Mafia II Catch-All

Pages

Mafia is still one of my favorite games of all time.

Mafia II is now in the works, developed by Illusion Softworks, same developer as the original.

They also did another of my old faves, Hidden & Dangerous, a favorite mostly because of the ability to coop through the entire campaign.

I can't wait. I had such a blast with the original Mafia.

I try not to swear in the forums much but ... f*ck YES.

With Bioshock, and now this...I think I'm having multiple gamegasms.

Both coming from 2KGames, which is interesting.

Yeah 2KGames is on a bit of a roll.

The important thing for me, though, is it is being developed by a development house for which I have loads of respect. The same developers that did the first one, and H&D, both of which are unforgettably great games.

Man I loved driving around the city in Mafia in those classic cars.

This is really fantastic news, the original was damn fun and a great breath of fresh air back when it hit in '02. Hopefully people will buy this one.

Yeah we can hope that since this is coming out on next-gen consoles, it'll sell well enough. Hell, with the driving elements, I might actually prefer the console version of this one.

I remember that one impossible race in the Mafia...arrghh that race drove me batsh*t insane.

Yes! Such a great game. If I played more games than the few I manage to get to, I'd replay the old one.

Yeah I think I'm gonna replay Mafia after Bioshock.

Good call. I gotta' find where I put my copy of that. This will definitely be a day one purchase for me. I had heard a while back though that Mafia 2 was in development a long time ago and there was a lot of internal turmoil on the team and that most of them left. That concerns me cause it may be a new group behind it. But I think Illusion Softworks knows how important doing this right is to their fans.

Handful of screens over at Worthplaying.

I think this one is particularly beautiful.

Mr.Green wrote:

Handful of screens over at Worthplaying.

I think this one is particularly beautiful.

Yes, there's nothing quite as lovely as a 403 Forbidden error.

Yes those are the screens at the official site I linked. Very nice.

I can't wait for this game.

I thought Mafia sold really well? From the comments here, maybe not? Hmm, now that I think about it, it DID take 5 years to start a sequel, which implies it didn't move many copies.

Wonder what triggered the change of heart?

Some spots in that game were stupidly hard (the race, the parking garage fight), but on the whole, it was superb.

Malor wrote:

I thought Mafia sold really well? From the comments here, maybe not? Hmm, now that I think about it, it DID take 5 years to start a sequel, which implies it didn't move many copies.

Wonder what triggered the change of heart?

Some spots in that game were stupidly hard (the race, the parking garage fight), but on the whole, it was superb.

It sold somewhere in the neighbourhood of 3 million units all said and done. It's take so long to announce because it's been in development that long.

Malor wrote:

I thought Mafia sold really well? From the comments here, maybe not? Hmm, now that I think about it, it DID take 5 years to start a sequel, which implies it didn't move many copies.

Wonder what triggered the change of heart?

Some spots in that game were stupidly hard (the race, the parking garage fight), but on the whole, it was superb.

As it has been done by Czech studio (i.e. much cheaper than US games) it would sell phenomenally well even with several hundred thousand games sold. From what I know, it actually went to millions (thousands of copies in Slovakia only, where you usually only sell several hundreds of copies of a single game at best. I am still seeing people in Mafia T-shirt that was sold in the pizza box of the collector's edition). Add to that Hidden & Dangerous and Vietcong and you have a studio with exceptional track record.

Oh yeah, and I'm looking forward to Mafia 2 as well. I chickened out of the race mission by setting it to easiest difficulty, that way it took me only about an hour to pass I have fond memories for the game, which says a lot because I'm not really into the GTA-style games at all. This one had a special charm for me, though. Also, they made English and Czech versions of the game, with the Czech one using much coarser language than English one (I played both). The swearing really added to the atmosphere.

Here comes the trailer. The page is in Czech only, but the trailer is in English. The three links beneath allow you to download the HD version. Enjoy. BTW, the developers say that original Mafia sold 2 million SKUs.

Great news!

That is awesome. I can't think of another game that I have replayed as many times or enjoyed as much as Mafia. Lost Heaven had a really cool feel to it. The game also ended very well, which some games have had a hard time doing lately. Yes, the race was extremely hard, but there was a cheat/shortcut about halfway along the track; useful once you hit the frustration wall.

Here is the HD Gametrailers version. What an excellent, exciting trailer!

Why don't people tell me about these games like Mafia...ah, wait. I hadn't found GWJ yet in 2002.

Nevermind.

Fantastic! Mafia was awesome.

I am so happy to hear that Mafia 2 is coming out I loved Mafia 1 and cannot wait to get Mafia 2, it looks great.

wanderingtaoist wrote:

Oh yeah, and I'm looking forward to Mafia 2 as well. I chickened out of the race mission by setting it to easiest difficulty, that way it took me only about an hour to pass

I actually had to get my brother to finish it. He is much more of a race gamer (me being no race gamer at all) and even he had trouble getting that driving battleship over the finish. Too bad I got stuck with it too long, and soon after that something shiny came along and I never looked back. That's still a shame.

The secret I found to that race mission was in the first turn. There was one racer -- I think he was red -- that was incredibly fast and difficult to beat. Everyone else was easy.

You could win the race on the first turn by clipping the red guy and knocking him off the track; he'd never catch up with you after that. From there it was just a matter of being careful and not crashing yourself.

Malor wrote:

From there it was just a matter of being careful and not crashing yourself.

That's the hardest part for me.

Preview with some interesting information.

Good news: Looks like the writer for the original Mafia is the Team Lead and Writer on this one as well. Excellent. The screenshots look great. Everything I read in the preview sounds great.

I hate to succumb to game preview hype, but man this one is proving difficult not to get all hyped up on.

I am so psyched for this game.

The only bad thing about Mafia was the race. Everything else (even the slow cars) was fine by me. Can't wait!

Certis wrote:

Everything else (even the slow cars) was fine by me.

According to the preview you can speed a bit over the speed limit. There's a bullet point for the box if I've ever seen one. Of course, I also find that lights in buildings will be turning off and on very cool too. And I'm not being sarcastic about that.

Certis wrote:

The only bad thing about Mafia was the race. Everything else (even the slow cars) was fine by me. Can't wait!

IMAGE(http://static.gamesradar.com/images/mb/GamesRadar/us/Games/M/Mafia%202/Everything%20Else/Mafia%201/1869Racing_30s_style--article_image.jpg)

Yeah, that race was just insanely difficult. It didn't help matters that your car would spin out with the slightest provocation.

I also hope that they ease up on the brutal driving restrictions. If you didn't follow the standard driving laws to the letter, you'd get pulled over in an instant (rolling through stop signs, going over the speed limit by 2mph, etc.). When your random car's top speed is like 30mph, it made tooling around the city feel like a crawl. While I did enjoy the fact that it made the world more immersive in that it felt like the AI was really aware of what you were doing, I think they just went overboard with it.

Either way, Mafia 2 is a day one purchase for me. The first one was sublime.

Yeah, it seems that race is the first thing anyone who played the first game mentions.

I remember it being frustrating as well, but I think I must've lucked through it at some point before I got really frustrated.
I DO remember it being stupid difficult, however I don't remember getting seriously exorcised about it.

Pages