izigame.me

🎵Straighten up and fly right, straighten up and stay right — cool down papa, don't you blow your top.🎵
Mafia 2 is as close to a modern classic as I can think of, maybe not as much as the first Mafia as that got an outright full-on remake and this didn't. But I've never played classic Mafia 1 or the remake. Mafia 2 was my introduction to the Mafia games.
So what's different about the Definitive Edition?
Well, you can't buy the classic version anymore for starters. Additionally, this version technically speaking, looks nominally better with higher resolution textures and improved lighting and weather effects. But it also suffers from an immense amount of technical failures that the classic version never had. More on that later.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2695557172
It also features the additional episodes (scored arcade style for replayability) — The Betrayal of Jimmy, Jimmy's Vendetta and Joe's Adventures.
Made Man
You'll play as Vito Scaletta coming back from the war after being arrested and given the option to enlist instead of serve time. The game is based in Empire Bay, a fictional city that is based on New York City. As you may have surmised by the title, you join the Mafia — where a number of low level robberies, criminal mischief and other more serious offenses take place. Such as the manufacturing of corpses and their disposal. Some might call it business. As I've stated, I never played Mafia 1, but I have played the more divisive Mafia 3 and I understand why it's so polarizing. I happened to enjoy it. From my experience, you don't need to have played any of the other games to enjoy Mafia 2 or 3, but you'll get more out of them if you do.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2695615949
Mission Structure
The game is actually extremely linear. It's more like a movie that just happens to take place on an open map. There's never any choice as to what mission you can do next. Some missions don't give you the best equipment but because the map is technically open in between objectives, it allows you the agency to go get better stuff or not. Either by buying better weapons, stealing a better car or upgrading one you've already got. The only significant side activity you can do is to bring cars to the scrapyard for extra cash, otherwise the only side activities are shops — whether you engage with them as a normal customer or just rob them is up to you.
It's one of the only open-world games specifically about crime where the police will come after you for minor traffic offenses e.g., speeding, fender benders with non-police cars. You can actually turn on a speed limiter to prevent you from going over the speed limit. Oddly, the police are not concerned if you enjoy driving against traffic provided you don't make contact with any of them. Of course, they'll also come after you for the real crimes being committed throughout the game as well. Speaking of, being wanted by the police has separate “meters”, one for if the vehicle (license plate) is wanted and one if they're looking for your physical description. You're able to essentially hide if you switch cars while unable to reach someplace to change your clothes. But the police will notice if you drive too close.
Anecdotes
Given the advantage of a retrospective viewpoint, you may pick up on things this time around you didn't the first time, such as Dave Fennoy voicing some of the radio dialogue — he's in a lot of games, but most notably, he's Lee from Telltale's The Walking Dead. And I'm almost certain I heard Mike Patton of the band “Faith No More” voicing some random NPCs, though I can't find any credits for him. He also does a lot of voice work including his more known parts like “The Darkness” where he voices... the Darkness. As well as Nathan “Rad” Spencer in the 2009 Bionic Commando re-imagining.
TechSmech
I ran this game using a Ryzen 5 5600X and a 6GB GTX1060 and it ran relatively fine beyond the much higher temps that a much more demanding game would typically run on this system. There were also sequences where a lot of fire or environmental damage would cause the game to drop down into the 40FPS range. I was running it at 2560x1080@75Hz as that is what my monitor's refresh rate is, I didn't test it at higher resolutions or frame rates, though there is a custom FPS limiter in the options.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2695567581
The 5600X, in my testing, draws about 35W when it's basically doing nothing and I use stock Wraith Stealth cooler so it tends to run a tad hot in the first place. However, in my Prime 95 stress test at 100% usage, it pulled 75W while never exceeding 83°C at stock settings. So despite the shown CPU temp seeming relatively high for what's it's doing, it's well within its normal range. It's just... a lot higher than more demanding stuff — I'm left to believe that something is simply off regarding this game.
There were glitches regarding facial animation and 'headpieces' to include hair and hats being set within the head during cut scenes. Sometimes “ambient” dialogue would repeat. And I don't mean like it simply ran through all the available recorded lines throughout the course of the game or sequence, I'm saying it'd repeat the line immediately after finishing it while cutting off other lines. It only happened in a few places, however.
The Gist
It's unfortunate that this “Definitive Edition” is riddled with technical issues. But I feel the narrative is strong enough to pull through those more dicey moments. It's the type of game that will get remade for the next 30 years, even if it's called something else.
If you've read this far, consider following my curation — Station Argus
My Mafia 3 review here.