Recent reviews by Middcore

Once again I am frustrated by Steam recommended/not recommended binary. This is not a bad game, but I cannot recommend it at the full $70 price.

First thing to get out of the way: the microtransaction furor was overblown. All the mtx items are things you can get in the game, and there are mods out that allow you to easily get tons of them. That said, Capcom would have been better off not to have them, since I can't imagine they've made much money off such dumb stuff and they probably cost themselves a lot of sales with the bad press.

Unfortunately that controversy in the first days of release obscured discussion of the game's actual merits. So let's talk about them.

Before Dragon's Dogma 2 got a lot of negative buzz for microtransactions, it got a lot of positive buzz in the weeks before release from people sharing beauty shots from the character creation tool. Dragon's Dogma 1 had a very nice character creator, especially by the standards of its day, and Dragon's Dogma 2's character creator might be unmatched by any other game on the market. The level of detailed control you have to customize your character's appearance here, especially the facial features, is downright overwhelming at first. If you have ever wanted to truly play "yourself" in a game, DD2 does it better than any game ever has.

Of course, making a great looking character isn't worth much if you can't do anything fun with it. So, what's fun to do in Dragon's Dogma 2?

Killing things is fun to do in Dragon's Dogma 2. It's the game's shining glory. You can do things in this game in terms of climbing monsters to strike weak points and casting magic spells that feel truly epic that no other game I am aware of lets you do. Not Monster Hunter, not Elden Ring. You could do them in Dragon's Dogma 1, too, and 12 years later it's kind of amazing no other game has appropriated some of these ideas. They're still very cool in DD2. Every class has badass things they can do, and the game lets you switch between classses very easily to try them all out, even encourages it in some ways, and even has a class specifically dedicated to mixing and matching skills from other classes.

Unfortunately, that's the only aspect of the game I can say is truly outstanding. Most other aspects of this game feel shambolic and unfinished.

This was billed as a "narrative-driven experience" and that is simply not true. Simply put, if you are a person who needs a good story in an RPG, this game is not for you. Story was certainly not DD1's strong point but it kinda-sorta made some degree of sense at the end. The story in DD2 simply falls apart after the first act, and everything you do in that first act where it feels like there's a coherent narrative thread turns out to be basically pointless. Memorable, well-written characters? You won't find them here. The archer lady and the cat lady on the cover art are barely in the game, they might each be in one cutscene and then have a couple of entirely skippable sidequests and that's it. But if there's a whole hour of content related to each of them they still count as prominent characters by this game's standards so that's enough justification to chuck them on the box, I guess. That's how little is going on here from a narrative standpoint.

You may have heard there is no fast travel in this game, and that the developers said you didn't need fast travel if your world was interesting enough. Unfortunately, while DD2 has attractive scenery, I can't say that it really rewards exploration. There aren't cool sidequests and dungeons to find everywhere like there are in a game like Skyrim. There isn't good loot to find as a reward for leaving the beaten path. Almost all equipment is sold at vendors, and treasure chests you find out in the wilderness rarely contain anything but a bit of gold or some crafting ingredients. What there is a whole heaping lot of is the same enemies, spawned in the same locations, every time you march back and forth from one place to another.

Mentioning enemies brings us back to the combat. Although the combat in DD2 IS very good, there are still things that hold it back from being as enjoyable as it could be. I believe the developers touted that this game would have greater enemy variety than the first one. The bestiary may be technically larger in the number of unique enemy types (neither game has a bestiary, so I can't say for sure), but it certainly doesn't feel like there's more variety when you're actually playing. As much fan as the combat skills and spells in DD2 are, you can only use them to kill so many goblins and harpies before they lose their luster.

Furthermore, in some ways, the combat in DD2 is actually a step back from the combat in DD1. There are fewer skills/spells you can equip on each class, which is particularly painful for magic-users. Some of the interesting little mechanics from DD1, like the when your party members would grapple an enemy and call for you to take advantage of the opportunity with an attack on the vulnerable foe, have disappeared. Certainly there is no big advancement in the combat gameplay here that you could say sets it apart from what the first game offered. What if, say, you could switch between controlling your Arisen and your main pawn in combat? I'm just spitballing an idea here. As it is, DD2's combat feels refined and yet stripped-down compared to its predecessor.

