I’ve given up on Mercenaries 2 due primarily to poor controls, and unfortunately I made it halfway through Mafia 2 today. I say unfortunately, because it looks like it’s going to be pretty short.

In terms of the world, the city is very pretty, with lots of distinct buildings and landmarks and a great feel to the atmosphere, but there’s not much reason to explore it beyond what you need for the missions. The handling on the cars takes some getting used to, but that’s fairly understandable for the era of cars involved here.

The plot is pretty basic mob cliches, but I think it does a far better job of taking itself seriously than GTA4 did, as it sticks to a fairly small scope and doesn’t get unrealistically wild and crazy (so far, anyway). Combat has a great feel to it, with enemies running around and stumbling and trying to find their own cover, much like you’d expect in a chaotic battle. Combat has been fairly limited too, happening sparingly rather than non-stop battle from start to end of a chapter. There’s even one chapter that I think didn’t involve a single fight.

The most irritating things so far are that you can get hit by unlucky one-shot kills, forcing you to suddenly and unexpectedly restart at the last checkpoint. The checkpoints are mostly plentiful, but the foundry battle in Chapter 8 was particularly annoying since there’s a massive, long fight and only one mid-battle checkpoint. And what made it extra-annoying was that I had to redo that chapter in order to pick up a couple Playboy magazines that I had missed due to being distracted by the frustration of all the insta-deaths… (I had to redo chapter 4 for the magazines as well, but that one wasn’t nearly as bad.)

I’m still enjoying it a lot, but at this rate I should easily finish it tomorrow.