Mafia II: Wasting a worldIs there any real point to Mafia II’s sprawling recreation of post-war New York City, other than to look pretty and offer up some pleasant driving downtime between shoot-outs and hammy mafioso dialogue?Because despite a thick veneer of believability and detail - from chuckle-some buffoons slipping on the ice to digital pastiches of New York’s most famous landmarks - delve a few layers deeper and you’ll realise that Empire City is little more than a ghost town. There’s nothing to do, no where to go and, outside of a few crappy collectibles, no reason to veer off the beaten track during missions.Open worlds have been around long enough for us to easily identify exactly what makes them tick. They help games feel less linear by allowing you to choose missions at your own discretion and tackle them to your own taste. They offer countless distractions, make environments feel more organic and reward exploration.Well, unless buying countless silk shirts is your thing, Mafia II’s Empire Bay offers none of the elements that typify open worlds. There are no side jobs and all missions are completey successive. There are few ways to make petty cash and barely anything to spend it on. You can pimp cars with beefy engines, but the police will fine you for speeding. You can buy guns but post-shootout body searches will fill your arsenal. You can buy a new shirt. Whoopee.What a waste of a world to delegate it to sluggish asphalt-crawling chaperoning from point A to point B.As the game winds down, and you’ve seen the same highway for the hundredth time, you’ll likely realise that you still don’t hav a lay of the land. Whereas sizable chunks of Liberty City or Vice City or San Andreas become second nature to you, your unflinching dedication to an anachronistic GPS guideline makes Mafia II’s world seem completely foreign, despite a good 15 hours worth of vacation time.The world comes across as obnoxious padding, boring and unproductive time wasting, something to do between the game’s lacklustre shoot outs and juvenile cut scenes. The environment is wasted, with developer 2K Czech seemingly content that the beautiful, intricately designed and architecturally vibrant world simply exists, without giving players any good reason to explore it. It seems silly to dispense game design tips in a genre that’s nearly a decade old, but take heed: an open world is far from the only ingredient in an open world game.

Mafia II: Wasting a world

Is there any real point to Mafia II’s sprawling recreation of post-war New York City, other than to look pretty and offer up some pleasant driving downtime between shoot-outs and hammy mafioso dialogue?

Because despite a thick veneer of believability and detail - from chuckle-some buffoons slipping on the ice to digital pastiches of New York’s most famous landmarks - delve a few layers deeper and you’ll realise that Empire City is little more than a ghost town. There’s nothing to do, no where to go and, outside of a few crappy collectibles, no reason to veer off the beaten track during missions.

Open worlds have been around long enough for us to easily identify exactly what makes them tick. They help games feel less linear by allowing you to choose missions at your own discretion and tackle them to your own taste. They offer countless distractions, make environments feel more organic and reward exploration.

Well, unless buying countless silk shirts is your thing, Mafia II’s Empire Bay offers none of the elements that typify open worlds. There are no side jobs and all missions are completey successive. There are few ways to make petty cash and barely anything to spend it on. You can pimp cars with beefy engines, but the police will fine you for speeding. You can buy guns but post-shootout body searches will fill your arsenal. You can buy a new shirt. Whoopee.

What a waste of a world to delegate it to sluggish asphalt-crawling chaperoning from point A to point B.

As the game winds down, and you’ve seen the same highway for the hundredth time, you’ll likely realise that you still don’t hav a lay of the land. Whereas sizable chunks of Liberty City or Vice City or San Andreas become second nature to you, your unflinching dedication to an anachronistic GPS guideline makes Mafia II’s world seem completely foreign, despite a good 15 hours worth of vacation time.

The world comes across as obnoxious padding, boring and unproductive time wasting, something to do between the game’s lacklustre shoot outs and juvenile cut scenes. The environment is wasted, with developer 2K Czech seemingly content that the beautiful, intricately designed and architecturally vibrant world simply exists, without giving players any good reason to explore it.

It seems silly to dispense game design tips in a genre that’s nearly a decade old, but take heed: an open world is far from the only ingredient in an open world game.

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