We’re about to take a leap back in time, back to the 1940s and early 1950s, in the world of Mafia 2: Definitive Edition situated in the fictional metropolis of Empire Bay, inspired by several American cities. The game itself is a remastered version of the original Mafia 2 from 2010. This edition now includes all the DLCs on top of the base game. Developed by Hangar 13 and published by 2K in 2020 on PC and 8th Gen consoles, the game invites you to step into the shoes of Vito Scaletta, an Italian-American war veteran trying to make a name for himself in the criminal underworld of post-war America. Expect a blend of third-person action, period-accurate cityscapes, and a narrative that leans heavily into the mobster movie vibe that involves full blown shootouts throughout the city. But how does Mafia II stack up as an open world experience? Let’s pop the hood and take a look!
Side Activities
First up, let’s talk about what you can do when you’re not knee-deep in mob business. You can start by splurging yourself in shopping through the multiple clothing stores around the city. There are a somewhat few variation between the stores. You’ll have the high-end and the other-end of clothing stores. Other than that you’ll have gun stores which are pretty much on the same page, they’re either a automatic weapons or handguns store. You can also have a meal or drink at one of the many food and beverages establishments in the city, but there isn’t really any depth to it. Although it does increase the character’s HP for an extra tad of immersion. Nevertheless, it’s pretty much an instant gobble down on the food or chug on the beer. So you won’t even get to sit down and enjoy it. Also the game has body shops to buy car parts. What does earn a quick mention is their more quick stop locations such as gas stations and the scrapyard or port where you can earn some extra cash, both adding its small weight to the immersion.
Other than that, it’s the usual run on the collectibles. Mafia 2 gives it a little spice though with the playboy magazines showing the Not so safe for work photos on top of the wanted posters but other than that there isn’t really much meaning behind it or relation to the story at all. On the topic of collectibles, although not formally included as 1, collecting cars might become a side activity of your own as you’ll definitely want to collect the more attractive cars on the road.
All that being said, Mafia 2’s side activities barely make up a list.
Area of Freedom
Stepping into the city of Empire Bay, the city setting of Mafia 2, you’re greeted with a decently sized open world that is completely whole. That means no segmentations or regions that divide the city. You’re free to explore the bustling central area up until the outer suburban areas without anything hindering you. However, there are invisible walls around the world hindering you to go for a quick swim in the river or anywhere outside the city. Additionally, the game does put you in a bit of a transition when entering buildings. It’s a short transition, but it’s there nonetheless.
A quick mention before we move on though. Some missions do restrict you in a specific area of the city, and these missions can be quite lengthy in duration. However, these are the usual design of main missions in most open world games. So it doesn’t decrease the seamlessness when you roam the open world of mafia 2 outside of those missions. Just be sure to spend a good time exploring the world before moving onto the next mission.
In short, outside of the side note, Mafia 2 nails the essence of the area of freedom aspect.
Liveliness
When it comes to the details on the world design, Mafia 2 nails it with precision. You get a detail accurate setting in the 1940s to 1950s with its old school building designs and all around era-authentic atmosphere that goes along with it, all brought to life by a city that genuinely feels like it belongs in post-war America. The game has anything from the skyscraper filled central with a good amount of luxurious hotspots to the more quite areas with a more of a residential feel to it, and a few more nature filled areas like parks or observatories. It’s also worth mentioning that while soundtrack isn’t anything special here, the game does have a few radio stations with time accurate music when you’re in your classic hot rod enjoying yourself in the good old mid 19th century.
While you’re strolling in the city itself. You’ll notice that there are a LOT of NPCs going about their daily life both in the bustling central city area and even in the more suburban residential areas that aren’t supposed to be as busy. So the suburban areas still have a good amount of NPCs. You’ll have businessmen walking to work with their leather suitcases to ladies who are just having a good relaxing smoke. This also extends to the cars passing by you when you’re on the road or having a stroll. You won’t ever feel like there aren’t enough cars in the city at any point in the game because most of the cars are different either model wise or customization wise.
