Mafia Madness Mangling Modern Myths
So we have Mafia II in the house now for Xbox 360, and I played the crap out of it, clearing its normal difficulty in about five hours.
Sometimes I watch shitty movies all the way through because they look good and I keep hoping they will become a better movie. Sometimes this pays off - I watched the unbelievably boring first act of Garden State and it turned out, the hero stops being a houseplant about halfway through and the movie becomes very weird and very entertaining. I had a glimmer of hope that the mind-numbing boredom was an actual deliberate attempt numbing my brain, and it turned out to be so. I watched Legion in hopes it would get better, and as it turns out, I have an unfinished movie review of it (Spoiler: I did not like it at all.) that I hate the movie too much (see?) to finish. This coming from the guy who reviewed Gymkata and Revenge of the Ninja and Zardoz without being paid to do so.
Mafia II can bite my crank. It's not so much an insanely frustrating game - although it does resemble such - as it is a Why You Do Not Join The Mafia Simulator.
The Godfather is a classic movie that is about a war veteran who comes home and through personal tragedy and loss, inherits the one thing he did not want - to be head of a criminal family. It is a story about vendetta, loyalty and most of all, that being in the Mafia sucks.
Mafia II is a video game that is about what a pathetic loser you are.
Our hero is Vito, a Sicilian-born American whose family immigrated to Empire Bay, a city that is a hybrid of New York City, Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco. Our story opens in 1945, with Vito desperately fighting in World War II. He is a paratrooper, and in the Army because the other option was prison. The few survivors of his unit storm a building in order to rescue the local revolutionaries, and in the end, he is saved because a "man of honor" - that's what they call mob bosses in "the Old Country" - basically tells the soldiers to surrender because the war will be over for Italy soon. This could actually happen; a don wielded immense power and respect amongst his people.
Vito comes home a decorated war hero (Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart) and meets up with his childhood friend, a bumbling fat ass dipshit named Joe. Joe exists primarily to get Vito in trouble, and Vito despite being intelligent, extremely dangerous and charismatic tends to go along with the dumbass plans of his bosom companion. You get used to "Joe Plans" early on.
Vito expresses concern he is going back to the front in a month once his leave expires, and Joe makes a phone call, arranging through his Mafia contacts to get Vito a honorable discharge from the Army. This begins your induction into a world where you get on your knees and smile pretty for Daddy, also called "the Mafia."
Some video games glamorize the world of the criminal element, or at least give it a romantic air. Yes, California gangbangers are fucking scum, cowards and useless wastes of carbon who kill innocent people in pointless power squabbles that accomplish nothing. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas manages to show the painful side of their vendettas while giving an air of romanticism to their codes of loyalty to one another; CJ enters the criminal world to avenge his mother and protect his neighborhood from crime, corrupt police and drugs - and make a profit along the way. It is a story of manipulation, power, respect and violence. GTA:SA is a good game that makes you forget that you are the fetch-and-carry boy for every asshole in the city with a thousand bucks and blackmail leverage on your ass.
In essence, Mafia II is a story that Does Not Glorify the Mob. Nothing good comes of your deeds, nothing worthwhile is built on blood, avarice and desperation. Vito wants more than anything to Not Be His Father, a broken-willed alcoholic who fell off a dock and drowned leaving his widow to pay off his debts. (You find out later he was murdered. You do avenge him at least.) Vito can't make the money he needs to pay off the two grand his father owes to a vicious loan shark (who isn't identified until halfway to the end at least) doing menial labor for the same crooked union boss who bled his dad for all he's worth, so he accepts Joe's offer to do work for the mob. His boss offers to make him a Made Man if he brings him five grand, and in the meantime gives him small time work. His first major mission is breaking into a government building to steal gas stamps so they can resell them.
