My expectation going in was something L.A. Noire-ish, and that was more or less what I got. Given that LA Noire is a very similarly themed game in the not so populated genre of Americana-sandbox (specifically in the 50's in this case), and both games came out around the same time (9 or so months apart), this "review" will contain a lot of comparisons to it. I really like period games though, and this was a great one, so I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Gameplay-wise, where LA Noire is Phoenix Wright meets GTA/sandbox, Mafia II is cover-shooter meets GTA/sandbox. Personally, I prefer the Ace Attorney style of LA Noire, Mafia II takes itself as much more of an action game, and does it fairly well. There's a wide variety of guns which sound very good. Enemies aren't terribly smart by themselves, but where they spawn usually incorporates the level design in some way to make the best of their limited intelligence. You have a health bar that regens, but it regens kinda like in Wolfenstein: The New Order where the more you get hurt at one time, the less max health you'll be able to regen before healing again. On the topic of health regen speed, it differs a fair bit between difficulties.
I played through the story through on hard, then mucked around a ton on normal and easy to mop up collectibles and achievements, and the difference between difficulties is noticeable. Your health appears to regen much faster on lower difficulties, but I'm not 100% certain (sometimes it was very fast, other times fairly slow), but the biggest difference is how hard enemies hit. Enemies have exactly the same amount of health on every difficulty, but you just take WAY more damage on higher difficulties. You aren't invincible on easy mode, but after playing through the game on hard, I certainly felt like it. You can get wiped away REALLY quick by an unfortunate Tommy gun blast on hard mode, and the checkpoints are fairly unforgiving in the later chapters (especially the last one). Hard tends to be a fair challenge, even for someone who sucks at twin-stick shooting like me. Occasionally it runs into problems with the game design though.
There are certain sections where you're being fired upon by another vehicle's occupants. You're ALWAYS driving more or less, and this ain't Saints Row: You can't fire a gun while you drive a car, not even a pistol. Sometimes you're forced to drive on narrow stretches for a few seconds after the respawn point, and on hard mode it's just a gamble on whether you'll make it to the street alive. It's a total roll of the dice on whether the AI will get lucky and completely wreck your health bar before you can even try to take evasive action, and these cars are from the 50's, so they usually aren't terribly agile to begin with. Driving sections like this just clearly don't feel balanced for hard mode (ones I'm thinking of are in chapters 13 and 14, if I remember correctly). There's also one specific driving challenge that cuts the time REALLY close on hard mode. Considering that challenge requires on walking out of your building and getting a car that spawns, if you don't have the luck to have sports car in front of the bar that respawn, you're fucked (that's chapter 11). This leads to my issues with general game design.
For a cover shooter, this game REALLY needs a blind-fire mechanic. To fire at all from cover, you need to stick near your whole damn body out to then take aim and fire. Mostly in the last few chapters, the need for a safer way to fire at things becomes very clear as you have to take on groups of 5+ guys by yourself. The enemies even have an animation which is more or less blind firing, so I don't really see why the player character can't have some variation of that :/. Also, the aforementioned driving is a HUGE part of the game. Broken down, this game is story bits, driving, and action scenes interspersed. There's no LA Noire-style "make your partner drive" feature in this though, you gotta drive EVERYWHERE yourself, and damn do you gotta do it often. There's one chapter that's literally just driving and story stuff, not combat at all. The game really never makes much of an effort to make your destinations close together, relying on the narrative to dictate where the player needs to go. As such, if you have very little patience for driving in games, even with player conversations during, that's a big sticking point I can't ignore.
I didn't find the driving so bad actually, though. Compared to LA Noire, this game has a TON of period music on its radio stations. I really like the early rock, rhythm, and blues tracks of the 40's and 50's, so I always got some enjoyment of being in a car. If the music ain't your thing, it'll be a lot less bearable though.
I really enjoyed the story, personally. Where LA Noire was a fairly sanitized version of the 50's in terms of race relations, misogyny, derogatory language, this game doesn't shy away AT ALL. They never throw down an N-bomb, they throw around just about everything else. The main characters are self-centered, racist pigs, and their language gets that across very well. The main cast of Italian mobsters are voice acted very well, and really bring you into the atmosphere. The narrative, while it doesn't focus terribly well in every area that I'd want it to, is well written and engaging. I won't comment on my deeper complaints with the narrative choices (because that's both beyond the scope of this review, and very spoilery), but the mobster bits are of course the best part.
One final comment is that I didn't quite care for the collectibles in the game. Not the style of their hidden-ness, but of what they actually were. Spread all around the city are wanted posters of mobsters that you can collect, which are themselves fairly harmless. But spread throughout each mission are Playboy (actually branded) magazines to collect. When you get one, you get the "Playmate" poster of that issue. I'm not sure if it's the actual fold-out from that numbered issue, but the're real photos of real women, so it's a constant hunt for tits, more or less. While I'll admit they're attractive, I don't really feel it added anything to the experience other than just pandering to a male demographic. I also don't believe it harmed the game in any real way, but it's just something I wasn't entirely comfortable with in a game that, while it does have sexual themes, otherwise has no nudity and fairly tame gore. (For the record, I had a similar issue to how Splatterhouse essentially did this exact same thing with its collectibles).
