An awkward cover mechanic makes smoothly getting about the place a complete chore while aiming and shooting is the clunkiest it could possibly be. Simply put, it feels completely archaic in the year 2020. We can't say the same for combat, however. And while it still features an open world with nothing to do and a complete joke of a police force, Mafia II continues to excel in the one place it had something to say.
Those tribulations get rather grandiose the more you progress, although a series of unique set pieces lend weight to keep you at ground level. Yes, it covers every cliché in the book, but the writing holds up with a heartfelt tale of doing what's right for your family no matter the cost.
The most frustrating thing about the situation then is that underneath this technical mess is a game with statements which still ring true 10 years later. This is an unacceptable state to launch in, especially so when the remaster's foundations were already laid a decade ago. Can you see where we're going? The title runs like a complete trainwreck during every story-critical sequence and it only gets worse when you throw combat into the mix. The vast majority of the game's missions take place in specially designed environments, so outside of driving to and from these scenes, you will spend a lot of your time indoors. It may be tough to wrap your head around what that really means for the undertaking, so allow us to lend a helping hand. And this is something which happens in these locations every single time you visit them. Confined spaces such as building interiors, apartments, and tunnels have it far worse as the frame rate nosedives into the literal teens. Stutters and frame rate drops are an incredibly common occurrence while out in the open world, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The remaster seems to target just 30 frames per second on PlayStation 4 Pro, but it never, ever achieves it for any decent length of time. There are so many faults and flaws introduced by Mafia II: Definitive Edition that you better buckle up for the long haul. What ensues is a narrative that still holds up to this day, but it can only do so much for an experience which even gives the Silent Hill HD Collection a good run for its money. Vito Scaletta finds himself wound up in one such criminal organization after returning from World War II with the aim of ridding his family of debt. Mafia II is still in there, somewhere, but it has been trampled on to such a degree that it can be considered long dead and buried.įor those who don’t know, this remaster brings together the base game and three pieces of DLC for a cinematic period piece dedicated to the illegal dealings of the mafia. From an atrociously bad frame rate and questionable slowdown right the way through to bizarre audio glitches, it quite literally has the complete package. However, ten years later, anything the game got right has been thwarted by the technical disaster that is Mafia II: Definitive Edition. Originally released for PlayStation 3 in 2010, it was by no means the greatest of its time.