Here we are introduced to Mafia II's stealth missions, and fuck them. Vito is a lot of things - a brutally effective brawler, a marksman, and a decent driver. He is not Solid Snake. He is not Gabe Logan. He is not Sam Fisher. He is not the Goddamn Batman. The stealth sequences are tedious, overlong and extremely pointless, as most end in a gunfight or desperately fleeing for the hills. This also introduces you to And Now The Mob Fucks You, a sequence that occurs basically every five minutes in this game. In the Godfather video game, it takes forever to make money; things cost insanely overblown amounts (TWO GRAND FOR A FUCKING SUIT? IT'S NINETEEN FUCKING FORTY, YOU MORON! TWO GRAND WOULD BUY YOU A HOUSE!) and for much of the game, the Mob takes most of your cash. Sure, a working stiff in the '40s couldn't pull down a thousand bucks a week, but the working stiff didn't pay 80% of his earnings to the government before he saw a dime, either. However, eventually, you start to earn money and respect, the things that matter in the Mafia world. You own property, your skills can be improved, you are given rank and authority by the Corleone Family.
Your contact in the mob who isn't Joe, Henry, tells you that if you kill anyone, you get a third of the take. So you have to avoid using your stealth kill ability (one of the few times you have any use for it) while playing Dodgedick with the security guards. Super. Eventually you acquire the keys, break into a locker, and access the safe where the stamps are kept. This sets off an alarm, and the Empire Bay Police Department, the Big Blue Dick That Will Be Fucking Up Your Life, shows up in force within seconds. They couldn't show up faster if you were robbing the goddamn police station. You go from avoiding four or five guards to an entire army that wants to murder you. They yell SURRENDER! and then open fire. You finally drag your ass out of the joint and back to Henry, who tells you that he ALREADY KNOWS ABOUT THE GUNFIRE and that he's taking a third of your cut as a penalty. 1) He said I would only get a third if I killed anybody. No one died. 2) He said I would only get a third if I KILLED SOMEONE, not that he would steal a third of my fucking money if someone happened to discharge a .45 in the same city as me. If I knew the cocksucker was going to shive me anyway, I would have snapped every neck in that damn building. So you get ripped off, right? Not merely. The stamps also expire at midnight, so now you have to drive around town desperately trying to sell the stamps to gas stations before midnight, and it's 11.55p, asshole. At 12a exactly, the stamps are worthless. You sell them for 35 bucks a pop. In other words, I think I made about $280 tax-free on this fucking mission, and not the thousands I was promised. This is not a fluke. This is the name of the game in Mafia II. Also, I think I spent about that much on fixing my favorite car. Ffffffff-
You finally get picked to whack some Fat Guy on behalf of the mob, and after a pretty gripping gunbattle (this is the demo level) you pay off your daddy's loan... and then get arrested. For selling gas stamps. One of the little fucking weasels snitched and the cops leaned on your Moms.
You get ten years in the stir for it. Super.
In prison, you spend some time learning more about hand-to-hand combat from Leo, an old mobster who also tells you that no one PAYS to get into the mob (which I knew, but wondered if the game knew) and that bad shit will happen to your old boss. Fuck 'em anyway. You become a sort of pit fighter for about six years in prison and even have a brutal fist fight with rapists in the shower (Vito was not joking when he said that they picked the wrong cheeks to pinch) and stab an insane Irish crook in the neck with a shiv. Nice!
You get released and start working for the Falcone Family, one of the three mob family. This was back in the 40s-50s, when no one knew shit about the Mafia, so Vito did not know about the Commission or that there were more than one family of mobsters.
Your first objective is to get Made, and you go to great lengths to accomplish this goal. Along the way, you kill, steal, commit arson and brawl to accomplish your goal. When the Mafia isn't taking most of your money for "fucking up" (No, it's not because I suck at this game. I'm actually good at it. This is just how the script rewards you for playing.) or nearly getting you murdered or arrested, they are telling you what a good little cabana boy you are.
Finally you get Made, and then get to watch a bad ass little cinema of Joe and Vito kickin' ass and takin' names, high ranked soldiers in the Falcone Family.
You get a house, cars, nice clothes, and a lot of cash. A whole lot of cash. Your sister finally reappears in the script, and you go rough up her deadbeat abusive husband, which she thanks you for by screaming over the phone that she never wants to see you again. You never do. But you're becoming a big man in the underworld, right? You have been loyal, you have been violent, you have been a fucking bad ass.
So the game rewards you by...
Burning down your house, of course! In the flames go your money, your clothes, and your guns. You are left to flee into the night in your underwear, broke and unarmed. You spend the rest of the game staying in the run down piece of shit dirty ass apartment of a dead kid who got killed because he tagged along with you on a job.
