Here is 2K Games' third attempt to convince us that replacing cutscenes with loading screen text, offering up the same batch of templatized missions and calling all of it “arcade-style” is some sort of experience that is either fun or consistent with what the first game delivered. It isn't. It's a cop-out.But doesn't this in fact add to the Mafia II canon? Barely. I was under the impression Joe's Adventures would reveal more about why Vito was sent to the replica Cartier Tank Americaine watch big house. There's some indication he took the fall for the Clementes, but this is all about Joe, Joe and Joe, underlined by the fact he's working with a minor character from the main game, Tony Balls. Henry Tomasino, the best character of the original game, is wasted in a cameo at the beginning and never heard from again.
Still, it's got like 24 missions.
That sounds like good value for $10. Fair point. Looking back I think I logged about 7 or 8 hours in this. But the missions are in many cases trivially easy and in others, bewildering as to what the designer intended for you to do. The best example was “Smuggler's Luck,” an early mission in which you're tasked with commandeering a van loaded with replica Cartier Declaration gold Ladie's watch stolen goods. The van has two gunmen aboard and an escort with the same firepower, all of it automatic weapons. Car combat in Mafia II is impossible - you can't shoot from your vehicle. Trying to run this thing off the road got me shot to death every time. Tailing it to a hideout wasn't the objective, it just drove forever.
I finally just parked an obstacle (a big truck) across its known driving path, got out and machine-gunned everyone while the escort car stupidly waited behind. (I then grenaded it for laughs.) Another mission, I'm advised by my NPC partner to infiltrate a train yard quietly. The game then tells me to equip a grenade. I just said the hell with Designers Replica Cartier Mens W69013Z2 watches and started shooting, suffering no consequences for that choice. A later mission, selling firearms to gun stores, puts you in an unwieldy boat of a pickup truck and sics a car full of machine gun-toting goons on you. Trying to lose it in a chase, what one would think was the purpose of such a mission, was impossible. The answer is to get out immediately and gun it down on foot. The mission design is just careless to the point of seeming spiteful.
