Remember to be a conscientious driver in Mafia II

It’s a nice afternoon. The sky is blue and clear of clouds, the radio is rocking a head-bopping tune of ol’, and Empire Bay is doing its post-WWII thing. Vito Scalleta and his best friend Joey Barbaro are out for a relaxing drive through the suburbs. Well, relaxing for them. In truth, they are heading to a house, and when they get there, they find a man outside watering his grass with a hose, looking all non-threatening. As quiet as can be, the two of them sneak up behind the man, toss out a cliche saying like, “Blah-blah-blah sends his regards!” and then shoot the life out of him.

The dynamic duo speeds away from the pursuing cops, and as they do, Vito runs a red light–at 70 or 80 mph, mind you. Joe, in all seriousness, berates him for this: “Did you not see that light was red?”

Sadly, Vito doesn’t come back with, “Did you not see we just obliterated a man’s body with bullets and now need to get away so we don’t get locked up or shot to death ourselves by the blue meanies and don’t really have time to obey traffic laws?” Instead, Joe’s line hung in the air, awkward and out-of-place, a piece of dialogue added to the game to instill realism, but working completely against that when context is not considered.

Also, this is going to be my last post about Mafia II. I swears it.

Open-world games thrive on minutiae. From idle chatter to signs in store windows to people carrying umbrellas when it starts to rain, it’s the little things that make the big thing whole. This is probably unfair, but I’m going to compare Mafia II to L.A. Noire, mostly because I view the games as quite similar, but far from each other’s levels. For most of the time, you go on missions with a partner in Mafia II, meaning you always have someone to talk to in the car. Conversely, someone’s always there to comment about your lackluster driving skills. This was the same way things went down in L.A. Noire, but when Cole Phelps would get yelled at for running a red light or hitting another car, it was never because it was Cole being an idiot. It had to do with reminding us that Cole was a man of the law and should set good standards for those watching from the sidewalks; it was there to remind us that we were occasionally driving someone else’s car, and he didn’t like to see it get dinged and danged up. It made sense there and then.

In Mafia II, you are a horrible human being. You kill for money, and that is all you see before your Italian face each and every new day you wake up. And so it just sounds bizarre to hear fellow murderers getting all up at arms over misconduct on the road. Especially during missions where you are trying to chase down another car. Of course you are going to run red lights then. That’s how you chase something, Joe. You can’t do both, commit murder and be a safe driver. This was just one of the more jarring moments in the game, coupled with the fact that the law will shoot first and ask questions later. Imagine a world where if you ran a red light you were popped in the face at close range by a trio of officers. Seems understandable, right?

Okay, that’s it for Mafia II. I’m out.

2012 Game Review Haiku, #18 – Mafia II

Driving along in
My automobile, this game
Is far from genteel

–

For all the games I complete in 2012, instead of wasting time writing a review made up of points and thoughts I’ve probably already expressed here in various posts at Grinding Down, I’m instead just going to write a haiku about it. So there.

The monotony of Mafia II

There are a couple of new(ish) videogames out for the Xbox 720 360 that have my interest, but after spending $60 on Game of Thrones: The Game and not even wanting to play it any further than the opening chapters due to “dog stealth” fatigue…I’m thinking I need to hold back for just a tiny bit. Finish some titles I have instead of just buying more, more, and more. For those curious, the games I’m mulling about right now are The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (probably what I want the Game of Thrones muck to actually be) and Dragon’s Dogma. Yup, RPGs. What a shocker.

So, Mafia II. It’s a game I waited a long time to receive as it was being passed around by the First Hour gangers, and then when I got it, I played for a little bit before being severely turned off by the main character’s lack of conscience and unwavering drive to make money, no matter who ended up in the woodchipper. I stopped playing during the mission where you had to sneak inside a building and steal some gas stamps; I failed it a few times due to being spotted and wanted the Achievement that rewarded players for going unnoticed, but then I forgot about the whole thing for many months. Until last week, that is. Go me:

The Professional (10G): Obtain the ration stamps without raising the alarm.

