For Vito, the appeal of being a mafioso is that you don't have to go through the same hardships everyone else does-his mob ties help him earn an early discharge from the army, his best pal and fellow up-and-comer gets him out of his cramped old bedroom in his mother's house, and his first bout of honest work is so dull that he walks out after working for less than an hour. Mafia II tells the tale of Vito Scaletta, a young World War II vet who becomes ensconced in the world of organized crime after witnessing the power of a mafia boss while fighting in Italy. It feels grounded despite its more ridiculous elements, and there's something oddly comforting about its familiar mechanics and plot beats.
It's an interesting, propulsive game, one that still feels unique despite leaning extremely hard on the tropes and cliches of mob dramas.
And yet I still like Mafia II quite a bit, and on what is now my third playthrough I find myself unable to pull away from it. The game, which broke records for its prolific use of the word "fuck" back in 2010, can feel immature, and the Definitive Edition's lacklustre remaster (more on that later) is doing it no favours. Mafia II condemns the mafia lifestyle, and the actions of these men, but when women exist in the game largely to throw themselves at men (or as centerfolds in the game's collectable Playboy magazines), it doesn't provide much of a counterpoint to these retrograde perspectives.īy clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's But when (to give just one example out of many) an Asian prisoner assures another one that he would have won the fight had he just "used dragon style," it's harder to give the game the benefit of the doubt. Sometimes it's clear that the characters are being racist or sexist, and that we're not meant to approve. The lines are often blurred in how the game portrays race and gender relations. When your character goes to prison, there are the prerequisite homophobic jokes about the showers. The game's plot contains few women with any real agency, and the script is full of slurs against them, as well as various racist slurs. Mafia II was never the most sensitive game, and in 2020 the "culturally sensitive content" made me squirm more than it might have 10 years ago. And indeed, as I replay the game on my PS4, there are many such parts. In some ways, this feels like an abdication of responsibility for some elements of the game that have aged poorly. The game includes culturally sensitive content and themes, and is intended only for mature audiences." "Mafia II: Definitive Edition presents the game's narrative content in its original form from 2010. Mafia II: Definitive Edition, the new version of the 2010 game available now on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, opens with a message that primed me for a game that might not have held up well.
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