Despite being the most dangerous and capable man in the city, capable of slaughtering any mob hitman or enforcer sent after you, you never climb anywhere near the top of the heap. You were born a shitheel nobody, and you will most likely die as such, and your friends will all die and it will be your fault. It doesn't just Not Glorify the mob. It basically demonstrates that there is no fucking difference between killing yourself at menial labor and joining the Mafia - except that working on the docks and giving all your money to crooked union bosses might not require you to kill your friends or wade through human feces, and you probably won't get your house burned down by random fucking Irish crooks.
Your old pal Henry convinces you to let him change loyalties to the Falcone Family and then talks you into going into a high risk venture, selling heroin. This is against the Rules, but you figure you can somehow get away with it. Even if your crooked ass drug-dealing shit head boss finds out (yes, you picked the wrong family. You ended up Not Being A Corleone, joy) he'll just want a cut. So you borrow $35,000 bucks from a loanshark (yes, the same one that your dad used, while the game screams over and over YOU ARE YOUR WORTHLESS FATHER, BITCH) and the idea is, you give him 45k, and make 20 large a piece. Sadly, he demands 60k in return instead of 45, which means that I am not going to make the 20 grand I was promised (surprise, surprise) yet I go along. You take the 35k to the Tongs, and the Chinamen give you heroin to sell.
You nearly get killed by... Actually, they never say who the fuck was trying to kill you. Some mob family I guess... and then make your money in another bad ass crime movie cinematic. Sadly, before you can pay off Bruno, your old pal Henry calls you to say that Falcone took 60 thousand as his fucking cut. So you have Nothing. OH NO, I SUCK AGAIN! So now you need to come with 60 thousand bananas to pay that douche Bruno off.
Then the Tongs hack your old pal Henry to death in a public park in front of you. With meat cleavers. While he screams for help and you are unable to save him. Thanks, game! Oh, and they take what money he had on him. Cool!
Joe and Vito storm a Tong restaurant and after a huge and messy firefight, another completely unnecessary stealth section and executing a Tong boss, you discover that Henry was a rat. I mean he was an informant, dig? Cool! I'm boned!
So. You have lost all your worldly possessions. You have lost all your money. You cannot pay your bills. You live in a dead kid's apartment. You have started a Mafia-Tong War. Your friend was brutally murdered and you may have vouched for a rat to get him into your Mafia family. You are basically fucked. So this is the part of the story where Our Disgraced Antihero fights his way back, right?
Wrong.
This is the part where your friend is kidnapped and you desperately fight your way out of an army of Mafia hitters to save him. This is the part where your friend Leo, your only other friend in the Mafia, the mentor who made you what you are, whose life you saved even though it nearly cost you everything, shows up and tells you that you are A Very Hard Shit He Once Had When He Was Bound Up. He chew you out, tells you that you are an idiot and an asshole, and then tells you that you must redeem yourself by killing Falcone who has been dealing in drugs and breaking the rules.
Nnngh.
Thirty-eight dollars in my pocket (all I had left after a long, hard, and tedious battle to get the cash for Bruno) and with a chip the size of Rhode Island on my shoulder, wearing the same beat up old leather jacket and jeans that were all I had to were when I got out of prison, I set out in the pissing rain to settle the score. I do it like a fucking hard ass, mowing down dozens of hitmen with my Tommygun and .357 Magnum, pouring rain and lightning flashes competing with the thunder and flash of automatic gunfire. Finally I corner my old boss, only for my friend Joe - my life-long buddy, criminal goon in arms and Nigh Unto Brother - to appear putting a fucking .357 to my dome. Falcone has made him a deal. Pull the trigger and you're a capo, a captain of the Mafia family.
Vito and Joe make a choice: brothers before assholes. Cue heroic bloodshed style buddy battle against overwhelming odds. Vito viciously shoots his boss to death, claiming it's the first time he's killed for himself - not for the mob, not for the Army, not for his father, but for himself.
Then they walk out to find Leo and a small army of Mafia outside. Vito assures his buddy that it's okay, he's fixed it this time. Then they are put in separate cars to go celebrate.
