was a bit of a letdown to play after the excellent mafia iii - a game that had a lot to say about its time and place.
in comparison, mafia is all empty calories. striking to look at (the reflections in those puddles? marone!) and just as much of a ball to play (i will never tire of shooting people in these games, they drop with a real dramatic purposefulness, and some of the set piece gunfights are a blast, especially the art museum).
but tommy angelo is a bland nothing. he's portrayed as both an empty psycho and a morally conscience gangster. i really got no sense of who he was or what he was pursuing. very much a PS2 era character. and as for his pals? annoying(ly voiced), walking cliches. his wife? as empty a character as her husband. his boss? just some guy, basically.
it's supposed to be a game about family but there are about five characters in the whole game who speak, and the whole game is just various riffs on the godfather with none of heft. the final level is called 'the death of art', and all i could think is that for a game this boring that kind of titling is a bit too on the nose.
i enjoyed the linear structure of the game. i think more open world games should be structured like this, chapter-by-chapter with an open world as a backdrop. shame the driving kind of sucked ass. but the world in the game is gorgeous. it really tickled my fancy for early 20th century life. i just wish the game had something to say about it (beyond, i don't know, that the suits and signs back then were stylish).
in comparison, mafia is all empty calories. striking to look at (the reflections in those puddles? marone!) and just as much of a ball to play (i will never tire of shooting people in these games, they drop with a real dramatic purposefulness, and some of the set piece gunfights are a blast, especially the art museum).
but tommy angelo is a bland nothing. he's portrayed as both an empty psycho and a morally conscience gangster. i really got no sense of who he was or what he was pursuing. very much a PS2 era character. and as for his pals? annoying(ly voiced), walking cliches. his wife? as empty a character as her husband. his boss? just some guy, basically.
it's supposed to be a game about family but there are about five characters in the whole game who speak, and the whole game is just various riffs on the godfather with none of heft. the final level is called 'the death of art', and all i could think is that for a game this boring that kind of titling is a bit too on the nose.
i enjoyed the linear structure of the game. i think more open world games should be structured like this, chapter-by-chapter with an open world as a backdrop. shame the driving kind of sucked ass. but the world in the game is gorgeous. it really tickled my fancy for early 20th century life. i just wish the game had something to say about it (beyond, i don't know, that the suits and signs back then were stylish).