The demo began with you playing as Vito. You are making your way towards the phone as it's ringing off the hook in a '50's house in a typical suburban surrounding. After you hang up the phone, you know that you are meeting the rest of your gang to "off" another mobster. You then have to find transportation to take you to the assigned location. You can either go the route of Grand Theft Auto and just break into a car or you could go to your garage and have your choice of one of ten cars to get you from point 'a' to point 'b'. Once you pick the car and are able to get to your location, a cut scene occurs.  The scene opens as you prepare to ambush the mobster. One problem, someone just spotted you and alerted the target - the cutscene ends and now the fun begins. For the sake of not spoiling the story, I'll move away from the narrative and on to my driving experience.

With more cars to play with, I can safely say that each car has been designed to handle realistically according to the makes and models of that time. While driving from your character's home to the location, I decided to play a bit of GTA and test out some of cars like a station wagon, a pick up truck and various other surrounding cars that were in the area. The controls of the cars are not what you would expect if you were driving a modern day car. The handling system is tricky and if you aren't driving the speed limit, you can easily lose control of the car and end up either running straight into another car or running some old lady over. Brian can attest that I committed the latter offense within the first two minutes of the demo. A small hint to you all: if you wish to stay "under the radar," obey the rules of the road, because if you don't and the cops are nearby, they will come after you.

Speaking of playing the game like GTA, in this demo I decided to take it to that level. Oh boy, not only did it surpass what GTA 4 should have been but did it much better. Nearly everything is interactive. Not every car you walk up to is going to be unlocked for you to get in at anytime. In Mafia 2. you have to first break the window to unlock the car door - then you can get in. Another thing that I found interesting, the NPC's you attempt to carjack in the game will fight back. It is a nice twist in the game play, especially because the hand-to-hand combat system is not that difficult. The cover system works very similar to how you would expect it to work. I was able to hide behinds boxes, pillars or anything else I found to use for cover.

My Take:

After playing more of Mafia 2, it is certain that I will be picking this game up and giving it a good play through to see if it everything I expect the game to be. Yes, it may feel like the first Mafia, but I feel the narrative is just a bit deeper in this sandbox game. It's been a while since I played in a sandbox world and I cannot wait to tackle Mafia 2 when it drops on August 24^th for North America and August 27^th for everyone else for the PlayStation 3, XBox 360 and PC.