Vito demands to know what is going on, and Leo stonily replies "Joe wasn't part of the deal." The car with your buddy drives away from you, likely to take him to his death (for whatever reason) and you are left Leo's fucking cabana boy.
You have accomplished nothing. You have achieved nothing. You are nothing.
Fuck this game.
Beating me up with a brutal story is one thing, but don't make me beat your game in 5 hours - which is goddamn short for a game this style - while giving me no options and punishing me for constantly following your stupid goddamn fucking plot. Don't make me a tragic flawed character and give me no chance for even a dark redemption as a powerful underworld figure.
Also, 2K: STOP MAKING REFERENCES TO "WOULD YOU KINDLY." STOP SMUGLY REMINDING ME THAT I HAVE NO FUCKING FREE WILL IN VIDEO GAMES.
Mafia II is like being the second biggest bully in elementary school. Somehow, even though you are insanely deadly, even though you are in a car with a man who thanks you for saving his life by coolly condemning the closest thing you have to family left, even though you are literally sitting next to the fucker who had your old pal Henry hacked to fucking death with meat cleavers, you get no option to fast draw your concealed .38 and pump three shots into each of them.
You beat up other little kids with foul mouths and take their money. Hopefully the recess monitor doesn't see your ass and stiff arm you into the pavement. Then a bigger bully takes your money. Only you never get smarter and keep doing it.
And the older kids you look to for advice just tell you what a fucking idiot you are and how useless you are.
Ugh. Mafia II is like a deflated Godfather: The Game. It's prettier, better voice acted and has a better combat system - if one that is completely and utterly unforgiving. The cars control like they are made of solid lead, equipped with wheels made of hot Teflon on a world made of ice and powered with either rocket boosters or hamster wheels. The cover system results in combats that play out like Whack-A-Mole With Tommyguns. And the only other thing than gun names that were licenses was Playboy magazine. Your big collectibles for the game are your own wanted posters - no idea where you find 'em - and images of Playboy calender girls from 1945-1951.
Whoopty fucking do.
Forget You Ever Saw Me,
"I don't know why I go along with your plans. I swear you're half-retarded, Joe."
Sometimes I watch shitty movies all the way through because they look good and I keep hoping they will become a better movie. Sometimes this pays off - I watched the unbelievably boring first act of Garden State and it turned out, the hero stops being a houseplant about halfway through and the movie becomes very weird and very entertaining. I had a glimmer of hope that the mind-numbing boredom was an actual deliberate attempt numbing my brain, and it turned out to be so. I watched Legion in hopes it would get better, and as it turns out, I have an unfinished movie review of it (Spoiler: I did not like it at all.) that I hate the movie too much (see?) to finish. This coming from the guy who reviewed Gymkata and Revenge of the Ninja and Zardoz without being paid to do so.
Mafia II can bite my crank. It's not so much an insanely frustrating game - although it does resemble such - as it is a Why You Do Not Join The Mafia Simulator.
The Godfather is a classic movie that is about a war veteran who comes home and through personal tragedy and loss, inherits the one thing he did not want - to be head of a criminal family. It is a story about vendetta, loyalty and most of all, that being in the Mafia sucks.
Mafia II is a video game that is about what a pathetic loser you are.
Our hero is Vito, a Sicilian-born American whose family immigrated to Empire Bay, a city that is a hybrid of New York City, Chicago, Detroit and San Francisco. Our story opens in 1945, with Vito desperately fighting in World War II. He is a paratrooper, and in the Army because the other option was prison. The few survivors of his unit storm a building in order to rescue the local revolutionaries, and in the end, he is saved because a "man of honor" - that's what they call mob bosses in "the Old Country" - basically tells the soldiers to surrender because the war will be over for Italy soon. This could actually happen; a don wielded immense power and respect amongst his people.
Vito comes home a decorated war hero (Distinguished Service Cross and Purple Heart) and meets up with his childhood friend, a bumbling fat ass dipshit named Joe. Joe exists primarily to get Vito in trouble, and Vito despite being intelligent, extremely dangerous and charismatic tends to go along with the dumbass plans of his bosom companion. You get used to "Joe Plans" early on.
