• Mafia II Demo Impressions

    Mafia II Demo Impressions

    Roydon Cerejo, Aug 14, 2010 1000 hrs IST

    One of the most anticipated sequels is here, well almost

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If you reflect on the games that made your jaw drop, something you just couldn't stop raving about, Mafia is most certainly one game that comes to mind.


For its time, it was the best crime/gangster game there was with amazing graphics. Mafia, till date features one of the best stories in a game with the whole immersive experience. The attention to detail coupled with the amazing background score and ambiance of the 1930s is brilliantly pulled off.

Even after finishing the game, you just had to visit the city of Lost Heaven again for another round, that's how good it was.



Apart from Starcraft II, this has got to be the second most anticipated sequel in gaming. Mafia II finally launches on August 27 (24th in the US) and we can't wait to get our hands on the copy. For now though you can download the demo which is available for all three platforms. Today we bring you a small peak into Empire Bay and your protagonist, Vito Scaletta.

For the PC you can download the game through Steam, which is about 1GB. The system we used consisted of an Athlon X2 4400+, 2GB RAM and an HD4830. Mafia II is using a completely new engine built specifically for this game by 2K Czech called the Illusion Engine. The game also seems optimized for Nvidia cards, as it makes use of Apex Physics that doesn't seem to run well on ATI cards.



We set the in game settings to 1366x768 res, everything Medium, Apex Physics - Off, AA - Off. Despite this, the game crawled badly. This seems to be mostly due to the new physics system in the engine that doesn't seem to play well with ATI cards at the moment. We do hope 2K games fix this problem in time or else the entire experience will be ruined.

There is a work around for this if you search a bit, but honestly it's not worth the effort given the game play in the demo is hardly 10 minutes. I will say this though, during our slow motion tour of Mafia II, you just couldn't help but notice how amazing it looked. The attention to detail is really good, especially the interiors.


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Discussion Board
(2) Comments
guna
,hyderabad, on Aug 26, 2010 06:56 PM
incredable
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ggjkliing
,Christchurch, on Aug 15, 2010 04:36 AM
Oh are you serious? The demo had so many things wrong with it! The controls were awkward, the camera angles at times were messed up, there were heaps of the same pedestrians walking around, the cover system was kinda poorly done, when you shot at people they wudnt react to where they were shot except if it was a headshot, if u shoot people on the ground the bullets went right through their body, theres no jump button, u cant swim or dive out of cars, people dont react to u if u aim your gun at them in the street, it just was not good enough especially since the game has been in development for sooo long! But there were some good things like the graphics, the music, the ability to bribe the police oreven use phones to bribe police, robbing stores and the cars of course. I just hope they fix it up or this game will just be a let down...
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