Mafia II, what next?

I thought Mafia 2 was superb,played the original many years ago and imo Mafia 2 has recaptured the spirit and feel of the original perfectly,graphics and driving mechanics in 2 are far superior but otherwise they are very similar games.

I can't understand why people are judging the first Mafia to be so much better,Mafia 2 is a next gen version of the first game,a linear,mission based,story driven shooter with free exploration possible between missions. Infact iirc the first Mafia had far less exploration possibilities between missions. Both great games imo that deserve to be played.
 
davewhite04 - it is strange, seriously - the aiming in Mafia 1 I never had any problem with.

The first few missions are the worst (still pretty good) - the amazing ones come later (I would list them, but do not want to spoil them for you in case you decide to continue).
You should really do something about that mouse : ).

And yeah I was oversimplifying with WSAD + mouse, but the settings are configurable..I set it to something like WASD + SHIFT + SPACE + E and have no problem...


Mafia 2 is great game too, seriously, but the first one simply has even better missions and much (much much!) better ending.

Plus you can't fully appreciate Mafia 2 story without finishing Mafia 1.
 
Paul_cz said:
davewhite04 - it is strange, seriously - the aiming in Mafia 1 I never had any problem with.

The first few missions are the worst (still pretty good) - the amazing ones come later (I would list them, but do not want to spoil them for you in case you decide to continue).
You should really do something about that mouse : ).

And yeah I was oversimplifying with WSAD + mouse, but the settings are configurable..I set it to something like WASD + SHIFT + SPACE + E and have no problem...


Mafia 2 is great game too, seriously, but the first one simply has even better missions and much (much much!) better ending.

Plus you can't fully appreciate Mafia 2 story without finishing Mafia 1.
Click to expand...

You have got a point regarding the mouse, I just use a standard wireless Logitech one, as now I just play games that aren't mouse intensive or I use a pad. I do have a gaming mouse though so might try it with that. Did you have a problem with the 4 gangsters at the gas station? I'm sure I shot 1 in the head and didn't kill him, plus I had like 12 bullets, seemed very hard.

Also, you can use the pad for driving, but it is too sensitive unfortunately(as someone guessed it would be in this thread). I must admit though that driving using the keys was pretty doable in any case.

The gangster setting is different as the base is at an old cafe(haven't checked if the games were based at roughly the same time though), much like in Leon the movie.

This ending talk is the thing(I love good stories) that is still keeping the game in the back of my mind, and the fact that you've just said the missions get MUCH better.

hmmm I have a few games to complete, such as Assassins Creed 1 and 3, and perhaps Saints Row 2. Then I think I'll give it another go. Redrooster mentioned some different pad software too, so might trial that for 30days on it and it might make the difference.

Thanks Paul
 
Mafia 2 is the only game I have wanted to complete since the original Metal Gear Solid (and half life before that), even my 13 y/o daughter got hooked on it (I know theres language and stuff but no worse than tv these days)

so a game that a 39 y/o bloke and a 13 y/o girl both play to completion = job well done :)
 
davewhite04 said:
You have got a point regarding the mouse, I just use a standard wireless Logitech one, as now I just play games that aren't mouse intensive or I use a pad. I do have a gaming mouse though so might try it with that. Did you have a problem with the 4 gangsters at the gas station? I'm sure I shot 1 in the head and didn't kill him, plus I had like 12 bullets, seemed very hard.
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I use intellimouse explorer 3.0 mouse, for about 8 years (one died after 6 years, I went and bought new one because it is the best mouse I have ever tried). I did not remember having problems in the gas station - you just have to be really careful, use rolling and conserve ammo (never reload until you are almost out of ammo, because Mafia 1 is probably the only game ever made with realistic reloading - if you reload with 5 remaining bullets in a clip, you will lose those bullets! Sadly Mafia 2 left this realistic approach).

davewhite04 said:
Also, you can use the pad for driving, but it is too sensitive unfortunately(as someone guessed it would be in this thread). I must admit though that driving using the keys was pretty doable in any case.
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Yeah for driving I used keyboard, x360pad is amazing for Mafia 2, but I was too lazy to try to set it up for Mafia 1 when keyboard was sufficient.I would never use it in Mafia 2 though : ).

davewhite04 said:
The gangster setting is different as the base is at an old cafe(haven't checked if the games were based at roughly the same time though), much like in Leon the movie.
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Mafia 1 takes place during 1930s, when during prohibition era and later, Mafia 2 takes place during 1945 - 1952 or so. There is a really great overlap between the two games, but again, you would have to finish Mafia 1 to appreciate it.

davewhite04 said:
This ending talk is the thing(I love good stories) that is still keeping the game in the back of my mind, and the fact that you've just said the missions get MUCH better.

hmmm I have a few games to complete, such as Assassins Creed 1 and 3, and perhaps Saints Row 2. Then I think I'll give it another go. Redrooster mentioned some different pad software too, so might trial that for 30days on it and it might make the difference.