Boom. Well…silent boom. And so, completing this mission helped fuel me forward, as the game moves at a rather quick pace. Not an exciting or fun pace, mind you, but a pace that a man running a marathon would appreciate. Though I did almost give up on the whole thing once Vito Scalleta got to prison and you had to do so many fights, which are probably the worst parts of the game. Especially when it just seems like you press the dodge button, and then you don’t dodge the hit. Frustrating and clunky to be sure. I hope there’s less fighting to come though I know there’s an Achievement for knocking out 30 dudes this way. Might not be worth the grind…

Tara enjoys watching me play Mafia II. Guess it reminds her of L.A. Noire, and I can see that in certain spots. It is, of course, nowhere as amazing, but there is some overlap. However, there are times I can’t get over the extremely monotonous activities this game makes you do as a player, such as handing out boxes of cigarettes, scrubbing toilets and floors, and using squeegees to clean windows. Like, those are the things you do between more back-and-forth driving and more hide-and-seek shooting. Oh, and filling up your gas tank. Cause I don’t get to do that enough in real life. Anyways, when these fireworks-inducing moments happen, I like to exclaim, “Videogames! 2012!”

Other than chapter-related Achievements, here’s two more that I earned with my supreme driving and shooting skills:

The Enforcer (10G): Kill 50 enemies.

Get Rich or Die Flyin’ (10G): Get all wheels of your car into the air for at least 20 meters and then touch the ground again.

Right now, I’m in the middle of Chapter 10, helping my less-than-stellar friend Joe clean up a little accident. According to the list of Achievements…there are 14 or 15 chapters total, which means I’m close to the end. That’s surprising, but I’m okay with that. I just want to complete Mafia II and be done with its utter blandness. The only thing I’ll miss is putting the speed limiter on and driving around the city to some truly great tunes. Oh well. Guess that’s what Grooveshark is for these days.

Mafia II is all about the money

I understand the concept of money as a motivator. It’s what fuels a majority of life, from food to gas to bills to pleasure. You can buy everything but love with it, if songs are to be trusted. But for me, within the context of videogames, it’s not enough to warrant doing horrible, atrocious acts of violence. I mean, it’s not like real money is being printed out of the Xbox 360’s disc tray; this is digital money to purchase digital things, and while I don’t mind doing miscellaneous tasks like writing fake blog posts or trimming Tara‘s bush in The Sims Social for some Simoleons, stealing cars and murdering those in wrong place at the wrong time for, um, $300 is not what I’d call justifiable. Unfortunately, all Mafia II has as a motivator is money.

Vito Scalleta is a war hero–that’s according to his childhood friend Joe, a crook and crooked man that eventually gets our young leading lad mixed up with the mafia. It starts out innocently enough, with Vito returning from World War II to snow and Christmas songs and the bad news that his sister and mother are still trying to pay off his father’s debt. Vito immediately wants to help, which shows off his good quality, but he’s willing to simply murder men trying to stop him from carjacking their ride, which shows off his videogamey quality.

I’ve only completed chapters one, two, and three so far, having started chapter four at this point. Vito is now tasked with sneaking into an office building and stealing gas stamps, and he’ll be rewarded better if he goes undetected. My kind of mission actually despite all my latest stealth failings with Deus Ex: Human Revolution. However, those first two chapters did not leave me excited about how Vito will grow as a character; basically, at this point, I’m writing him off as yet another Niko; oh hey, look at that, their names are similar too.

In chapter three, after meeting with the man that Vito’s father owes a ton of money, Vito was given the job to move some crates on to the back of a truck. For $10, which, I dunno, in the late 1940s, could probably get you a lot of thingies. Bread, milk, a porno mag. You go up to the crates, press X to pick one up, walk it over to the truck, press X to put it down, and repeat the process all over again. Mundane, but that’s how a lot of grunt work is, and while there were probably something like 4o to 50 crates, I was willing to carry them all back and forth because a job is a job, and I’ve always done whatever job I’ve been given. Vito, however, was not having it, complaining with each crate until he simply refused to carry any more; I was given the false decision to leave when he’d had enough, and with nothing else to do, I had to play into the role of Vito, who was not interested in doing what he dubbed “slave labor” for a measly $10. For shame, man. However, beating the crap out of warehouse employees not willing to chip in for a mandatory haircut collection is more wholesome work, mostly because it pays better. Sigh…

Fantastic tunes on the radio though. More games need this much Dean Martin love. And there’s a great attention to detail here, with the city looking very much alive, just like L.A. Noire. But at least that game had a likable main character, one with a soul, as flawed as it became. Here, with have Vito, who will do anything it takes to make money. Again, these sorts of people do exist, but they aren’t fun to roleplay as there is only one path to follow. Heed the words of Benjamin Franklin: “Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.”