Mafia 2's story is great, most characters are well written and the missions are good enough. Difficulty is not that harsh like it was in the previous game, although you can make it tough with the highest difficulty and also with realistic driving and there are still a few missions which can give a bit of a headache. The atmosphere is still very good and feels authentic, thanks to the soundtrack as well. Graphics look great, even though the game is more than 10 years old. Controls are fine, you need to get used to the driving and some of the key bindings but it's alright. However, this game has its own problem on modern systems and most times it can crash a lot or the graphics can glitch. To fix this, you need to use the 4GB patch from [url=https://ntcore.com/4gb-patch/]here , and patch the mafia2.exe at .../steamapps/common/Mafia 2/pc. After that, all of those issues should get fixed (it got for me) and now Mafia 2 uses 4 GB virtual memory instead of 2 GB. But this issue is not really the game's fault, but there are a few things which could have been better in Mafia 2, and one of them is the AI. Overall, the friendly AIs in gun fights are not doing too much or anything, meanwhile the enemies (especially in later chapters) will aimbotting and shoot you on sight, depending what weapon they have they can push you without trying to protect themselves. The police AI is also questionable, because sometimes they don't react to you if you are speeding right in front of them, but sometimes they notice you when you are speeding behind them. Or they can lose you in places where you are open to find or easy to find you but sometimes they can magically see you through walls and also they are ruthless in car chases... they are really inconsistent in general. Then, there were parts in the story which felt overdone, too long and one of them for example is the prison parts. I get it that the story needs to build up Leo and Vito's connection, but this part was just too long without much interesting part for me. There is the checkpoint system, which works fair and square but sometimes checkpoints are too far from each other on certain missions which makes them difficult to complete if you die a lot in them, although this part is more to the challenging aspect rather than a problem for me. Mafia 2 has DLCs as well, which are additional cars and clothing. There are even 3 DLC stories to follow which are standalone from the story mode, which sounds exciting on paper. Betrayal of Jimmy This is basically an open world mode for Mafia 2 with a bunch of missions and to give an "arcade experience for the player", playing with a guy who looks like a budget Mr. Clean, but his name is Jimmy. Jimmy is a gun for hire, and in this DLC he will work for Sal Gravina on the Italian Mafia side and for Tam Brodie who is leading his Irish Brodie gang. Jimmy's job is to help them to eliminate their competition in a total of 24 missions. This DLC has nothing to do with the main story (although some of it's missions are played on key locations from the main story), doesn't contain any character from there neither, which is not big of a deal, but to be fair this one has no real story or characters (Jimmy is deep as a character like a cardboard) to follow and the missions are also gets repetitive and some of them are really difficult, and on top of that the missions has a time limit to complete, and if you miss that you have to restart the whole mission, and some of them are takes a decent time to start it anyway. Not even mentioning that some mission's mechanics are not really working properly, for example missions which include cars with explosives in it and you are supposed to drive them carefully, they are never exploding for any contact... at least they never did in my playtime. Difficulty will come from either you having barely enough time to finish the objectives, or you have to deal with a bunch of enemies and also have to deal with the police continuously. And what is the craziest thing to me is that this DLC is almost as long as the main story mode, this takes 4-5 hours to playthrough, and the story mode is around 5-6 hours which is really crazy to think about. In the end, the DLC tries to connect the dots and gives the illusion for an epilogue on this non existent story, where Jimmy gets set up when he goes for his reward when the police catches him with drug in his reward car, he will be sent to prison but promises to himself to take his revenge on those who set him up, on his former employers. And to explain it further, throughout the whole DLC the player collects points from missions and from the free play part in order to get a good placement in the leaderboards, and that's basically the "arcade experience". Honestly the whole thing is just a big miss, and has the most annoying game elements of Mafia 2. Do not play it. Jimmy's Vendetta It continues what the last DLC started story wise (even though that was not much to begin with), and in this one Jimmy wants to take his revenge on those who wronged him in the past in 28 missions now. This DLC is basically the same as the previous one, except that Jimmy's Vendetta is more forgiving with the difficulty. It still has some quite difficult missions, but most of them are manageable and the time limits are not too bad either. The final mission sets on a new place on the map, so that's a bit of a change and something nice to see, although enemies can occasionally wallbang you here. In the end of the DLC Jimmy deals with the gang leader and head of the Italian family, however Jimmy goes for the Judge as well, who allegedly managed both groups and sent Jimmy to prison. Jimmy kills the Judge as well and that ends the Vendetta. This one is a little bit bearable and takes 4 hours to playthrough, but there is no reason to play this one at all. Joe's Adventure This DLC focuses on Joe and fills the plot holes in the main story starting from Chapter 5, which sounds good for those who are interested more about the game's story. It basically shows how Joe meets with Eddie Scarpa and how he makes connections with his family. The introductory mission is really good and fun, fits perfectly with the Mafia 2 missions from the story mode. It gives high hopes for the player after the two DLC... but other than that, I think this is by far the worst DLC to play. The gameplay and even most missions are the same as in the other DLCs, except that there are occasionally proper story missions, but they are not that well made as the first one was. The reason I really don't like this one is the difficulty, which ramps up massively here. More active and annoying police, really picky mission states, difficult timed missions, aimbotting enemies and missions where you need to know ahead what will happen, otherwise you are done. Getting through the 25 missions that this DLC contains is painful, it took me 5 hours in total. So all in all, the base Mafia 2 game is fun and alright it has some points which could be annoying or could have been done better, but all in all fine. Any other additional content except the clothing and the cars are horrible tho, so only play the base game which I recommend. 30€ with the Definitive Edition sounds a bit expensive, I would go with 20€ max for the two games.
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