modeps
04-05-2010, 11:27 AM
http://evavhost.com/i/news/mafia2.gif
It's hard to imagine that the original Mafia came out eight years ago, but it totally did. It's also hard to imagine that Mafia II was announced nearly three years ago but again, it totally was. We're now headed down the home stretch with the release date coming in August, so you'd hope it was shaping up to be a good game. Lets be perfectly honest here, from my time with it at PAX East, Mafia II has a lot to prove.
http://evavhost.com/i/press/MafiaII-1.jpg
Talking to other attendees about Mafia II, everyone said basically the same thing: It feels just Grand Theft Auto IV set in the 50s. Problem with that is the cars don't lend themselves to awesome maneuvers. While you could certainly compare it to worse games, the tech just doesn't seem to be that of a modern title. Tearing in the cutscenes and jagged edges everywhere were particularly heinous. Even the cover system was akin to GTAIV's where it was serviceable, but not exactly great. The whole "slide to cover" wasn't about some cool acrobatic baseball slide, but it seemed like 2K Czech just forgot to animate and the model literally slid across the environment looking totally janky. Generally, it controlled fine although some sort of lock on would have helped.
The addition of vintage Playboys also felt gimmicky and unwarranted. Imagine being mid-firefight and coming across a vintage mag, only to stop everything to start ogling some nude pinup girl. Collectibles are one thing and I don't feel that it was in poor taste, but it felt really strange auto-viewing the smut when trying to show another mobster what their insides look like.
http://evavhost.com/i/press/MafiaII-2.jpg
The best feature of Mafia II that I could tell? Voicework. From the bit I got a chance to listen to, it sounded great. We were playing on a 360 kit as well and there was no compression to be heard.
As I was just trying to cause a little random havoc, the nearby demo attendant asked if I'd rather jump to the end of the demo and take part in a big firefight. Basically, that sums up my whole experience in the game. Causing chaos for the sake of chaos just wasn't entertaining and I would much rather just head to the next story point. This is a sandbox game, so the world needs to be interesting and fun to play around with, but I didn't get that feeling at all. Still with a large game like Mafia 2, it is difficult to tell what's gonna happen when it finally comes out on August 24th. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the final build looks like.
It's hard to imagine that the original Mafia came out eight years ago, but it totally did. It's also hard to imagine that Mafia II was announced nearly three years ago but again, it totally was. We're now headed down the home stretch with the release date coming in August, so you'd hope it was shaping up to be a good game. Lets be perfectly honest here, from my time with it at PAX East, Mafia II has a lot to prove.
http://evavhost.com/i/press/MafiaII-1.jpg
Talking to other attendees about Mafia II, everyone said basically the same thing: It feels just Grand Theft Auto IV set in the 50s. Problem with that is the cars don't lend themselves to awesome maneuvers. While you could certainly compare it to worse games, the tech just doesn't seem to be that of a modern title. Tearing in the cutscenes and jagged edges everywhere were particularly heinous. Even the cover system was akin to GTAIV's where it was serviceable, but not exactly great. The whole "slide to cover" wasn't about some cool acrobatic baseball slide, but it seemed like 2K Czech just forgot to animate and the model literally slid across the environment looking totally janky. Generally, it controlled fine although some sort of lock on would have helped.
The addition of vintage Playboys also felt gimmicky and unwarranted. Imagine being mid-firefight and coming across a vintage mag, only to stop everything to start ogling some nude pinup girl. Collectibles are one thing and I don't feel that it was in poor taste, but it felt really strange auto-viewing the smut when trying to show another mobster what their insides look like.
http://evavhost.com/i/press/MafiaII-2.jpg
The best feature of Mafia II that I could tell? Voicework. From the bit I got a chance to listen to, it sounded great. We were playing on a 360 kit as well and there was no compression to be heard.
As I was just trying to cause a little random havoc, the nearby demo attendant asked if I'd rather jump to the end of the demo and take part in a big firefight. Basically, that sums up my whole experience in the game. Causing chaos for the sake of chaos just wasn't entertaining and I would much rather just head to the next story point. This is a sandbox game, so the world needs to be interesting and fun to play around with, but I didn't get that feeling at all. Still with a large game like Mafia 2, it is difficult to tell what's gonna happen when it finally comes out on August 24th. I guess we'll have to wait and see what the final build looks like.