I mentioned pawns. I could write an entire review just on the good and bad things about the pawn system. Some people will love it, others will simply live with it. The main thing that's changed with pawns compared to DD1 is the Dragonsplague mechanic, which supposedly was considered for the first game but had to be abandoned due to technical limitations. It's certainly inventive. Does it add enjoyment to the game? Not in my view. And I swear I'm not trying to harp on "broken promises" here, but the developers claimed DD2 pawn chatter would be less repetitive than DD1, and that promise certainly feels broken from where I sit listening to my party inform me about the same ladder in the capital city they have informed me about on every single previous visit.

In general, it's kind of shocking how little Dragon's Dogma 2 actually IMPROVES on Dragon's Dogma 1 beyond the ways you would expect it to improve just from coming along 12 years later, such as better graphics. It's like creator Hideaki Itsuno devoted all his attention to implementing more idiosyncratic ideas he didn't get to put in DD1 without actually looking at what the first game's weaknesses were and trying to rectify them this time around.

If you get this game for $30-40, it will be much easier to appreciate just experimenting with the ways the different classes kill stuff and accept... pretty much every other aspect of the game being half-baked as just "quirky." If you get this game for $70, it will be much harder to shake the feeling you've been delivered a manifestly unfinished product.

Most of my experience with this game is the Switch version but although the Steam and various console versions get updates at a different pace all of what I say should apply to the game in any of its incarnations.

This game is just fun!

Any 2D wrestling game released now is inevitably going to be compared to Fire Pro Wrestling World. This game is certainly not a replacement for Fire Pro. but there's no reason it can't co-exist with it in the game library of wrestling fans.

Retromania isn't trying to dethrone FPWW. However, it totally achieves its goals as a pick up and play, "thoughtful button masher," arcade style wrestling game evoking the feel of classics like WWF Wrestlefest. Gameplay is pretty intuitive to learn but has enough complexity to make winning satisfying. The wrestler sprites and move animations look great. If you're expecting bells and whistles like weapons and exotic stipulation gimmick matches you'll be disappointed, but all of the "essential" match types including 3-way, 4-way, tag team up to 8-man, and rumble matches are represented.

The UI outside of match controls is competent, which is not to say that it couldn't be improved. Setting up custom matches with lots of competitors is a trifle tedious.

A lot of effort went into "extra" presentation stuff. The number of different ring environments (from arenas to high school gyms to a bash on the beach and a heavy metal "hell") isn't necessarily where I would have prioritized developer man-hours, but they're certainly nice to have (although I wish there was a way to pick a default one). All wrestlers have entrances with their own music and their own ring announcer audio. There's also match commentary (although it gets repetitive fast and doesn't describe the actual in-ring action - the only move that gets a specific commentary callout is the Road Warriors' Doomsday Device).

The game's biggest weakness currently is the roster. The lineup is an... eclectic... mix of a few old-school legends like the Road Warriors, an ECW quartet (Tommy Dreamer and the members of Blue World Order) and then a bunch of more current indie competitors. Having all of these guys mixed together in story mode frankly doesn't make much sense, but Retrosoft is working with what they can get. The pitfalls of licensing are clearly the real obstacle here. Things wouldn't be so bad if there was a CAW mode, but there isn't. More wrestlers have been promised as DLC, with the first of a trio of free post-launch DLC wrestlers Retrosoft has revealed already added. The pace of updates has been slow but the game is far from dead and we can only hope for the roster to continue to steadily expand. However, we're probably just going to have to make our peace with the fact licensing means we'll never see most of the superstars from the era the game evokes nostalgia for.

In summary: It's not the "best," deepest wrestling game available - Fire Pro Wrestling World's title reign continues with no sign of a real challenger appearing. BUT if you just want a wrestling game you can sit down and jump in to playing and have a smile put on your face (as opposed to curating a collection of CAW clones of every wrestler you've ever heard of and some you haven't and then sitting and watching AI matches), Retromania is a worthy choice.

PROS:

+Gameplay is tight, intuitive enough for beginners (at least if you understand this is fundamentally a Fire Pro-style timing-based grapple system), but with enough depth for winning and getting better at it to feel rewarding
+Wrestler sprites look superb, move animations are smooth, and the overall quality of the pixel artwork is very high
+Plenty of fun extras like different rings, ring intros, and audio intros and commentary
+Game is still in active development and getting new content and patches

CONS

-Anemic roster of wrestlers with no CAW and extremely slow pace of additions
-Menu UI could use improvement
-Match commentary lines are quite generic and don't describe what's actually happening in the ring (but it can be turned off if it starts to grate)
-Price tag for what's currently offered might be considered a bit high, at $20 it would be a slam dunk, er, running power slam

First let me just say that as you scroll through the reviews, you'll note a lot from 2021 and early 2022 slagging the game because it's supposedly "dead" with no updates. There was, in fact, a major update in Spring 2022 and development of the game is ongoing. Will any of those "lol dead game" people ever come back and edit their reviews (especially the ones who specifically said they would if there was ever an update)? Not likely. All of that to say, you should disregard all of those old reviews that just say "game is dead/abandoned."

