Trailer!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06 ... 3-trailer/

Mafia 2 demo is on steam, downloading it as I speak.

ooh, cool. I'll have to load it up when I get home.

It's short and features a short trip around the city and a shooty-shoot mission, but it plays really really well. Both graphically and gameplay-wise. haven't noticed a quicksave option yet tho...but it doesn't seem like it has been quickly ported to the PC from a console, as everything has a PC button assigned and logical ones at that (left ctrl, left shift, spacebar, e to use, you know). Lots of 'fucks' flying around, good voice acting, even nudity (I found a 50's playboy mag in the apartment).

Yes, this looks like it may be the ultimate mafia-movie-come-to-life game. Very impressed by the demo.

cool, I'm looking forward to picking it up. Does it allow free-roaming?

Yeah, but a bit silly limited: when driving from your house to the mission spot you have 10 minutes to faf about in the city. It's pretty marvellous...you can go into a bar and hold up the place, only to have the bartender pull a shotgun on you. Once you start the mission there's no timer though.

The silly part is that you can just play for another 10 mins if you restart the demo. Ah well. You'll enjoy it. I'm tempted to preorder now if I find a cheap deal, it's out in 2 weeks.

ah, cool, keep me posted. Totally forgot to get it loading at lunch... hopefully I'll remember to do it tonight. I mean, how long could it possible take to load.

I preordered Mafia 2 yesterday. I found myself starting the demo over and over again (not the actual mission, the free roaming part) and totally enjoying the world and doing effed up shit. I let the psycho in me take a hold of me and entered a diner, ate a cheeseburger, then pulled a gun and headshot the old lady running the counter. Panic broke out, and I shot two people who tried to run in the back. The rest were still wimpering at their tables in their respective booths, and I I headshot each of them at a time, chaging the tune on the jukebox for every kill.

Then the police came and I did a filmic firefight with me ducking behind counters and under windows as they tried to surround me. Since the diner is almost all windows, glass was flying as they tried to smoke me out. Pretty epic.

The detail in everything, like Vito's home, the music, the seemingly very smooth graphics and the overall atmosphere just seem right. Worth a preorder semi-gamble. If nothing else to reward them for actually releasing a demo, which is getting rarer and rarer for big titles like these.

yea, I'll probably grab the game when it comes out. I'm sure the quality will be decent. The benefits for pre-ordering just don't get me excited enough to pre-order it.

I played the console demo; and whilst I'm sure graphically and frame-rate wise the problems will dissapear on a good PC I have this to say:

The game looks and feels fantastic in nearly every aspect. It takes a little getting used to to drive the old time cars as obviously we're used to grippy cars and things now. Then ten min demo timer is a bit annoying, but if you're just gonna drive around the demo area it's plenty of time. You only feel left short if you want to go killing things, but that's the sign of a good demo - leaving you wanting more.

You can go fill up your car, which I'm not sure is a good thing: If in the full game you're required to fill up you're gonna have a whole new load of trouble on your hands if you draw a blank when picking a getaway vehicle that has no fuel, or worse you run out of a fuel in a secluded area. Still, should add a new lease of tension to the game!

The main gripe I had on the Xbox was that looking out of the window from the appartment caused frame rate issues, down to a guestimated 20-25fps, for which there is just no need these days. But still, with the delays to the game so far I'm sure that it's come a long way.

The boobs were a very, very welcome treat - I love it when they don't censor shit just because it's in a game.

The aiming works well, if you get good with it you can aim at people's heads before you pop around the corner allowing you to just pop out and BAM off with their heads. I do have a slite gripe against the enemy AI, it's pants - they just stay in the same spot and pop up and down taking shots. However, I realise this isn't a sim, it's a gangster film gone game so I can't really hold that against it.

All in all, everything seems well place, paced and faced.

Should be a cracker of a game.

On a side note, I'm installing BG2!

Yeah the AI does act a little weird. I didn't notice it in the liquor plant mission, but I did when I started going mass murderer in a burger joint and the police came after me. They'd sometimes just walk in through the front door right into a shotgun blast to the face even though the entire diner had open windows. I mean, I can understand doing something as silly like that when you're not fully aware of the danger. But they could actually see me standing 3 meters from the door with a shotgun inside. Typical non-logical AI behavior.

I heard about there being FPS issues on the consoles. I think tycho at Penny Arcade touched on it.



But like he said, it runs like absolutely gravy on the PC of everyone I know who played it.

Redrum was kind enough to buy me a copy, so I'll be playing it on release day. I installed Mafia 1 last night and will probably play with it a bit in the meantime. I'm not sure if I'll be able to handle 2004 graphics... we shall see.

Oh, cool! Mafia has aged really really well. There'll be some annoyance of course, but the graphics are still really solid. I think you may be surprised!

So you finish mafia 1 yet?

My Mafia 2 copy shipped yesterday - I may be playing it in the weekend if the postal services don't fuck up. But they probably will...

oh, hehe, I started playing Mafia 2 yesterday, of course. It's pretty good... cinematic and all that. Though one minor gripe from a review I read is definitely true... the cut scenes are long. It seems like you're playing for about 2 minutes for every 6 minutes of cut scenes. I'm not too far in yet.

As for Mafia 1, no, I haven't finished. I'm at the point where I'm knocking off some dude in a hotel, but it's a difficult mission. Very easy to take a shotgun blast to the face.