Somehow, I've never heard of this game or the TV show it’s based on. The term hidden gem gets thrown around a lot but this one is sure as shit hidden if nothing else. Probably because it only came out on the PS1 and the Sega Saturn, which is odd for a point and click adventure game, very very much in the LucasArts style.

You’re this young plucky dragon inventor, Flicker (lotta fire puns, go figure) and you have to become a knight, win a tournament, foil the bad guy, save the princess (in more or less that order). When i say LucasArtsy, i mean: mainly a comedy game, can’t fail or die, fully voiced and lavishly animated. The humor is very british (the TV show was co-created by Terry Jones, so figures) though I didn't find it’s writing to be quite at the caliber of the best LucasArts games, the humor is more cute than funny most of the time (though there are a few very good gags). Mostly this game has a ton of charm thanks to the pixel art, lots of custom animations+locales and the stellar voice-work. This is a who’s who of 90s voice actors, the cast is really insane (Kath Soucie, Jim Cummings, Cheech Marin, Rob Paulsen, Jeff Bennett, Gregg Berger, Jess Harnell, Roger Rose, Michael Bell, Charlie Adler, Terry Jones, Harry Shearer, B.J. Ward, Brian George).

The game is fairly short and simple (which is a plus in my book), but I used a guide anyway if i got stuck because I wasn't playing for the puzzles. There’s a few mini-games that can be bypassed easily with save-states. One mild annoyance is the fact that any scene transition has an associated load time. Takes just 3-4 seconds but it kinda kills the pace because it happens whenever there’s a background change, not just when going from room to room. And in cutscenes there’s a ~one second black screen between any cuts. Not a big deal, but something that would’ve not been a problem in a PC version.

My only gripe is that I wish there was a bit more dialogue and interaction with all the characters, and that the writing was a little sharper. You can finish this game in a couple of hours, especially if using a guide here and there. Don’t mind the short length at all, but it feels kind of like a waste to create all of this art and animation and have most dialogue interactions be a quick back and forth, or at most 2 or 3 dialogue options.

Still very much worth checking just for the overall production quality and I'm surprised it seems to be almost totally forgotten. Lack of a PC port is probably the main reason.

This one is quite an odd duck, in many many ways. It’s funny how many criticize open-world games from becoming too bloated, but Mafia 2 was criticized at launch for having NO bloat whatsoever. The open world is a backdrop in this game, not a playground, for the story of Vito, an up and coming mafia-boy.

So yeah this is a pretty classic mafia story, Vito comes from a poor family, resorts to crime, falls in with a bad crowd, goes to the war, comes back and gets right back in with the mafia. It checks off a lot of mafia tropes so it does feel a tad tired at this point.

Mafia 2 is also quite impressive on a number of fronts, especially for 2010. It exceless in place such as voice acting, world-building details and the game engine is also fairly impressive in certain spots, with the environmental destructibility or the detail it allows for. Some of the places you see or visit are insanely well crafted for what should be a throwaway-backdrop for a quick mission. If you like exploring finely crafted digital worlds, then Mafia 2 has something to offer.

Story and characters are the main draws of Mafia 2, since the gameplay is fairly standard driving and shooting. The driving some might find compelling since it can be set to “simulation” but i just kept it regular because i wasn’t here for the driving honestly. But you’re gonna do a LOT of it (no fast travel in this game), which can get tedious but the game is short enough that I didn’t get the chance to get annoyed, just a bit bored a few times. Classic music on the radio (which changes with time, i think?) helps with the driving and the overall atmosphere of the game.

What I found odd is that the story feels rushed/disjointed in places. Like other than Vito, Joe and to some extent, his prison papa Leo Galante or Henry (had to google their names), most nobody gets any significant screen time. At one point later in the game you have to whack a guy that fucked you over previously and it took me a minute to remember who he was since he appeared in like ONE cutscene or two at most. Same goes for Vito’s mother, you see her once in the intro, talk to her on the phone later, and that’s it. That’s the entirety of Vito’s interaction with his dear mother during Mafia 2. Same with his sister, they have like 2 interactions in the whole game. I think the game would have benefitted from a tighter cast that you spend more time with. Cause other than Joe and Vito I can’t really recall many others with detail, which you could say is fine since it’s THEIR story, but i still felt that a tighter more developed cast would’ve helped elevate the story overall.

That being said, Vito and Joe are fairly well developed, written and acted characters. I can’t say I LOVED them or cared about them too deeply, but their relationship was engaging and kept me at least interested till the end. Again, it helps that this game has no bloat, so it was a breezy 10ish hours or less i think (without any of the DLC). And I did find it interesting that this game is even less glamorous about the mafia lifestyle than usual. Sure you climb the ranks and “become somebody”, but I’d argue that most of the story is about Vito being given the short end of the stick. If you’re a pawn in the Mafia, then your fate is more or less sealed, a point hammered home in a more poignant way than I would’ve expected.

Honestly, I’ll take this approach to open-world games rather than the Ubisoft-bloat direction. That being said, I feel like there was room for SOME emergent gameplay since there’s some interesting systems that you never really have to interact with, like robbing gas stations. They’re not fully developed or anything, but there’s only ONE instance in the game where you are given an open-goal (make this amount of money) and allowed to go about it anyway you’d like. I feel there could have been a few more opportunities (at least 1 or 2) to let the player engage with the world a bit more freely without disrupting the story too much, give me a goal to make money, maybe some restrictions, and then let me do it however I can or want to.

Mafia 2 was for me, more than anything, an interesting anomaly to revisist. An open-world game that rejected many of the genre conventions of the time, trying to tell a fairly serious/mature story. I wouldn’t call it an amazing game, but it was a good time overall and worth the 9ish hours I put into it. I was looking for a captivating story in an interesting backdrop, and Mafia 2 provided. Not all the time, but it kept me going till the end, which most games do not. Worth mentioning that the end is somewhat abrupt (some called it a cliffhanger?) and predictable, but you know, the journey not the destination, yada yada.