So with that out of the way, let's talk about the actual merits of Graven. I really wanted to like the game. I was (and still am) totally smitten with the late 90's "3Dfx-esque" (or maybe "PS1core") aesthetic. The level design is pretty good. The glimpses of story shown in the part of the game that's done so far are intriguing and hit just the right vibe.

The game right now is buggy. I am not talking about minor bugs here, I am talking about serious, quest-breaking bugs. This is more frustrating than it should be because of some design decisions made, but I am not going to torch the game just for that because this is an early access release and some bugs are to be expected.

Let's talk about those design decisions, because they're what actually stops me from recommending the game right now. Combat is not good. Most of the weapons are not satisfying to use and killing any but the most basic enemies is a tedious exercise in circle-strafing and whittling down their too-abundant health. In general it seems like Graven can't figure out whether it wants to be like Heretic and Hexen (in which case combat this clunky is a deal-breaker) or be an immersive sim more along the lines of Thief (which gave players far more options for avoiding direct combat than Graven does).

The player has magic, two different elemental types of it right now even, but spells are little more than cantrips used for things like little environmental puzzles. Magic is not a meaningful combat tool against any but the most basic enemies. This seems to have been a deliberate design decision meant to force a grittier, more challenging experience but for most people it will just be disappointing.

Worst of all is the save system. The game uses checkpoint saves. In a game with Graven's heritage, not being able to just make manual saves is inexplicable. Because the checkpoints are based on your location, it's entirely possible to hit a checkpoint in the middle of a fight, die, and respawn immediately with the same enemies mauling you so you just die over and over. Worse still, saves and respawns between game sessions (as in quitting the game and coming back to play more later) are based on the hub location of whatever part of the world you're currently in, typically meaning a long slog through the wilds (through respawned enemies) to get back to where you were if you don't have time to finish a whole quest and go back to the hub in one sitting.

Bugs I can forgive. Design decisions that are at best strange and at worst wrong-headedly anti-fun I cannot, and Graven is far enough along in development now that I can't see major stuff like this changing. Because of this I cannot recommend Graven and while I will continue to check in on its development I don't anticipate ever being able to recommend it.

I am not the target audience for this game, as while I like RPG's the particular type and era of Western computer RPG's that Skald is clearly inspired by are not near and dear to my heart. I was too young to play them when they were current and in the present the lo-fidelity graphics are, I must admit, a stumbling block I had to overcome. In spite of this Skald won me over with its excellent writing and loving presentation.

I have played through the demo content basically twice over now, once as a cleric and once as a rogue, and I will probably go through once more as a magos. (It's pretty clear how a warrior plays so I don't see the need for a separate run-through there.)

The glimpse we get of the story here isn't exactly groundbreaking stuff - a missing maiden with latent supernatural ability, horrors from the deep, townspeople driven to bloody madness - but it doesn't need to, and everything strikes the right dark fantasy balance of grim theatrics. The player character has a past which is sketched out well enough to give a believable motivation and make the plot more engaging than just having the party meet in a tavern and see a quest posted on a notice board would be. Dialogue options may not end up changing the outcome of a conversation but they give the player a nice opportunity to do some solo role-play and define their character for themselves, a welcome touch for a person like me who makes up elaborate backstories for all of their RPG characters even in games where the PC is meant to be a blank slate. All of the NPC's - a veteran sellsword, an old lighthouse-keeper, a beleaguered imperial bureaucrat - sound just as they "should", with a fitting familiarity to how they're written that is somehow comforting without being dull.

