Mafia II Exclusive Hands-On - Driving, Open-World Exploration, and Cover-to-Cover Shooting

While the original Mafia was a challenging and underrated cult classic that told the tale of a crime drama in 1930s America, Mafia II will be a sequel that takes place in a bigger, postwar world with faster cars, bigger guns, and much higher stakes. We took a second look at the upcoming sequel by watching a demonstration of part of the early game and then playing through a level that takes place about halfway through it. We stole cars, got into fistfights, bribed the police, fought through a vicious gun battle, and even picked up a girlie magazine along the way. And we have much to report. Please be advised that this story may contain minor spoilers.

As we've discussed previously, Mafia II will be a story-heavy third-person action game that spans the 1940s on into the 1950s and will cover the career of Vito Scaletta, a young man growing up in the Italian quarter of the fictitious city of Empire Bay. Vito starts his life as a down-on-his-luck neighborhood kid who gets drafted into service in World War II but comes back on brief medical leave to find that his neighborhood buddy Joe is a made man with money, women, and enough pull to get Vito a phony government note that will get him out of the army forever. Joe has an intriguing offer he shares with Vito over drinks, but gives him some time to think about it.

At the beginning of the game, Vito returns to the big city in the dead of winter, and in the early part of the game, he makes the long walk back to his apartment, passing by the locals engaged in various outdoor activities, like shoveling snow, buying hot dogs, and slipping on frozen sidewalks, and generally going about their own business. Many of Mafia II's venues will be populated by ambient characters that are both scripted to perform certain actions and are unscripted--in addition, the game will have a dynamic music score with some 120 period pieces from the 1940s and 1950s (plus a symphonic score from the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra) that will change depending on what you're doing in-game. In fact, even the game's weather system will change to help suit the scene (rather than simply change on a 24-hour day-night cycle) to help make even quiet downtime moments seem like scenes out of a motion picture.

In Mafia II, you'll take an odd job here and some dirty work there on your journey to become a made man.

Vito returns home to his apartment to meet his elderly mother and high-spirited sister, enjoy some home cooking, and make the unpleasant discovery that his hardworking-but-estranged father, who recently passed away, had taken out a huge loan from a loan shark just before he shuffled off this mortal coil. This obviously puts Vito in a tough spot and motivates him to take Joe up on his offer. We then jumped ahead to a different part of the game, about halfway through, in the early 1950s, with both Vito and Joe firmly established as up-and-coming confidence men working odd jobs for local mobsters. This was about the time that we picked up the Xbox 360 controller ourselves and started playing the game.

Our session began at Vito's apartment, which acts as a hub area that contains a working radio, as well as his clothes-filled closet--which is more important than you think, considering that changing your clothes and ditching your stolen car can sometimes be the only way to get the cops off your scent. After nabbing some clothes, we picked up a note that Joe had left for us about a job. We ducked out of the apartment building to find that we had been holed up in a pretty decent part of town, complete with a garage out back to store all the cars we'd acquired. While there were a few cars for us in storage to try out, we were more interested in borrowing one from oncoming traffic.

Stealing cars is as simple as pressing a button, just like in the Grand Theft Auto games, though there are obvious consequences, including an increased "wanted" level that will make you a target for the police, as well as angry motorists who may not give their cars up without a fight. We nabbed a passing sedan from a plucky motorist who helpfully put up his dukes so that we could try out Mafia II's melee combat system. The game uses the four controller face buttons to let you throw a light punch, throw a heavy punch, dodge, and continuously block--properly dodging an incoming punch gives you a brief advantage that will let you land a quick counterpunch. If you're lucky, you can also land a critical hit, such as a vicious kick to the face, that will instantly floor your opponent, just like we did. If you're unlucky, you'll end up finishing off that vicious act of assault and battery right in front of a passing police car, just like we did. But since Vito was already well on his way to becoming a made man at this point in the game, we had the option to slip the cops a couple hundred bucks, and with a little greasing of palms, we were off the hook.

Rather than risk the hassle of dealing with the fuzz again, we hightailed it back to our garage and picked out a muscle car we had lined up. We hopped into the car and hightailed it downtown to our rendezvous point with Joe, marked on a minimap in the lower corner of the screen. Fortunately, 2K Czech has opted against making running red lights and stop signs a punishable offense, so you can drive like a moderately crazy person without the frustration of always having the cops on your heels. Like the original Mafia, Mafia II has a speed limiter option that will automatically keep your car under the speed limit--speeding is considered a minor offense, which, like most low-level crimes in Mafia II, will attract the ire of the police only if you commit it within sight range.

How'd that fire get started, officer? Here's a couple hundred bucks. You didn't see nothing.

And should you commit a minor offense in front of Johnny Law, your "wanted" level will increase only slightly, and if you're able to outrun the cops, your "wanted" status will eventually disappear. There are multiple levels in the "wanted" system that are fairly nuanced, but generally speaking, as long as you keep a little extra money in your pocket to pay off the police, and don't do anything stupid, you should be able to get by in the early game without too much trouble. However, in later parts of the game, you may be tasked with messier jobs, such as disposing of dead bodies or robbing a gun shop--serious infractions that will bring the authorities in droves, setting up roadblocks, calling in armored trucks, and sending in cruisers at top speed with the specific purpose of ramming you off the road.