That's probably the best platform to play the game on, despite the presence of some thin, action-oriented free DLC on the PS3. It's worth noting that the shooting is more precise (and the frame rate much smoother) on the PC, the platform the original Mafia originated on. Like the storyline, the missions have a couple of standout moments-an explosive assassination attempt atop the city's tallest, snazziest hotel comes to mind-but there aren't enough of them to keep the action moving consistently through the game. In general, it's stop, pop, rinse and repeat from one mission to the next, and other than the occasional fistfight or car chase (there's that reliance on driving again), it's hard to play more than a handful of the story's 15 chapters without feeling like you've done all this before. To be fair, there are two sorts of collectibles scattered around the game world (one of which notoriously features several dozen Playboy centerfolds) that don't really add much to the experience of playing the game. At least there are some impressive surroundings in which to do all that shooting, like a lavishly decorated Chinese restaurant, a planetarium, and lots of the decrepit industrial parks and seedy-looking back rooms where mobsters seem to love doing business. Not only is there a conspicuous lack of significant activities to keep you busy between missions, most of the missions themselves merely revolve around functional third-person shooting that's really nothing you haven't seen before. Mafia II doesn't really take into account the eight years of progress in open-world game design since the first Mafia came out.
There's some simple pleasure in hopping in a classic car and tooling around the beautifully rendered period trappings of the city, but at a certain point, you realize you're spending the majority of your time in the game merely ferrying yourself and some number of cohorts to or from your next mission objective, and this isn't an especially lengthy game to begin with. The story progression is completely linear-there's only one plot-related mission available at any given time-and there are no side missions or activities to speak of, leaving the sprawling metropolis of Empire Bay to feel like so much finely crafted window dressing. This is an open-world game that doesn't utilize or really even need its open world. Cliched or not, the plot would be strong enough to support Mafia II if it were a better action game than it is. Then, just when it seems like it's about to really get going, the game is over. But you have to slog through just as many predictable turns, and a lot of uninspired game design-driving and shooting, then more driving and shooting, then still more driving-to get to them. You end up with a lot of (maybe too many) recognizable elements and scenarios mashed together-dead bodies in trunks, mob bosses living in luxury behind bars, wiseguys turned Federal informants, traditionalist dons clinging to the old country fighting with American-bred bosses who are into dealing dope-that do fit together reasonably well and result in a few genuinely exciting moments toward the end. This mid-century tale of Sicilian immigrant turned low-level mob enforcer Vito Scaletta borrows so much from genre classics like The Godfather, Goodfellas, and The Sopranos that it's almost a surprise to see their respective filmmakers go uncredited at the end of the game. I'm a sucker for a good mob story, but Mafia II's is merely decent. Expect to do a lot of business with a lot of guys like these.
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