WHAT? Mafia 2, the most anticipated game of the year
WHERE? Moscow. Hot as Empire Bay of the 50s
The young veteran of Vito Skallett returns to a vision in the winter of 1945 to the native Italian quarter of New York (formally the city is called Empire-Bay, but it is already clear). The neighboring aunts look enthusiastically at the hero of the war in a touching overcoat and with a suitcase in his hands, a broken floor lamp flying out of the window (followed by an inimitable Italian abuse), an unfamiliar gray cat hisses on the stairs. Behind the door, mother and sister are greeted to tears, and behind, in the car, there is a child’s best friend named Joe, who not only carefully met Vito at the station, but also firmly promised that he would definitely not return to the front.
In childhood, Joe was very lively (because of the early problems with the law and participation in bad companies, mother categorically forbade Vito to be friends with him), and now he demonstrates all the signs of a rapidly rich bandit. A new car, a child’s coat and voice, who always bought everything in childhood. But the most important thing is that Joe knows the right people who will not only help Vito “draw” all the necessary certificates for enrolling in the reserve, but also work money. Moreover, how much money is needed: the deceased father owed dubious types in hats, and promising work by a loader in the port, which shines to the rest of the veterans, is clearly not suitable for these purposes.
In the port
Even in detail opening the tie of one of the chapters Mafia 2 , we do not risk spoiling you at all, and there are exactly two reasons for this. The first-the preview-version of the game contains only four, in no way interconnected by the chapter, and the very beginning in it has not been shown (there is an assumption that the first chapter will be devoted to the events that occurred with Vito in the war). Well, finally, the second reason is that even the largest piece of the plot, torn from context, will not be able to convey the trepidation that any normal person experiences, first stepping on the creaky from the snow, the sidewalk Empire-Bay.
Yes – this is the same Mafia , In which we played eight years ago, despite the wild -wilderness and plot, which is a set of all conceivable stamps of gangster cinema. And not only because the closest competitor in the person Grand Theft Auto 3 Then he was still childishly reveling in the three-dimensionality, naively suggesting that we jump on the springboard and participate in street races, because it is fun. Mafia, strictly speaking, had no competitors at all, and the notorious three-dimensionality was only a technical tool with which it was easiest to immerse the player into the gloomy reality of the 30s of the XX century.
New Mafia – absolutely about the same. Despite the fact that the level of technology here is quite comparable to GTA 4 (read: there are not enough stars from the sky), during the game you deliberately neglect the fussy running and go a step so as not to miss a single randomly overheard conversation or details. There is no TV in the parental apartment of Vito, but there is a cheap radio receiver, a bunch of onions hang in the kitchen, and posters with sports cars are hung in the children's room on the walls of the walls. The cleaning lady in the house of a rustic hang of Joe complains to the loud music from his friend’s apartment, and the apartment itself (“bought the whole situation in just three months” – the owner explains with pleasure) with a mixture of luxury (“without a phone like me you can’t live now!") And cheap chic (carpets and photos of girls from" Playboy ").
The streets of the snowy and therefore even more gray and detached city are filled with the same as Vito, who returned from the war veterans who timidly look at the buleled, varnished limousines belonging to members of the mafia and rich people. Many of these people in the form have yet to return to the ocean – before the end of the war there are several months.
Having learned to hack the locks with the help of the ubiquitous Joe (for this you need to smoothly move the master key and fix each of the pins by pressing the button) and having earned fabulous three hundred dollars on the theft of the car, Vito is more and more inclined to the thought that he had conquered his own. Yes, and the family can now help.
Face with scars
In the next chapter (this chronology concerns, of course, only our preview-version), we find the hero by the owner of our own apartment, phone and hat, who quite successfully embodied the pre-war slogan of the president of Hoover. Vito now also has two cars in each of the two garages and a sandwich with a chicken in the refrigerator. Unlike the first part, where for the entire game it was possible to get drunk on the ship only once, here food and drinks are used for its intended purpose – to restore strength.
One of the reasons for the complexity of the first Mafia was that a strip of health there was one for the entire mission, and the first-aid kits in the 1930s were as rare as television. Now, with small injuries, health is restored automatically, but only to a certain border, which can only be overcome by food, drink and healthy sleep. All this is frighteningly resembles GTA, and it is generally not clear why it is needed here. But, in addition to such optional nonsense, the console civilization gave Mafia normal checkpoints in which it is not scary to die from a random bullet a minute before the end of the task.
Another thing for which we seriously feared in connection with multi -platform is control of cars. The fact is that the author of these lines was at one time one of the few eccentricians who really liked to go through a dentifly complex fifth mission on the racing track. But, fortunately, 2k czech I managed to get out here, hiding the treasured button "Simulation" in the bowels of the menu. After its activation, the rear -wheel drive samovars without ABS, which have not been different in terms of the complexity of management from the same GTA, suddenly begin to go as they want: they “dance” on ice, reluctantly touch the hill and become completely insensitive to the turns of the steering wheel. That is, they behave exactly as in the first part.