Vito expresses concern he is going back to the front in a month once his leave expires, and Joe makes a phone call, arranging through his Mafia contacts to get Vito a honorable discharge from the Army. This begins your induction into a world where you get on your knees and smile pretty for Daddy, also called "the Mafia."
Some video games glamorize the world of the criminal element, or at least give it a romantic air. Yes, California gangbangers are fucking scum, cowards and useless wastes of carbon who kill innocent people in pointless power squabbles that accomplish nothing. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas manages to show the painful side of their vendettas while giving an air of romanticism to their codes of loyalty to one another; CJ enters the criminal world to avenge his mother and protect his neighborhood from crime, corrupt police and drugs - and make a profit along the way. It is a story of manipulation, power, respect and violence. GTA:SA is a good game that makes you forget that you are the fetch-and-carry boy for every asshole in the city with a thousand bucks and blackmail leverage on your ass.
In essence, Mafia II is a story that Does Not Glorify the Mob. Nothing good comes of your deeds, nothing worthwhile is built on blood, avarice and desperation. Vito wants more than anything to Not Be His Father, a broken-willed alcoholic who fell off a dock and drowned leaving his widow to pay off his debts. (You find out later he was murdered. You do avenge him at least.) Vito can't make the money he needs to pay off the two grand his father owes to a vicious loan shark (who isn't identified until halfway to the end at least) doing menial labor for the same crooked union boss who bled his dad for all he's worth, so he accepts Joe's offer to do work for the mob. His boss offers to make him a Made Man if he brings him five grand, and in the meantime gives him small time work. His first major mission is breaking into a government building to steal gas stamps so they can resell them.
Here we are introduced to Mafia II's stealth missions, and fuck them. Vito is a lot of things - a brutally effective brawler, a marksman, and a decent driver. He is not Solid Snake. He is not Gabe Logan. He is not Sam Fisher. He is not the Goddamn Batman. The stealth sequences are tedious, overlong and extremely pointless, as most end in a gunfight or desperately fleeing for the hills. This also introduces you to And Now The Mob Fucks You, a sequence that occurs basically every five minutes in this game. In the Godfather video game, it takes forever to make money; things cost insanely overblown amounts (TWO GRAND FOR A FUCKING SUIT? IT'S NINETEEN FUCKING FORTY, YOU MORON! TWO GRAND WOULD BUY YOU A HOUSE!) and for much of the game, the Mob takes most of your cash. Sure, a working stiff in the '40s couldn't pull down a thousand bucks a week, but the working stiff didn't pay 80% of his earnings to the government before he saw a dime, either. However, eventually, you start to earn money and respect, the things that matter in the Mafia world. You own property, your skills can be improved, you are given rank and authority by the Corleone Family.
Your contact in the mob who isn't Joe, Henry, tells you that if you kill anyone, you get a third of the take. So you have to avoid using your stealth kill ability (one of the few times you have any use for it) while playing Dodgedick with the security guards. Super. Eventually you acquire the keys, break into a locker, and access the safe where the stamps are kept. This sets off an alarm, and the Empire Bay Police Department, the Big Blue Dick That Will Be Fucking Up Your Life, shows up in force within seconds. They couldn't show up faster if you were robbing the goddamn police station. You go from avoiding four or five guards to an entire army that wants to murder you. They yell SURRENDER! and then open fire. You finally drag your ass out of the joint and back to Henry, who tells you that he ALREADY KNOWS ABOUT THE GUNFIRE and that he's taking a third of your cut as a penalty. 1) He said I would only get a third if I killed anybody. No one died. 2) He said I would only get a third if I KILLED SOMEONE, not that he would steal a third of my fucking money if someone happened to discharge a .45 in the same city as me. If I knew the cocksucker was going to shive me anyway, I would have snapped every neck in that damn building. So you get ripped off, right? Not merely. The stamps also expire at midnight, so now you have to drive around town desperately trying to sell the stamps to gas stations before midnight, and it's 11.55p, asshole. At 12a exactly, the stamps are worthless. You sell them for 35 bucks a pop. In other words, I think I made about $280 tax-free on this fucking mission, and not the thousands I was promised. This is not a fluke. This is the name of the game in Mafia II. Also, I think I spent about that much on fixing my favorite car. Ffffffff-
You finally get picked to whack some Fat Guy on behalf of the mob, and after a pretty gripping gunbattle (this is the demo level) you pay off your daddy's loan... and then get arrested. For selling gas stamps. One of the little fucking weasels snitched and the cops leaned on your Moms.