Verdict: While the sloppy gameplay mistakes keep me from recommending it to everyone, any fan of history, Americana, or organized crime films will likely adore the story. I'd also recommend it to anyone who loved LA Noire's setting and wants more of that somewhat campy 50's atmosphere and storytelling.
Gameplay-wise, where LA Noire is Phoenix Wright meets GTA/sandbox, Mafia II is cover-shooter meets GTA/sandbox. Personally, I prefer the Ace Attorney style of LA Noire, Mafia II takes itself as much more of an action game, and does it fairly well. There's a wide variety of guns which sound very good. Enemies aren't terribly smart by themselves, but where they spawn usually incorporates the level design in some way to make the best of their limited intelligence. You have a health bar that regens, but it regens kinda like in Wolfenstein: The New Order where the more you get hurt at one time, the less max health you'll be able to regen before healing again. On the topic of health regen speed, it differs a fair bit between difficulties.
I played through the story through on hard, then mucked around a ton on normal and easy to mop up collectibles and achievements, and the difference between difficulties is noticeable. Your health appears to regen much faster on lower difficulties, but I'm not 100% certain (sometimes it was very fast, other times fairly slow), but the biggest difference is how hard enemies hit. Enemies have exactly the same amount of health on every difficulty, but you just take WAY more damage on higher difficulties. You aren't invincible on easy mode, but after playing through the game on hard, I certainly felt like it. You can get wiped away REALLY quick by an unfortunate Tommy gun blast on hard mode, and the checkpoints are fairly unforgiving in the later chapters (especially the last one). Hard tends to be a fair challenge, even for someone who sucks at twin-stick shooting like me. Occasionally it runs into problems with the game design though.
There are certain sections where you're being fired upon by another vehicle's occupants. You're ALWAYS driving more or less, and this ain't Saints Row: You can't fire a gun while you drive a car, not even a pistol. Sometimes you're forced to drive on narrow stretches for a few seconds after the respawn point, and on hard mode it's just a gamble on whether you'll make it to the street alive. It's a total roll of the dice on whether the AI will get lucky and completely wreck your health bar before you can even try to take evasive action, and these cars are from the 50's, so they usually aren't terribly agile to begin with. Driving sections like this just clearly don't feel balanced for hard mode (ones I'm thinking of are in chapters 13 and 14, if I remember correctly). There's also one specific driving challenge that cuts the time REALLY close on hard mode. Considering that challenge requires on walking out of your building and getting a car that spawns, if you don't have the luck to have sports car in front of the bar that respawn, you're fucked (that's chapter 11). This leads to my issues with general game design.
For a cover shooter, this game REALLY needs a blind-fire mechanic. To fire at all from cover, you need to stick near your whole damn body out to then take aim and fire. Mostly in the last few chapters, the need for a safer way to fire at things becomes very clear as you have to take on groups of 5+ guys by yourself. The enemies even have an animation which is more or less blind firing, so I don't really see why the player character can't have some variation of that :/. Also, the aforementioned driving is a HUGE part of the game. Broken down, this game is story bits, driving, and action scenes interspersed. There's no LA Noire-style "make your partner drive" feature in this though, you gotta drive EVERYWHERE yourself, and damn do you gotta do it often. There's one chapter that's literally just driving and story stuff, not combat at all. The game really never makes much of an effort to make your destinations close together, relying on the narrative to dictate where the player needs to go. As such, if you have very little patience for driving in games, even with player conversations during, that's a big sticking point I can't ignore.
I didn't find the driving so bad actually, though. Compared to LA Noire, this game has a TON of period music on its radio stations. I really like the early rock, rhythm, and blues tracks of the 40's and 50's, so I always got some enjoyment of being in a car. If the music ain't your thing, it'll be a lot less bearable though.
I really enjoyed the story, personally. Where LA Noire was a fairly sanitized version of the 50's in terms of race relations, misogyny, derogatory language, this game doesn't shy away AT ALL. They never throw down an N-bomb, they throw around just about everything else. The main characters are self-centered, racist pigs, and their language gets that across very well. The main cast of Italian mobsters are voice acted very well, and really bring you into the atmosphere. The narrative, while it doesn't focus terribly well in every area that I'd want it to, is well written and engaging. I won't comment on my deeper complaints with the narrative choices (because that's both beyond the scope of this review, and very spoilery), but the mobster bits are of course the best part.
One final comment is that I didn't quite care for the collectibles in the game. Not the style of their hidden-ness, but of what they actually were. Spread all around the city are wanted posters of mobsters that you can collect, which are themselves fairly harmless. But spread throughout each mission are Playboy (actually branded) magazines to collect. When you get one, you get the "Playmate" poster of that issue. I'm not sure if it's the actual fold-out from that numbered issue, but the're real photos of real women, so it's a constant hunt for tits, more or less. While I'll admit they're attractive, I don't really feel it added anything to the experience other than just pandering to a male demographic. I also don't believe it harmed the game in any real way, but it's just something I wasn't entirely comfortable with in a game that, while it does have sexual themes, otherwise has no nudity and fairly tame gore. (For the record, I had a similar issue to how Splatterhouse essentially did this exact same thing with its collectibles).
Verdict: While the sloppy gameplay mistakes keep me from recommending it to everyone, any fan of history, Americana, or organized crime films will likely adore the story. I'd also recommend it to anyone who loved LA Noire's setting and wants more of that somewhat campy 50's atmosphere and storytelling.