Similarly, the gameplay mechanics here are all classically conventional D&D-derived stuff which won't make the player waste any time scratching their head before settling in. There are four classes to choose from (at least in the demo), following the familiar archetypes of fighter, arcane spell-caster, divine spell-caster, and rogue. There are five primary attributes, each of which governs an array of other ability stats. Characters have the opportunity to buy feats and (for some classes) spells as they level up. Combat is turn-based and takes place on what is basically a grid map, but you can also talk your way through some situations. The player's party can make camp and eat rations to recover damage, there are the customary health and mana potions, and the presence of stats like "resolve" and bottles of spirits that boost it hint at the need to make will saves and such in the full game. Likewise there are hints pointing at an alchemy/crafting system which is not present in the demo. There are two possible party members to recruit in the demo prologue, but the store page promises a dozen in the full game, and the UI has space for a party of up to six.

I only encountered a single bug during my ~2.5 hours of playtime in the demo, where during one combat encounter trying to open my inventory would simply bring up the start-of-battle dialogue over and over. That said, and with the understanding that a certain amount of fiddly-ness in the way the game controls and plays is "authentic," I do have a list of minor complaints and improvements I hope to see in the full game:

-How stealth in combat is supposed to work is not at all clear, which was especially vexing playing a rogue
-Potions only work during combat, which seems a bit odd, and if you "use" one outside of combat by accident it's consumed with no effect, which seems harsh
-More character portraits, and the ability to change the color of clothing in the portrait to better match the on-map avatar, would be welcome
-The results of your party's attacks are shown by default and you must select "continue" to confirm you've read them, but the results of enemy attacks are just skipped over, so you just see your HP bars going down without knowing exactly how you're being damaged. This is one thing when fighting rats but later in the game when you'll presumably encounter enemies with more powerful abilities and status effects it could become a problem
-Selecting between targets, especially for spells, is not intuitive
-The passage of time when the party is camping is somewhat confusing, to the point where I suspect it may be bugged (IE the camp screen will show the last 2-hour block you can assign camp tasks for ending at, say, 05:37, and yet after breaking camp it will somehow almost immediately be nightfall)
-While the "CRT mode" video option is a nice touch, it would be nice to see any other video options at all, like the ability to play in a window.

In summation, I highly recommend putting Skald on your radar if you're a person who was raised in the Commodore 64 era or on games like Ultima, and even if that doesn't describe you I would suggest at least giving the demo a playthrough if you have any appreciation for well-written and passionately crafted RPG's. I eagerly await the planned full release of Skald this summer. This game shows great promise to be an engrossingly "nostalgic" experience even for people who never directly experienced its spiritual forebears - dripping with the irresistible charm of a throwback crafted by creators clearly in it for love and not money, even if they deserve to make plenty of the latter.

It's nice that they took the time and resources to remaster this game, but on its merits I can't recommend buying it at its regular Steam price of $40. Even $30 on sale is pushing it, to be honest.

Graphically, it definitely looks nice. Not eye-poppingly nice for a game that came out in 2020. More like "2015-2016 nice," which makes sense as I believe this is running in Mafia III's engine. (Let's not mention the Mafia III Definitive Edition which looks absolutely identical to the original.) The facial animations are very good, with the exception of a couple of awkward moments. The new voice acting is quite good.

Gameplay-wise, this is a competent third person cover-based shooter. The weapons are reasonably satisfying to use but the game suffers from a lack of weapon variety, although I suppose there's not that many different types of gun that fit the setting. There are some very basic stealth sections, about which the only thing that can really be said is that they aren't frustrating... they're simply forgettable. There are a few fist fights, which actually do rise to the level of slightly frustrating because of the bizarre controls (Q to punch? Alt to counter/dodge?), but thankfully there are only a few of them. There are several car chase missions, which lean rather heavily on a wonky ramming mechanic early on, but then later in the game any need to ram or otherwise damage your adversaries' vehicles seems to disappear and it's only necessary to lose your pursuers or, when pursuing, keep your quarry in sight until a cutscene plays.

You do a lot of driving even outside of those pursuit missions. The game requires you to drive manually around its open world to each mission destination. There is no option to have one of the NPC's accompanying you drive, or to just skip to the destination. Fortunately the game's open world isn't big enough that any of the commutes take more than a few minutes, and Lost Heaven is realized prettily enough that you don't mind admiring the scenery, at least for the first few hours. But open-world game design has come a long way since the original Mafia came out in 2002. Actually even in 2002 there were open-world games with a lot more going on than this. I'm not saying Mafia should be GTA, and I'm not saying that the game's map needs to be splattered edge to edge with icons for different types of activities like a modern-day Ubisoft game, but the fact is that there is simply nothing going on here. The game has a "free ride" mode that allows you to just drive around the city, a "carcyclopedia" in the main menu showcasing all of the game's vehicles and their characteristics, and achievements for collecting different types of car, but there is zero actual incentive to explore the city. The game could have been redesigned as a completely linear, non-open-world game and not suffered for it.

