Review: Mafia 2

On January 1, 2011, In Game Reviews, The Student, By Rick

You can take our lives, but you'll never take our Whiskey!

If you like Mafia, you will like Mafia 2. Normally you would see this  line at the end of a game review, but I figured I would spare you any tedious preamble and get straight to the root of the matter. After all, that’s pretty much how the rest of the gaming community has pigeon-holed 2K Czech’s latest creation.

In fairness, it is quite understandable that so many reviewers have resorted to this lowest-common-denominator of  conclusions. There’s no escaping the fact that Mafia 2 is very, very similar to it’s seven-year-old prequel.Yet games like  Starcraft 2 have seen nothing but praise for their similarities to the original, so it seems odd that Mafia 2 has been so harshly criticised for following the exact same development outline.

One reason for this is that many people expected Mafia 2 to be GTA IV in a sharper suit, and were disappointed when they discovered that, rather than being a free-roaming experience filled with wacky side missions and absurd challenges, the city of Empire Bay turned out to be little more than a backdrop for an intensely linear, plot-driven experience. 2K Czech want to tell a story, and they’re not going to let you get sidetracked by an irony achievement for running over a hundred people in an ambulance.

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Techin’ The Mickey: Tech-no-logical.

On December 21, 2010, In Techin' The Mickey, The Student, By Rick

As if there weren’t enough ludicrous rumours about video games turning children into obese zombies with the attention span of a mackeral/genocidal maniacs who take guns into school and scream “MULTI-KILL!” while they blast everyone in sight, apparently games are now “sexualising children,” according to a recent report produced for the home office.

That’s right: all that time staring at the back of Princess Peach’s head in Mario Kart Wii is turning little Timmy into a ball of red hot lust. The report, which was compiled by Big Brother psychologist Linda Papadopoulos, criticised games containing “highly sexual content,” alongside pornography and sexualised advertising slogans.

One of these games, Miss Bimbo, includes challenges such as obtaining breast augmentations in order to marry a wealthy man.

Before we consider why an important governmental report is being conducted by a celebrity instead of a real psychologist, we would like to point out that Miss Bimbo isn’t a game at all. It’s actually a social networking site with a few woeful minigames tacked onto it, which goes to show just how much Dr Papadopoulos knows about the industry that her report condemns.

If a game like Bayonetta was easily obtainable by children then we would understand where this report was coming from, but it isn’t, and we don’t.

Returning to the point that this report was compiled by someone whose job is to assess the mentality of people who don’t have a mentality, the government’s attitude towards one of its biggest potential sources of revenue is becoming increasingly bizarre. Already we’ve had bloody Supernanny collaborate with Parliament to assess whether  or not games are corrupting the youth in one form or another, the result being nothing other than a superfluous alteration of the way games are rated.

Additionally, the government continually fails to recognise British game development as a legitimate industry, despite worldwide acclaim for developers such as Edinburgh’s own Rockstar North, most recently creators of Grand Theft Auto IV.

Of course, all sorts of controversy surrounded GTA IV, but only because the government stubbornly refuses to let go of the belief that video games start with Mario and end with Sonic.
Next week we’ll be assessing Mumsnet’s review of Aliens vs Predator. It’s going to be a corker.

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Techin’ the Mickey: Conservatech

On December 21, 2010, In Techin' The Mickey, The Student, By Rick

So far I’ve just about managed to avoid using this column as a soapbox to stand on while I bitch and whine about my own personal issues with the games industry. Therefore, as I’m about to blow enough hot air to make myself a viable option for NASA’s next spacecraft prototype – I thought it only fair to give you a little bit of warning.

I am, always have and always will be, a dedicated PC gamer. The type that scoffs at playing a first-person-shooter with an x360 pad, and is well aware that compared to  Deus Ex, Mass Effect is light years away from being the greatest RPG ever made.

I’m not blind to the advantages of consoles. It’s pretty diffcult to gather your friends around a PC for a game of Pro Evo or Mario Kart, and when it comes to Street Fighter IV a mouse and keyboard just doesn’t cut the mustard. I do however, have an uneasy relationship with consoles simply because since they entered the mainstream all I’ve heard about PC gaming is that it is either A) dying, or B) already dead.

Now if such comments were the misguided outbursts of the odd prepubescent forumite they wouldn’t bother me so much. Unfortunately, it isn’t merely ignorant teenagers who hold this opinion. Ever since Halo betrayed its originally intended platform ten years ago, game after game has either suffered a delayed PC release or been denied one entirely. This very week Dead Space 2 and Alan Wake became the latest casualties of the PC gaming cull.

Frankly, Alan Wake can go boil his pretentious head. The only reason Microsoft have made it a 360 exclusive is to shift more consoles – a preposterous decision for a company who have just released Windows 7. However, Dead Space 2 has been denied a PC release due to alleged lack of sales of the original. It is in this where the real issue lies.

Dead Space was an excellent game, but like GTA IV and many others it was disastrously optimised for PC controls – simply turning Isaac Clarke around was like trying to drag a rhino through a swimming pool filled with treacle.As a result of mistakes made by the developer, sales were lost. But instead of fixing them for the sequel, EA decided to pull the game from the PC altogether.

EA are one of many companies who use lack of sales as a reason not to release games on PC alongside the age-old excuse of piracy. Yet the sales figures they refer to do not include those made via digital distribution services like Steam, which are estimated to make up 47 percent of all PC game sales, and with ten million users on Steam alone, that’s an awful lot unaccounted sales.

If PC gaming does die, it will be because corporations like Microsoft and EA kill it, and it will undoubtedly be a mistake they regret.

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