But thanks to the new physical engine, it looks a hundred times better: when jumping over borders, rubber crushes to the rim, a torn muffler drags on the ground, and when the car, “slipping” on the winter road, drove into a pillar, its motor stalls at it. But this is not the end-Vito picks up for a few seconds under the hood (not otherwise changing candles), after which Rydwan still comes to life. Once I had to repair a stolen car right under the golden bet casino fire of the police, shooting off from behind the hood: the cops sent out numbers and signs throughout the city, so at the sight of a canary sedan with two bullet holes and blood spots on the door, police opened shooting at the same second.
Fortunately, you don’t need to learn the device of the door lock for each machine – you can hack any lint (only the number of pins and the speed of clicking on the button), open the lock, knocking out the glass, or just selected by knocking the driver on the panel. The animation of this trick is one in one similar to GTA 4, which is puzzling – the Czechs really seriously moved into it or they are so joked? It is difficult not to notice that during a parallel development for PC and consoles, the game has become easier and more friendly, but you do not notice the benefit from this far from immediately.
A few good guys
For example, an evil and all -seeing police on fantastically fast cars from the first part remained in the past – now, if there are figured drills, getting away from a single crew is not a problem. And in order not to glow in the future, it is enough to change the numbers or replace the body. This can be done in car repair shops, where for surcharge you will be installed by pezhon white rims or a carburetor will be adjusted.
Alas, it is impossible to tint the car “in a circle”, as the gangsters of your area love, because in addition to the searched car, the police will also recognize the heroes themselves and the heroes themselves. But if the “tall dark -haired man in a leather jacket and with a scar on the cheek” suddenly turns into a “tall dark -haired man in a coat”, then everything will be in order. Simply put – you can also buy clothes in stores and choose any house before the mission.
The case of checking this falls out quickly enough: the phone is cracking in the hallway, and Vito, hastily dressed, rushes along with Joe for the next task, if both of them were promised to be recommended in the powerful family of Falcone. Rising in the elevator to the warehouse crowded with enemies, Joe ruins the bottle – the guy seems to have problems not only with good taste, but also with alcohol. Five minutes later, having got a German stationary machine gun (this is not the only trophy weapon in the game – there is a war, there are a lot of things by hand), Joe and Vito are shot from the window of the factory of competitors arriving on cars. The whole mission slightly resembles the defense of the pizzeria from the first part, except that the location of enemies no longer needs to be learned by heart, as, however, to spend twenty attempts to pass through.
Vito knows how to run, hide behind shelters and conduct aimed fire, and enemies no longer sit still as chained, try to move and go from the rear. In general, the action led to the standards of 2010, and this is good news. The bad ones are that the complexity is more designated for those who came here from GTA 4: the weapon almost does not give back, and with such a gigantic crossroads, it becomes quite difficult. The times when one salvo from the shotgun slightly threw the hero back, lifting the sight under the ceiling, and it was physically impossible to discharge the Topson clip at one point due to crazy vibration, passed. We hope that the Czechs will add a button for the choice of complexity not only near the physics of cars to the release.
It’s harder to fall
With obvious curts in the direction of the gamepad, play Mafia 2, oddly enough, it turned out to be most convenient for PC. Unlike the monstrous port GTA 4 (again she, but what to do?), who slowed down even after all patches, nothing like this is observed here. Yes, cars appear from the air, perhaps a little close to us, but the rest of the detail is excellent-the snow cap is melting in a heated car, the glass under the bullets crumbles into thousands of fragments, and any small propaganda poster on the wall is perfectly read at a distance.
It is a pity that the gloomy winter in the city quickly ends and the last pair of missions in our version is already under the scorching sun. In the yard, the beginning of the 50s, MR sound from car radio receivers.Sandman and Rock Around the Clock, and the blossoming Empire-Bay becomes like some kind of Vice City. It was from this period of the game that the very first screenshots were made that we printed on these pages in recent years.
The world here still changes only according to the scenario, and within the framework of one mission, the time of day and the weather always remains the same-this feature again passed from the first Mafia. In this part of the game, Vito and Joe are successful mafioso, to which the family trusts the most difficult tasks like eliminating the boss of competitors. We have already analyzed this mission with the laying of a bomb in the hotel according to the results of a trip to the Czech Republic a year ago, since then little has changed there (except for the overhead mustovs of the characters). Unless glass and other garbage taught to fly more effectively with NVIDIA PHYSX, but the charm of Mafia 2, as you know, is not at all in this.
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She is what. Returning from the assignment to the crunch of classic radio (on which the tracks from the first part are twisted), slow down in front of the traffic light, missing the police car. Take a look at the map with one eye, pretending to see a thin red line of the path (which never disappears) and realize that Mafia 2 would be an excellent argument among supporters of fatalism. A game in which a large, beautiful city with a bunch of mise -en -scenes and random characters is not being built, not to force them to go to the bar to the other end, but to make it a decoration for one amazing one, albeit in a pre -calculated life, at any time admires admiration. For us, this life begins on August 24 – do not be late for the first act.