izigame.me

There is no denying that Mafia 1 and 2 are staples in the libraries and backlogs of most gamers that appreciate a good story... I loved these two games back in the day on the Xbox and I only just now revisited both of them.
Truthfully speaking, Mafia 2 is not as good as Mafia 1, but it is certainly a gem and a "must-play" for everyone - I highly recommend playing through the two games. With that said, I bought Mafia 1 and 2 on sale and I would NEVER buy either of the two games at full price. 30 bucks for this port that has a lot of bugs (which we will talk about) is just not acceptable. I paid 5 and I felt like that was a reasonable amount for this old port.
Took me about 10.5 hours to finish the game on Hard difficulty, so let's talk about the good, bad and ugly. Starting with the bad and ugly,
• Stuttering gets progressively worse throughout the chapters - started off relatively fine, but by chapter 12-15 the game stuttered an insane amount to the point where it felt semi unplayable. By then I was too invested and had to just endure the terrible performance.
• SLIGHT SPOILER INCOMING! Chapter 14 is bugged and has been for years. If you decide to rob any stores during chapter 14 or rob stores in order to get enough money for Bruno, the ending cutscene will not show up and you will have to re-do this mission (which is quite long, might I add). The simple fix is to take the $22.000 when you kill Derek and then crush cars at Bruski's.
• Way too expensive. 30 bucks for an archaic and bad port like this is outrageous. Don't ever buy this unless it's on sale.
• A lot of visual bugs... Faces, cars, screen blinking, etc.
• Dialogue bugs. Repeated lines and delayed lines are common.
• No ability to free-roam? Seriously? Why was this never implemented. Even Mafia 1 had this.
• Cops in this game are useless - you can massacre the whole city and all it takes is to speed a little bit up and they will never catch you. Massive downgrade to the cops in Mafia 1, which I found to be brutal on Classic mode.
All in all, you can get past the bugs and enjoy the game, none of them break the game completely and I played through the whole thing without a single crash. Let's talk about the good...
Mafia 2 is a game that executes the 1940s and 1950s theme perfectly... Everything from the cars, Empire Bay which sets the tone for a fictional take on New York brilliantly, the weapons and most importantly, the characters and overall story-telling. These are without a doubt Mafia 2's strongest points. I can't praise the story enough, it is enthralling and captivating and you become heavily invested in the characters of the game, to the point where deaths in-game are felt on a personal level. It's just one of those games where you have to play through it to see what it's all about - trust me, it's worth it.
Oh, and they also give you naked Playboy women to look at throughout the game and I can shamelessly admit that I collected every 50 of them. Oops.