Review
Mafia II (Xbox 360)
Gone to the Mattresses
by Deadpool
Vito Scaletta is a man who goes along to get along. A man who's loyal to his family and friends. But he's also a man who finds himself making some very dark choices for said family and friends, but perhaps the person Vito winds up hurting the most over the seven year period of Mafia II is Vito Scaletta himself. The question becomes, however, is he worth saving?
I never played 2K Czech's Mafia, which came out in 2002 when they were named Illusion Softworks, and aside from taking place in the same universe and featuring one scene that'll be familiar to those who played the original, storywise you won't be lost at all. The action movies from Lost Heaven of the 1930s, which was totally not at all like Chicago of that era, to Empire Bay in 1945, which is totally not at all like New York City in that same era. Like its predcessor, Mafia II is an open world game, but the city is fairly empty of sidequests or things to do. As it was in the first game, 2K Czech wants you to concentrate on the narrative. While on the one hand, Head Writer Jack Scalici and the studio's dedication to immersing the gamer in a memorable storyline is commendable, problems arise when the story is, well, not that memorable.
Like most immigrant families, the Scalettas are in a very dire situation at the game's outset. Vito's father, an alcoholic dockworker, has recently died. Vito (Rick Pasqualone of Medal of Honor, Dead To Rights, and Space Chimps) and his buddy Joe Barbaro (the legendary Robert Costanzo, who's appeared in games such as Kingdom Hearts and Sewer Shark, in addition to too many live action and animation credits to count) have been pulling petty jobs, but when Vito is nabbed on a robbery charge, he signs up for the army to avoid jail time, and provide a tutorial level. After a surprising development battling Mussolini in Italy in late 1944, Vito comes home over winter break, and Joe finagles a way to get him discharged. In order to get the Scalettas out of debt, and to build a life for himself, Vito partners up with Joe and fellow small time enforcer Henry Tomasino (Sonny Marinelli) and finds himself drawn inexorably into the world of organized crime.
When Mafia II opens, it does so promisingly. Vito's return to Empire Bay is filled with citizens to interact with, streets teeming with life, and plenty of side conversations to listen to. Once the openng chapters are done, however, the city goes quiet like most open world games do, and you're set on the missions. 2K Czech is intent on keeping the gamer on a linear track, so aside from selling cars, robbing stores, buying food and clothes, and hunting for collectibles, there's really just the missions (except for an extremely ill-advised bit where the game finally lets you loose and tells you to make some dough on your own late in the narrative). While filled with plenty of checkpoints, a good portion of the game's fifteen chapters are big missions. Early on I was surprised at how going to bed simply unlocked an achievement and brought on another section of the story.
Playing your way through the sections of the story can be smooth, but also tedious. 2K Czech didn't skimp on the gameplay- it's simple run and gun, but the cover system works well and the gunplay is fun. There's not much variety in weapons, and the pure gunplay sequences are a little too spaced out, but they work. The developers tried to make each action sequence in the game feel like a mini-movie, and for the most part they succeeded. Each big mission has some unique gameplay elements, be it stealth or a timed racing sequence.
Here comes the tedious part, though: There's driving. lots and lots of driving. And this isn't an open world game where you can drive freely like a maniac, either: the car physics are realistic and a head on collision can result in an instant game over. Some reviewers have complained about this, but I found it to have an all right learning curve once I came to terms with what the game world wanted me to do. And boy, did it want me to listen to that car radio: many missions feature objectives at different sides of the game map, and Vito winds up the driver for, well, everything. Even one job Vito and Joe pull, Joe makes a point of hiring a getaway driver. Guess who winds up full of bullets before Vito and Joe have to make their getaway? It almost becomes comical, and while yes, 2K Czech have insisted this game isn't Grand Theft Auto III in the 1950s, I believe I've spent this game observing the streets of Empire Bay as I roll by far more than I think the game makers even intended. Now I know, I suppose, how it felt for that family at the beginning of Manos: The Hands of Fate (How's THAT for an obscure reference).
It certainly helps, though, that 2K Czech broke the bank for an astonishingly good list of period songs to be played over the game's two radio stations, and lots of radio chatter... which falls into repeats way too often. There are some great, great, songs in this game, and 2K Czech will make sure you're sick of about five to ten of them. It took my second playthrough before I even realized the actual variety; I heard "Ain't Love a Kick in the Head", and I had to double check I wasn't playing Fallout New Vegas. Now ain't THAT a hole in the boat. The game's score is fantastic, with in particular a title screen theme that is worthy of the mob films the game is trying so hard to emulate.
In addition to a great sounding game, Mafia II is a great looking game. The first glimpses you get of Empire Bay as Joe drives you around (okay, ONCE some else drives) at Christmastime are breathtaking, even in SD. Much care has gone into the cinematics, and they're some of the best I've seen on the 360. The mocapping is crisp, and the only real flaw are the faces- sometimes they're too stiff and don't quite pull off what I think the developers were trying to pull off, which becomes a big, BIG problem in a crucial sequence in the game's final section.
But the real selling point, the goal Scalici and 2K Czech seem to have been going for, is telling an immersive mob epic, and that's what I'm going to spend the rest of this review looking at. In my opinion, it didn't work, but why?
