Mafia II

Bit of story to this one. It was a Games with Gold title a ways back and I downloaded it on to the Xbox 360 with every intention of playing it. I was then told by certain gaming friends that the game’s downloadable content was to be removed from the marketplace and that the only way to 100% the game was to get the Xbox Classics version which has the DLC included. I’ve now completed the game but for all intents and purposes the DLC is still there on the marketplace so I didn’t need to buy a copy of the game that I already had for free. For fuck’s sake.

Anyway Mafia II has us following the story of Vito Scaletta, a guy that seems set on a having a life of crime, but then gets arrested, gets conscripted, gets injured, gets illegally discharged, decides to have a non-crime related life, lifts one box in a warehouse, thinks ‘fuck this, crime is better!’ and thus starts the adventure of Mafia II.

Along for the ride is Joe Barbaro, the guy your mother warned you about who basically goes around starting trouble and gets Vito involved. What I do admire about Vito though, is his no nonsense attitude to getting stuff done. Hey Vito, go here and steal that car.  ‘Ok’. Hey Vito, here’s a gun in case you need to kill some dudes when you do. ‘Ok – and I’ll make sure I kill at least twenty dudes while I do it.’ He’s the ideal Mafia henchman which plays directly into your hands as the player.

Gameplay wise it’s fairly solid although my major criticism is the structure of the game. You have to play through chapters which take place at certain points in time but the world is a sandbox with no side missions. You basically just go from point A to point B and carry out whatever mission you are tasked with. The sandbox element to the game is almost totally redundant.

Another thing that was negative was the music as well. While I appreciate that it’s the fifties, there really is no need to have the same five songs playing over and over again on the radio. Although Dean Martin’s Ain’t That a Kick in the Head is pretty darn good. The rest of it can suck my dick.

Achievements – 1,500 Points – 67 Achievements

Despite the linearity of the main game, the achievement list is quite varied. There are 22 achievements for the main story and some really annoying ones that aren’t triggered by anything from the main story but will need to be done in certain missions to get them. The first one of these is in chapter 2 where two people are having an argument over a broken down car at the side of the road. You have to wait for the two people to stop arguing and when the guy storms off, help the woman fix her car. The first time, I walked past this, thinking it was no more than an interesting piece of environment activity, seeing as the last time I tried to talk to someone, they basically told me to fuck off and mind my own business.

Another one which was fuckery was for helping a certain character at a certain part of the story escape from his house without getting caught. It’s another one of those ‘you need to know what to do before you can do it’ ones and considering the game continues on whether you fail or not, replaying this is a pain in the ass.

There are loads of bits that you have to do which require you to go out of your way during gameplay. There is one for getting 5 headshots in quick succession and the easiest way to get it is to replay a bit with a machine gun from a window. There are no scoped rifles in the game to up accuracy so this really felt like pot luck. Robbing 5 stores in 5 minutes is another thing that you have to do just for the achievement and no real gain.

There are others but these are my picks for annoyingness. The harder one is for surviving ten minutes at the maximum wanted level but there is an exploitable glitch where you can park in the car crusher and the police can’t get you.

Now for the big ones. You have to drive in 30 different vehicles but the game doesn’t track which ones, only how many different vehicles you have been in. This would have been easier if I had downloadable the DLC first as it gives you eight cars in your garage but I managed to do it without this after climbing through several cars that all look the same.

The last two achievements see you getting collectibles and this is where the chapter layout of the story can go fuck itself. There are playboy magazines and wanted posters that you need to collect spread throughout the sandbox world. The wanted posters are fine but the playboy magazines are specific to in-game chapters. This means that if even if you did what I did and do a hard playthrough from the off, you will still need a partial second playthrough to get the magazines (unless you used a guide for the first playthrough) rather than just roaming roads at your leisure to pick them up. I still don’t get the reason for this.

Downloadable Content

There are two DLCs that carry achievements for this game; Jimmy’s Revenge and Joe’s Adventures. Jimmy’s revenge is the fucker here as it requires you to kill 1,000 enemies and drive for 1,000 miles in the DLC. This is basically horrendous grinding as you will only get around 300 odd kills playing through the missions and you will only drive around a paltry 100 miles.

Thankfully, there is another exploitable glitch where you can drive through a shop window and fall through the floor of the game. This will get you another achievement for amassing 1,000,000 points in the arcade style game but also it accumulates miles very slowly. I had to leave my Xbox on overnight for several nights grinding this out.

Joe’s Adventures, which I played second, is much more forgiving in comparison. Half of the achievements are story related and out of the other five, only one of these is a pain in that you have to get 10 different score actions in the same mission. It takes a bit of planning but it’s nothing compared to driving 1,000 miles for NOTHING.

Mafia II was pretty great up until the point of finishing the main game. The DLC didn’t really add anything other than pissing off achievement hunting gamers and to be honest, didn’t really add a lot of extra story. Still, it felt like a rewarding completion add a welcome addition to the 100% club.