You get ten years in the stir for it. Super.
In prison, you spend some time learning more about hand-to-hand combat from Leo, an old mobster who also tells you that no one PAYS to get into the mob (which I knew, but wondered if the game knew) and that bad shit will happen to your old boss. Fuck 'em anyway. You become a sort of pit fighter for about six years in prison and even have a brutal fist fight with rapists in the shower (Vito was not joking when he said that they picked the wrong cheeks to pinch) and stab an insane Irish crook in the neck with a shiv. Nice!
You get released and start working for the Falcone Family, one of the three mob family. This was back in the 40s-50s, when no one knew shit about the Mafia, so Vito did not know about the Commission or that there were more than one family of mobsters.
Your first objective is to get Made, and you go to great lengths to accomplish this goal. Along the way, you kill, steal, commit arson and brawl to accomplish your goal. When the Mafia isn't taking most of your money for "fucking up" (No, it's not because I suck at this game. I'm actually good at it. This is just how the script rewards you for playing.) or nearly getting you murdered or arrested, they are telling you what a good little cabana boy you are.
Finally you get Made, and then get to watch a bad ass little cinema of Joe and Vito kickin' ass and takin' names, high ranked soldiers in the Falcone Family.
You get a house, cars, nice clothes, and a lot of cash. A whole lot of cash. Your sister finally reappears in the script, and you go rough up her deadbeat abusive husband, which she thanks you for by screaming over the phone that she never wants to see you again. You never do. But you're becoming a big man in the underworld, right? You have been loyal, you have been violent, you have been a fucking bad ass.
So the game rewards you by...
Burning down your house, of course! In the flames go your money, your clothes, and your guns. You are left to flee into the night in your underwear, broke and unarmed. You spend the rest of the game staying in the run down piece of shit dirty ass apartment of a dead kid who got killed because he tagged along with you on a job.
Despite being the most dangerous and capable man in the city, capable of slaughtering any mob hitman or enforcer sent after you, you never climb anywhere near the top of the heap. You were born a shitheel nobody, and you will most likely die as such, and your friends will all die and it will be your fault. It doesn't just Not Glorify the mob. It basically demonstrates that there is no fucking difference between killing yourself at menial labor and joining the Mafia - except that working on the docks and giving all your money to crooked union bosses might not require you to kill your friends or wade through human feces, and you probably won't get your house burned down by random fucking Irish crooks.
Your old pal Henry convinces you to let him change loyalties to the Falcone Family and then talks you into going into a high risk venture, selling heroin. This is against the Rules, but you figure you can somehow get away with it. Even if your crooked ass drug-dealing shit head boss finds out (yes, you picked the wrong family. You ended up Not Being A Corleone, joy) he'll just want a cut. So you borrow $35,000 bucks from a loanshark (yes, the same one that your dad used, while the game screams over and over YOU ARE YOUR WORTHLESS FATHER, BITCH) and the idea is, you give him 45k, and make 20 large a piece. Sadly, he demands 60k in return instead of 45, which means that I am not going to make the 20 grand I was promised (surprise, surprise) yet I go along. You take the 35k to the Tongs, and the Chinamen give you heroin to sell.
You nearly get killed by... Actually, they never say who the fuck was trying to kill you. Some mob family I guess... and then make your money in another bad ass crime movie cinematic. Sadly, before you can pay off Bruno, your old pal Henry calls you to say that Falcone took 60 thousand as his fucking cut. So you have Nothing. OH NO, I SUCK AGAIN! So now you need to come with 60 thousand bananas to pay that douche Bruno off.
Then the Tongs hack your old pal Henry to death in a public park in front of you. With meat cleavers. While he screams for help and you are unable to save him. Thanks, game! Oh, and they take what money he had on him. Cool!
Joe and Vito storm a Tong restaurant and after a huge and messy firefight, another completely unnecessary stealth section and executing a Tong boss, you discover that Henry was a rat. I mean he was an informant, dig? Cool! I'm boned!