The plot has many great set pieces, but they simply lurch from one sequence to another, taking inspiration from the great Mafia films but unlike Red Dead Redemption or Grand Theft Auto, failing to put the unique spin and trademark humor that Rockstar regularly employs. The dialogue is often well written and quite funny, but just as often feels ground down by the gears of the plot.
The developers seem to have cut a lot out of their narrative, for sake of game flow it seems. There was a moral choice system they weren't happy with, and you can see traces of it here and there, and I wonder if the removal of said choice system may have hampered Vito's character a little bit. One weird thing I noticed was the detailed backstories I recieved when I beat the game, sometimes about characters in the game I interacted with for less than a minute.
While Scalici groused in GamePro on how critics have focused on the cliches of the plot, my feeling is he and his co-writers did little to expound on said cliches. Are Vito's mother and sister repulsed by the lifestyle he's chosen, despite the fact that he provides for them? Yes. Is Joe a violent bumbler who causes as many problems as he solves, but a true blue friend in the end? Yes. Does one of our anti-heroes turn informant just like Tommy did in the last game? Yes (though the game doesn't even do us the courtesy of providing a concrete reason, just an embarrassingly obvious throwaway line hinting something's up). Are there Chinatown gangsters and Irish gangsters whose portrayal borders on racist? Sure and begorrah, there is, although in the game's defense, they don't shy away from Joe and some of the other characters being racist assholes. Does a drug deal go spectacularly bad? Indubitably, though it features a scene of violence that's so horrifying it comes close to the "don't cut her down" scene from Deadly Premonition in sheer disturbingness.
Throughout, there's no real momentum to Vito Scaletta's journey because he himself feels like such a passive figure in it. His motivation starts out as needing money, then he needs more money, and by the end of the game, he's basically just trying to survive. Vito, as I said, goes along to get along, following Joe and Henry's harebrained get rich quick schemes, reaping the benefits when they succeed and paying the consequences when they fail. Vito rarely has anything to fight for outside of protecting Joe and his family. Pasqualone's performance is strange, often emotionless, not unlike Josh Gilman's take on Michael Thorton in Alpha Protocol (which I think was meant to be satire, but if I ever get around to reviewing that game I'll explain why. Vito rarely gets emotional, and he's awfully chaste- the game doesn't give him a girlfriend, even though Joe is seemingly swimming in them. Vito is almost a sociopath, and I can't help but wonder if that was part of Scalici's point- that like Niko Bellic, the player is meant to realize he's playing a seriously damaged individual. But if that's the idea, Scalici fumbled it, because Vito becomes progressively difficult to care about as a protagonist, while Niko had depth. There's no real reason given for Vito's behavior, other than his upbringing and lack of finances, and that's not enough. An attempt is made to explain how Vito's actions during the war affected his behavior, but it's not really followed up on, and this failed plot thread makes the game look especially bad compared to, say, Boardwalk Empire, which has done a fine job these past few weeks drawing a straight line from Jimmy Darmody's actions during the war to what makes him a particularly deadly mob enforcer. Vito also suffers compared to his comrade in arms, Joe Barbaro.
Ah, Joe Barbaro. Sure to make an eventual top ten list of best NPCs of all time, I bet. 2K Czech must have realized early on what a treasure they had in Robert Costanzo's performance as Joe, since he gets all the best lines, the best tail, he even has a stronger character arc and more likable qualities than Vito, even though he's just as violent and uncompromising, if not more so (and a bit more of a racist). I had thought Costanzo retired long ago (I was disappointed no one thought to give him a call for Arkham Asylum), and it was extremely refreshing to hear his voice after all these years. Especially since, no lie, I'm the guy, the one guy in all the world, who actually sat down one Saturday morning in 1993, and played Sewer Shark to its completion. I greatly enjoyed any time Joe was on screen to brighten up the normally very dour and calculating Vito. Tellingly, the developers have seized on a good thing and made the second DLC mission pack Joe-centric. In addition, several side characters wind up stealing the show.
While there's fun to be had playing the set pieces Mafia II, there's not as much fun watching the story, because it features many things you've seen before in other, better games, and despite the tremendous amount of effort Scalici and company seem to have spent in trying to tell this story, it fails to have much of an impact. I haven't gone over any plot specifics because I simply don't have the energy to- the framework is like every mob war scenario you've seen. And that really hampers the experience of playing the game. The more I progressed into Vito's story, the more detached I felt from the narrative as he seemed to.
I think the ending of the game probably sums it up best. Yahtzee Croshaw complained that it was too abrupt and didn't make too much sense (and yes, this is one time where the facial animation's stiffness screwed up, as I alluded to earlier). I disagree. Without giving too much away, it's a cliffhanger to nowhere that doubles as a horrific punch in the gut. Vito joined the Mafia to protect his family and friends, but by the end of his journey, it looks like the Mafia is all that he has. But once the initial shock of the gut punch fades, I realized Vito Scaletta selling his soul really isn't too much of a tragedy, because there wasn't much of a soul to sell to begin with. It's the failure to really ignite that emotional core that ultimately dooms Mafia II. You didn't break my heart, Vito. You didn't break my heart.
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