It’ll no doubt be compared to GTA IV but Mafia II is less free-roaming and a lot more plot driven than Rockstar’s benchmark game. There is in fact no day/night cycle because of this; the game is split into different time periods (so the time of day/seasons and weather does change), and while you have the freedom to do pretty much what you want or go where you want at some point during the game’s 15 chapters it never feels like as much of a sandbox game as GTA IV or Red Dead Redemption, as you don’t get a choice of who to work for or where to go, you just follow the plot and prompt the next set piece.

You play as Vito Scaletta whose story starts in Sicily in 1943; Vito is a paratrooper fighting Mussolini’s Italian army for control of a small town. This intro does two things; it sets the time period nicely and makes you realise that the Mafia II game engine would make a darned good WWII third-person shooter.

Returning home in 1945 Vito is met at the train station by his old buddy Joe Barbaro, and when honest manual labour proves to be a pain in the um…back, Vito goes to work for Joe and the “family.”

The game, unsurprisingly, is extremely violent, but not in an unexpected or gratuitous way, as you get to kill countless hoods, gangsters, cops and no doubt will take out the odd innocent bystander too – even a certain Tommy Angelo becomes one of your victims, and provides a poignant and clever, if brief, connection to the game’s roots for veterans of the original Mafia game.

It’s not all gunplay either; Vito learns to be handy with his fists during a stay in prison and fist fights are violent and dramatic with an easy to use ‘auto block’ mapped to the ‘A’ button. Combos and finishing moves make you feel like a real champ, or a real chump if you get beaten down.

It’s not new to an open world game but the population all seem to have little snippets of dialogue, sometimes they’ll recognise Vito, sometimes not, sometimes be friendly, sometimes not, and you frequently run into people having their own little lives and dramas; the landlady scrubbing the floors and eavesdropping at someone’s door, a woman whose car has broken down and is nagging her poor boyfriend because he can’t fix it (you actually get an achievement for stepping in and getting her car going); car passengers who nag you if you drive too fast, crash too often, or go through red lights. Any store, bar, gas station or diner can be robbed, but you need to keep an eye out for cops and other men wearing long coats over smart suits—they’re probably gangsters too, and if spotted should be treated with respect as they’re likely to pull a gun on you.

The game engine allows for impressive levels of detail, and hopefully without dropping any spoiler bombs I’d like to mention a few of the ‘little touches’ that make Mafia II special for me: the trash cans and mail boxes that are full of trash and letters that fly everywhere when you hit them; hubcaps fly off cars that are driven too hard; a vehicle’s wheels stay angled when Vito gets out of it and don’t ‘snap’ back straight; heavy cars bounce on their suspension and tyres bulge realistically; many shops actually have items in the windows, they aren't simply low-res textures; mirrors are actually mirrors; taps, showers and toilets work; cars can be stolen either by picking the lock or by smashing the window; there’s a realistic amount of automatic gearbox clutch slip on the cars when doing a hill start; car crashes HURT, and can even be fatal; the quality of the motion capture whether it’s in set piece shootouts in missions, or just out wandering the city; the way Vito shies away from ricocheting bullets when he’s in cover mode; during the winter chapters pedestrians slip and slide, and may even fall on their backside in the snowbound city.

It is these kinds of things which add so much to the immersion, things that few other developers bother with when they truly realise the scope of a open-world sandbox game, corners get cut and detail gets lost or left out. Not in Mafia II.

There is something about the period setting and music that gives the game some real class. They’ve cheated a bit and much of the music comes from later than the timespan covered by the game (1943-1951), but a soundtrack featuring (amongst many, many others) The Andrews Sisters, Benny Goodman, Bing Crosby, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Dean Martin, Doris Day, Duane Eddy, Duke Ellington, Eddie Cochran, The Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Peggy Lee, Richie Valens, Rosemary Clooney reads like some sort of Who’s Who of ‘40s and ‘50s music. The car handling and physics make driving a pleasure anyway, but the 3 radio stations always seemed to have one tune or another on that appealed to my ears, so many journey took longer than they needed to. The radio stations aren’t as numerous or irreverently funny as GTA’s but they do regularly feature witty little updates and news items, often including events perpetrated by Vito, Joe and Co.

The character models are rather good, full of character and voice acting is of the highest quality, in stark contrast to some of the other big releases of late. Rick Pasqualone as Vito, Bobby Costanzo as Joe, Dwight Schultz, Brian Bloom and the seemingly ever present Nolan North all do superb jobs. Clearly written by genuinely talented people who love and understand Mafia movies, and as with the original Mafia game, the dialogue is believable and authentic and the story rings true as well; with some “yeah I thought that’d happen” moments and a couple of real twists, even managing a twist on a twist. It’s a shame it’s all over in 10 hours or so, because many stunning locations in Empire Bay don’t get used at all, but maybe they will in the DLC stories that are planned (“Jimmy’s Vendetta” is the first planned.)

Most of the shootouts are tense and exciting affairs, although a certain amount of Vito’s health recharges, he can only take a few hits before dying so you’ll have to use the cover mode properly and won’t be able to wade in all guns blazing Rambo-style—even if toting the gangster’s favourite, a Thompson sub machine gun. You can recharge Vito’s health by buying a burger from a diner or a hotdog from a vendor, a refreshing beverage from a bar or even just by snatching a bottle of cola or a sandwich from your fridge. Some missions will send you back quite a way to the last checkpoint should Vito die, but only very rarely did the game make me whinge and I played it through on the ‘Hard’ difficulty setting.

Other reviews have complained about the game’s lifespan but hang on, let’s be fair, most of Red Dead Redemption was about collecting stuff, and about 90% of Just Cause 2’s lifespan was down to pick-ups and collectibles. Mafia II has a lot of collectibles with 50 Playboy magazines and 159 ‘Wanted’ posters to find – I believe every one of the development team was made into one. Finding the Playboys rewards you with an actual period centrefold to ogle at, and they are usually found inside buildings or at locations only accessed during missions. The Wanted posters are all over the city, down back alleys, on the sides of huts, bridges and in some very unlikely locations, but the hunt for them does encourage exploration.

Vito will obviously attract the attention of the local police force during his career and his wanted level goes up, clearly indicated by 1-4 on-screen stars and various icons. This can be lost by simply losing the cops, by distance or by line of sight. If you’ve been identified and have a wanted poster icon, you’ll have to change clothes or use a phone to sort the problem by other means (but the latter is very expensive.) The game indicates via on-screen icons whether the cops just want to give you a ticket (this can be paid on the spot or you can refuse and resist arrest), or they may want to arrest you (2 stars & a handcuffs icon) or will shoot on sight (3 stars plus a pistol icon) or if you really persist, you get road blocks and 4 stars accompanied by a machine gun icon and extremely aggressive cops toting Tommy guns…

Vehicles can also be identified as yours and can have their own wanted status, but this can be sorted by dropping into one of the many local mechanics. Here you can simply get a car repaired, or change a car’s paintjob and licence plate to lose its wanted level, and even tune it up to make it faster and handle better. You can wash a dirty car or fill up its gas tank at a filling station, but fuel usage seems an underused and almost pointless element, and I never once actually ran a car out of gas during the game.

Mafia II’s story and core gameplay are its strengths, but the story is totally linear and unlike GTA IV never branches, which is perhaps a shame as its replayable chapters would have suited differing outcomes to choices perfectly. I would also have been nice to have a few more side missions or jobs to do, as I said earlier the Empire City environment seems sadly underused. Nevertheless the game oozes quality from every pore and fans of the genre need this in their collection.