Playing A Game Mafia II PC

Grand Theft Auto V can't come soon enough.

Mafia II came in my bundle of BioShock Infinite freebies from 2K, and I was feeling a bit of a hankering for open-world mayhem, so, sure. But after about an hour, I've yet to find anything I could respectfully call "mayhem," nor for that matter much openness in the world. Granted, I still seem to be in the game's introductory phase, but I'm having trouble imagining myself having fun tooling around town when the police will chase you for speeding.

True to the game's period, the cars feel like boats and the guns are a pain to aim and reload. Melee combat is less polished than GTA4, and lockpicking is -- actually, it doesn't even feel like it's working right at all. Basically, Mafia II's mechanics aren't that fun - sometimes intentionally - so it makes sense that the game would try to emphasize its story and setting. To its credit, the voice acting is quite good, especially supporting character Joe, voiced by a prolific Italian/Brooklyn stereotype. But the character animations aren't convincing enough to support this talent, and even the first hour of the game has plenty of contrived and absurd story events. The story missions just aren't good enough to keep me interested.

And, protip, when your game has a prologue chapter, it's pretty stupid to have a minutes-long cutscene prologuing the prologue. And to have additional controls tutorials later in the game that are just redundant with the prologue's. Seriously, did the game's first chapter just make it in at the last minute?

For a game with collectible Playboy photographs, Mafia II has done a surprisingly poor job of convincing me to play it.

Progress: Gave up -- stole my first car.