Thanks Paul
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You are welcome, I just really like the first game : ).


BTW, I made some screens when I last played it - the game looks really amazing for its time, years ahead:

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/4229/game2008101202363193br2.jpg

http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/7939/game2009100323065223.jpg
http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/5318/game2009100323100384.jpg
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/1148/game2009100323101320.jpg
 
2002 screenshots

In the IGN game of the year award, 1942 won and Mafia was actually runner up. Here are some 1942 screenshots:

One
Two
Three

Actually pretty good too, but the draw distance in Mafia is amazing, as you said.

Here are two PS2 game of the year winners, one was first or something the other slightly lower but the other games were cartoon-ie, and tbh honest both the Megadrive and SNES could easily produce cartoon graphics of high quality just with smaller sprites and smaller worlds.

One
http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/6079/ps22j.jpg

Hope these links work...
 
To be fair, the draw distance on those screens I made is so great because I used a mod that allowed it - in vanilla nonmodded game, the draw distance was sadly much smaller (yesteryear graphics card were not capable of more).
 
Paul_cz said:
To be fair, the draw distance on those screens I made is so great because I used a mod that allowed it - in vanilla nonmodded game, the draw distance was sadly much smaller (yesteryear graphics card were not capable of more).
Click to expand...

Ah I see. I think I'm just using vanilla and the graphics are still stunning compared to others in 2002, mind you 1942 is pretty good, in fact most PC games back then were way ahead of the pack, the good old days...
 
Paul_cz said:
To be fair, the draw distance on those screens I made is so great because I used a mod that allowed it - in vanilla nonmodded game, the draw distance was sadly much smaller (yesteryear graphics card were not capable of more).
Click to expand...

Yeah I used that too now that when I replay it. ;)

But in its day when there weren't any mods until the later days, it was king and unheard of. :D

One of the best games I have ever played is Mafia 1. Everything is just perfect, atmosphere, semi realistic, fantastic story, epic driving/cars and setting. :cool:

If you don't like that sort of setting etc then don't bother and go play the latest Tron game or something like that...

It's not GTA, and you don't have to take some fat russian to burger king or some **** bowling.

People have ago at the parts of Joe's Adventures when your doing little jobs and the like but in GTA4 everyone is like "WOW THIS IS INCREDIBLE, I'M GOING TO SCORE TONIGHT!!!!111". :rolleyes:
 
Yea just goes to show how shafted us pc games get nowadays. thats why i now own a ps3 and xbox 360 and sold my ati 5870 for a 8800gtx.

Oh well only wasted energy lol.
 
I was disappointmented playing Mafia 2. I thought the missons involved way too much driving and not enough action. I personally enjoyed playing GTA 4 & episodes from Liberty City more.
 
BTW Mafia 2 had a lot of development done in 2004 - the script was written, game mechanics, engine was running...

There was one problem - the team switched from their own engine (LS3D) to Criterion's Renderware engine (used in everything from GTA 3 to Burnout Paradise) - they switched to this engine, because they wanted to release the game on consoles at the same time with PC, and LS3D was not possible to adapt to consoles well (it was written as PC engine, using it to its fullest, consoles could not compete...also why console port of Mafia 1 was really bad).

However, EA bought Criterion - and with that, Illusion softworks had to stop the development, because the engine was no longer licensed out!

Also, there were new consoles on the horizon, and releasing the game for old generation seemed to be unprofitable.

So a decision happened - completely new engine had to be written from scratch, for PC and next gen consoles. With that, all textures, models, animations, editors and tools....EVERYTHING had to be created anew.

Then POS3 came out, the devs found out it had even less memory than X360 (it has 256MB for RAM and 256 for graphics, while X360 has 512MB and devs can choose how to allocate it, which is much better) and new engine rewrites had to happen because of it.


Thanks to all this NO SWEARING, the team did not manage in time to finish all features to 100% state, even though they had worked on them a lot for a long time, and therefore they got cut - several whole missions, melee weapons, more complex fight system, public transport...

That was all worked on, but because of the trouble with console development, it got cut due to lack of time.



So there you have it folks, on how consoles destroyed one of the potentionally best games ever (even though it is still ****** great!).
 
Look on the bright side though... erm there isn't a bright side :(

Actually, maybe streamlining was a good thing, I mean it could have potentially been a worse game even though it had the features you mentioned removed, we'll never know I guess.

Interesting post.
 
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