So. You have lost all your worldly possessions. You have lost all your money. You cannot pay your bills. You live in a dead kid's apartment. You have started a Mafia-Tong War. Your friend was brutally murdered and you may have vouched for a rat to get him into your Mafia family. You are basically fucked. So this is the part of the story where Our Disgraced Antihero fights his way back, right?
Wrong.
This is the part where your friend is kidnapped and you desperately fight your way out of an army of Mafia hitters to save him. This is the part where your friend Leo, your only other friend in the Mafia, the mentor who made you what you are, whose life you saved even though it nearly cost you everything, shows up and tells you that you are A Very Hard Shit He Once Had When He Was Bound Up. He chew you out, tells you that you are an idiot and an asshole, and then tells you that you must redeem yourself by killing Falcone who has been dealing in drugs and breaking the rules.
Nnngh.
Thirty-eight dollars in my pocket (all I had left after a long, hard, and tedious battle to get the cash for Bruno) and with a chip the size of Rhode Island on my shoulder, wearing the same beat up old leather jacket and jeans that were all I had to were when I got out of prison, I set out in the pissing rain to settle the score. I do it like a fucking hard ass, mowing down dozens of hitmen with my Tommygun and .357 Magnum, pouring rain and lightning flashes competing with the thunder and flash of automatic gunfire. Finally I corner my old boss, only for my friend Joe - my life-long buddy, criminal goon in arms and Nigh Unto Brother - to appear putting a fucking .357 to my dome. Falcone has made him a deal. Pull the trigger and you're a capo, a captain of the Mafia family.
Vito and Joe make a choice: brothers before assholes. Cue heroic bloodshed style buddy battle against overwhelming odds. Vito viciously shoots his boss to death, claiming it's the first time he's killed for himself - not for the mob, not for the Army, not for his father, but for himself.
Then they walk out to find Leo and a small army of Mafia outside. Vito assures his buddy that it's okay, he's fixed it this time. Then they are put in separate cars to go celebrate.
Vito demands to know what is going on, and Leo stonily replies "Joe wasn't part of the deal." The car with your buddy drives away from you, likely to take him to his death (for whatever reason) and you are left Leo's fucking cabana boy.
You have accomplished nothing. You have achieved nothing. You are nothing.
Fuck this game.
Beating me up with a brutal story is one thing, but don't make me beat your game in 5 hours - which is goddamn short for a game this style - while giving me no options and punishing me for constantly following your stupid goddamn fucking plot. Don't make me a tragic flawed character and give me no chance for even a dark redemption as a powerful underworld figure.
Also, 2K: STOP MAKING REFERENCES TO "WOULD YOU KINDLY." STOP SMUGLY REMINDING ME THAT I HAVE NO FUCKING FREE WILL IN VIDEO GAMES.
Mafia II is like being the second biggest bully in elementary school. Somehow, even though you are insanely deadly, even though you are in a car with a man who thanks you for saving his life by coolly condemning the closest thing you have to family left, even though you are literally sitting next to the fucker who had your old pal Henry hacked to fucking death with meat cleavers, you get no option to fast draw your concealed .38 and pump three shots into each of them.
You beat up other little kids with foul mouths and take their money. Hopefully the recess monitor doesn't see your ass and stiff arm you into the pavement. Then a bigger bully takes your money. Only you never get smarter and keep doing it.
And the older kids you look to for advice just tell you what a fucking idiot you are and how useless you are.
Ugh. Mafia II is like a deflated Godfather: The Game. It's prettier, better voice acted and has a better combat system - if one that is completely and utterly unforgiving. The cars control like they are made of solid lead, equipped with wheels made of hot Teflon on a world made of ice and powered with either rocket boosters or hamster wheels. The cover system results in combats that play out like Whack-A-Mole With Tommyguns. And the only other thing than gun names that were licenses was Playboy magazine. Your big collectibles for the game are your own wanted posters - no idea where you find 'em - and images of Playboy calender girls from 1945-1951.
Whoopty fucking do.
Forget You Ever Saw Me,
"I don't know why I go along with your plans. I swear you're half-retarded, Joe."