As it is, the need to drive to the mission location and then drive back to base in almost every chapter seems suspiciously like it's only padding out the length of the game, and you can easily finish Mafia Definitive Edition in ~12 hours anyway. There is no real replay value here than I can see, since as already mentioned there are no side missions, no player choices that trigger branching paths or affect the plot in any way, and no NG+. There is a "classic mode" where cops will chase you for running traffic signals and you lose ammo if you reload before a clip is empty and such, IE a self-imposed challenge mode that in my opinion just adds a layer of annoyance to pedestrian gameplay.

All of the ways that Mafia Definitive Edition falls short as an action game in 2020-21 could be forgiven if the story delivered the goods. But like most other aspects of the game, the story is pretty unremarkable. Perhaps in 2002, when most action/shooter games still followed John Romero's infamous maxim that plot in a video game is like plot in porn, this seemed like heavy storytelling. Almost two decades later, however, perhaps the best that can be said for it is "An effort was made." Mafia's story hits all of the mob movie tropes and checklist items you'd expect. It's certainly not BAD. It doesn't make you care terribly much about the protagonist Tommy Angelo, or any of the other characters either. It doesn't do much to sell Tommy's building internal conflict about his life as a gangster, and so neither his betrayal of the family or his former pals' betrayal of him have a lot of impact. Even the flash-forward at the end to events from Mafia II depicting Tommy's ultimate fate leave you shrugging as the credits roll.

Again, it's nice that Hangar 13 and 2K did this. If you never played the original Mafia almost 20 years ago or with any of the fan patches/mods since then, this is probably a better experience just from a graphical and quality of life standpoint. But it's too short and too just "fine" in every aspect to deliver a good value proposition at its usual price point. Pick it up on sale for $20 or under and it won't wear out its welcome.

Your initial impression of Shadows: Awakening is highly likely to be formed by your opinion on whether it is too much like Diablo or not enough like Diablo.

Yes, this is an isometric third-person fantasy dungeon-crawling ARPG clickfest. Unlike Diablo, however, the emphasis here is not on a loot loop of killing enemies to get better gear to allow you to go kill more enemies and get better gear. Shadows: Awakening tries to differentiate itself by being the only (so far as I am aware) party-based (or pseudo-party-based) Diablo-esque RPG.

Your main character is a demon, and the rest of your party is composed of "puppets," souls of ancient heroes and defeated foes who the demon claims over the course of the story. Only one character is active at a time, but you can switch between party members on the fly. The demon and each party member have their own stats, abilities, and types of gear, and you have frequent opportunities to swap party members in and out. All of the "souls" can die and then be resurrected, but if the demon dies, "you're dead" and have to load from a save. When acting as the demon you are in a shadow realm and the demon can allow the party to reach areas other characters cannot, but only the "puppets" can interact with certain things in the physical world. Some enemies exist only in the shadow realm and others only in the physical; some exist in both, or have a spirit version which must be vanquished in the shadow realm before being defeated in the physical. In theory there is the potential for combo tactics by using one character's ability and then switching to another character to use a different ability.

For the first few hours, all of this seems like a breath of fresh air if you're a person who finds the min/maxing loot treadmill of Diablo and most of its clones tedious. The game also creates the initial appearance of having some pretty intricate lore behind it, making you feel in your first couple hours like you're really stepping into an epic dark fantasy story.

Unfortunately, by 10-15 hours in the charm of all of this starts to wear off fast, at least it did for me. While I am willing to cut a lot of slack for "AA" games by smaller developers whose abilities don't quite measure up to their ambition, this isn't just a case of a mid-tier game that's rough around the edges. The fundamental gameplay of Shadows: Awakening is flawed and does not hold the player's interest.

While I did not expect the game to rely on the dopamine rush of constantly replacing your gear to min/max your build the way Diablo does, and even welcomed that it did not, the selection of gear and abilities the game does offer becomes monotonous. Most of the loot that does drop in any given area is not an upgrade. The pool of abilities each character has is limited, you can only have 3 usable at any given time, and you only get to pick a new one or upgrade an existing one every few levels. You'll spend hours at a stretch using the same gear and same attacks, and it doesn't help that the variety of enemies in any given area of the game is also small. The potential for comboing abilities between characters is also not deep - aside from the demon's starting ability which temporarily freezes groups of enemies so you can pound them with impunity, there's just not a lot going on there.

