radio. That's right, this game hates player choice so much that it had a whole chapter where you can't even control your radio! Even saints row 2 lets you change the radio back during those missions with pierce where he'd try to change it. But nope, not mafia II. This game wanted to be special.
That stealth mission earlier? It had me sneak through a sewer. Then, at the end of the section after the 760th cutscene (approximately), it told me I smell like shit. Well, the game gave me no other way in, so basically it insulted me for following it's own damn instructions.
So is it special? No. It's not. You can find better stealth, combat, driving, hell, gameplay in general in any other sandbox game.
And yet, apparently, I'm supposed to overlook all of that because the story is well written. And you know what the worst insult is? It's not! Sometimes vito complains about the job he's given or expresses worries, but he always goes along with it. You never make it to boss level either. You're always the *****. Always the errand boy. Hell, chapter 8 had me doing cigarette inventory from the back of a truck. It's just a generic mafia story and nothing more. It never tries to be anything more. All it does is punish you for playing it
Even your rewards don't last. Chapter 6 takes away your money. Then, about 5 chapters later, your house gets burned down and you lose all your money. This game loves taking away your rewards for playing it and it never ever stops. It hates open world freedom with a passion and openly despises anyone who enjoys it. The only reason I bought this game was to see just what the hell people like about it so much. And you know what? I'm still confused. I could only play up to chapter 10 or so before permanently locking the game in my cabinet because sitting on the shelf it made me nauseated every time I looked at it.
People keep saying the story is good and it looks nice and the sound is nice. Well, it does look nice and the sound is nice. You know what else that's true of? 90% of all games today. And you can have much more fun just popping in GTA IV and playing some assassination missions or something. Hell, play some gears of war if you want some cover based shooting. At least there you're shooting aliens. This is just a driving simulator that has some shooting sections and insults you as much as possible if you're a sandbox fan. And you know what? Fuck it right back.
Even if you like cover based shooting, you'll find that here, 90% of your time won't be spent shooting. It'll be spent driving. You have to follow traffic laws. Drive too fast? You get a ticket. Barely scrape another car? You get a ticket. Don't even try running over a pedestrian. If you do, you get 3 stars and the cops shoot you to death. So it's basically a sitting in traffic simulator most of the time and cover based shooting most other times.
There are some annoying as hell stealth sections which you'll either find too hard or too easy. I found them too hard. I mean, most of the time I could just take cover and wait for my health to regenerate. But oh no, not in these stealth sections. You get found, you either die or the mission auto fails anyways. None of these are really used to any effectiveness and really, these could just have been more shooting sections. Really, the stealth here is just completely pointless and only there so the game can pretend it's full of variety.
And the missions. Oh god the missions. I'm not kidding here, I've had fucking missions where I had to drive drunk friends home from the bar. Also, chapter 6 is a prison section, so I hope you like hanging around a gray and bland prison for an hour and cleaning toilets. No, seriously, the game actually made me clean toilets in prison. I could have been playing vice city and actually becoming my own boss and taking over a city, but no, I had to clean toilets.
What's worse is that immediately when I got out of prison, I had to bury a body. I mean watch my character bury a body. Once again, the chapter was nothing but driving. Only, not the kind of driving I had gotten used to, where I had control of my radio. That's right, this game hates player choice so much that it had a whole chapter where you can't even control your radio! Even saints row 2 lets you change the radio back during those missions with pierce where he'd try to change it. But nope, not mafia II. This game wanted to be special.
That stealth mission earlier? It had me sneak through a sewer. Then, at the end of the section after the 760th cutscene (approximately), it told me I smell like shit. Well, the game gave me no other way in, so basically it insulted me for following it's own damn instructions.
So is it special? No. It's not. You can find better stealth, combat, driving, hell, gameplay in general in any other sandbox game.
And yet, apparently, I'm supposed to overlook all of that because the story is well written. And you know what the worst insult is? It's not! Sometimes vito complains about the job he's given or expresses worries, but he always goes along with it. You never make it to boss level either. You're always the *****. Always the errand boy. Hell, chapter 8 had me doing cigarette inventory from the back of a truck. It's just a generic mafia story and nothing more. It never tries to be anything more. All it does is punish you for playing it
Even your rewards don't last. Chapter 6 takes away your money. Then, about 5 chapters later, your house gets burned down and you lose all your money. This game loves taking away your rewards for playing it and it never ever stops. It hates open world freedom with a passion and openly despises anyone who enjoys it. The only reason I bought this game was to see just what the hell people like about it so much. And you know what? I'm still confused. I could only play up to chapter 10 or so before permanently locking the game in my cabinet because sitting on the shelf it made me nauseated every time I looked at it.
People keep saying the story is good and it looks nice and the sound is nice. Well, it does look nice and the sound is nice. You know what else that's true of? 90% of all games today. And you can have much more fun just popping in GTA IV and playing some assassination missions or something. Hell, play some gears of war if you want some cover based shooting. At least there you're shooting aliens. This is just a driving simulator that has some shooting sections and insults you as much as possible if you're a sandbox fan. And you know what? Fuck it right back.