Now when we look deeper into the NPCs themselves, you won’t get any reaction unless you actually bump into them. After that, they’ll quickly continue walking off as if nothing ever happened, unless you start a fight with them of course. At that point, you’re going to be in for a full blown street fight.
Overall, Mafia 2 does a great job at creating a living world that has equal amount of density in every corner.
Customization
Moving on to what you can customize. First on the list is the character customization, or rather clothing customization. The game has plenty of outfits to choose from, ranging from dope to straight up dapper. However that’s just it, you can only choose whole outfits, not individual pieces of clothing for your character. The option is there in the game to choose an outfit but there won’t be any mix and matching here. And forget about changing hairstyles or any physical appearance, because there aren’t any.
Outside of character customization, there’s vehicle customization, which is just enough to personalize your vehicle to make it your own. You can customize your car to any color or custom paint job, tweak the engine for upgrades, change your license plate to your own, and pick out your tires. It’s not as extensive as you might hope but it still gets the job done. Furthermore, you also need to make the choice of which cars you want to collect, as the game only lets you collect 10 cars at a time. This is the amount of space you have in your garage. So you’ll have to make a wise choice on which cars to keep when you’ve reached that point.
How about guns? Well we won’t be counting them this time because the game lets you buy every gun in the game and carry all of them in your arsenal of deadly firepower so there’s not much personalization there.
That about sums it up for the customization, Mafia 2 has a few customization options to offer letting you make choices here and there.
Engagement
The story is Mafia 2’s biggest hook. Some might call it a cinematic masterpiece. However, we're not here to talk about the story. We're here to talk about what keeps you playing outside of that. And outside of the main narrative, there’s not much to keep you playing. The game has limited amount of side activities, and most of them lacking depth as well. I mean let’s be real who wouldve have thought that scrapping a car will make you want to continue the game. Although the game does have its in game currency, there aren’t many features that pushes the player to earn the most cash possible as the only feature that isn’t cosmetics only and also rewarding outside of the main story is the car engine upgrade. On top of that, the game’s strong point, of which is the immersion, doesn’t add any value to the engagement outside of the story whatsoever. Suffice to say, the game is surely missing that one hook to keep the player busy outside the story while pushing them back on the main storyline at the same time.
Either way, Mafia 2 lacks any feature that even comes close to keeping you hooked outside of the story.
Uniqueness
What this game doesn’t lack in at all or actually thrives in is it’s period setting, strong narrative, and attention to 1940s-50s detail. The way it blends cinematic storytelling with open-world elements is unique, and it also adds the intricacies to match as well. The game makes sure you really suck in the period specific setting, whether it’s classic style buildings and businesses, classic vintage cars, music or even the fashion that was popular back then. Mafia 2 does a great job at making sure they got every single detail right. Even when there is a time skip from the 1940s to early 1950s, you’ll notice that the cars change along with the time skip. The game also tries very hard to make the game as immersive as possible with anything ranging from the cops giving you a wanted level for speeding to even being able to bribe them. Speaking of speeding, you can actually use the speed limiter feature in the game to stay within the speed limit, while keeping an eye on the tank in case you have to pull up at a gas station to refuel. Now, these small details might not be much on their own, but when combined they create a world that is true to its nature as it is immersive. All of which is rare to see in the open world genre.
Ultimately, Mafia 2 presents a unique approach to the open world genre, one that pays off well.
Now that we’re at the end of the line in the Mafia business, I can finally say that Mafia 2: Definitive Edition shows promise when it comes to where it is strong, which is its approach in cinematic immersion, complete freedom to roam in most missions, and more than lively world. Outside of that, the game presents you with a somewhat enough amount of side activities to keep you busy for a slight moment, and enough customization to personalize your playthrough. This is of course on top of its obvious lack in engagement. All in all, Mafia can be a decent choice for a select few out there, receiving a C tier from us at GameTyr.