The game tries to break up the monotonous mob-slaying with puzzles, but these are usually more tedious and frustrating than clever, and the same types of puzzle are repeated without alteration in multiple dungeons.

You acquire new "puppets" for your party for completing quests as part of the story, and certain party members are required for certain areas for story reasons. You also have to make mutually exclusive choices during the story which will allow you to add some characters to your inventory of puppets but lock you out of others. This means you can't just form a party of the characters you like the most, and there is no New Game+ mode which allows for greater freedom as far as I am aware.

Even story and world-building, which at first seems like it could at least be a redeeming point of the game, ultimately disappoints. After multiple chapters of gameplay over the course of a dozen hours, I could not explain to you anything about the game's overall plot except that the main bad guy (who I only know of by reference) is apparently called the Theocrat, and I am the type of person who listens to and reads lore in games obsessively when other people skip or skim. There are periodic infodumps about new areas and quests, but none of it holds together as part of a coherent story. The player goes from one place to another, is sent on one task after another, each stop along the way punctuated with a fresh helping of context-free lore, but I have no clear idea what my overall objective is.

I got this game for, I believe, under $10 in the last summer sale, and that price I can't feel too chagrined at it falling short of my positive first impressions. If you're a fan of hack-and-slash, clicks-and-cantrips ARPG's and would like to give one that tries to do some things differently a chance, maybe consider Shadows: Awakening the next time it's deeply discounted. At its regular price of $40, though, don't even think about it.

tl:dr: This game is worth playing but the remaster is very half-assed and it's overpriced at $30, since Steam forces me to make a binary choice I would say NOT RECOMMENDED... AT FULL PRICE. Wait for a sale.

Let's be clear about what Mafia II Definitive Edition is: it's a very lazy graphical remaster with no other meaningful enhancements made to the original game from a decade ago. You can watch side-by-side comparison videos and see how little noticeable difference there is. Vito has blue eyes now and looks a little more tan? Maybe the textures on cars are a little sharper? Basically this looks like the original game with a reshade mod enabled. Apparently they've fixed some bugs which affected the original game on high refresh rate monitors (I was still a 60hz pleb back when I played the original so I can't say), but in exchange they've removed the PhysX elements for some reason? If you were hoping for, say, some of the additional content notoriously cut during the Mafia II's development to be restored here, fuhgeddaboutit.

Since I got Mafia II Definitive Edition for free for owning the "classic" version of the game, I guess I can't complain too much, but if I paid for this, I'd be upset.

Underwhelming graphical upgrades and cut content "might have beens" aside, Mafia II is still a game worth playing, and didn't get as much respect as it deserved because people expected it to be GTA with fedoras, which it just isn't. However, while it's an enjoyable experience, it's also quite a short one. If you're wanting to play the game for the first time you're looking at paying thirty bucks for 10-15 hours of gameplay, which is a bit dear. If they still sold the "classic" edition of the game at a lower price I would say just buy that - buuuut, they don't. That being the case: If you haven't played the game before, get it, but get it on sale. If you've played it before, there is no reason to play the "Definitive Edition" apart from nostalgia, it plays and even looks (almost) exactly the same as the game you remember.

"When living half your life in alternate history Soviet Russia, Bio Shocks YOU!" Perhaps somewhat derivative, but derivative of some pretty darn good games. Short, but with no dull moments, well written if a little predictable, good looking in a "This game was made with UE3" kind of way, and with some very enjoyable weapons and abilities: Try not to smile when using a sniper rifle that allows you to slow time and steer your bullets around obstacles to their targets. Not enjoyed by as many people as it should be, since it rarely goes on sale because lolActivision, but give this a chance the next time the stars align and it gets a decent markdown and you're not likely to regret it.

It's not the game its predecessor was, and it's not the Grand Theft Auto with fedoras people unfairly expected it to be. But Mafia II is still a pretty respectable game in its own right. The story is solid, in a pastiche-of-every-mobster-movie-you've-ever-seen kind of way, and there's a reasonable number of nice set-piece action sequences. Probably not worth the $30 that they're still asking normally, but if you can get it on sale, for, say, $15 or less, the game is worth that much just for the part where you drive home from burying a body while your buddies sing along to the radio in the back seat, in between puking from a combination of drunkenness and corpse-stench.