Anyhow, the game starts you off with you in Italy shooting Italians, which warms you up for the rest of the game of shooting Italians, and after the first campaign mission in Italy, the game sends you right back to Empire Bay, where you engage in the usual petty criminality that marks this sort of thing. But hold on, because there's a twist.
In the Grand Theft Auto universes, the criminal world is made to seem awfully fun. In fact, a great many people who play the Grand Theft Auto games (hereby to be abbreviated as GTA), tend to immediately pick up a car, start running people over, and see how long they can last. But there are a ton of side things to do in the GTA universe, which really make it seem as though you could enjoy a lucrative crime life. The police, if they do catch you, are a momentary inconvenience, and easily avoided. As long as you're not committing homicide right in front of them, they typically don't bother you too much. And as you amass loot, you're free to spend it on whatever savory or unsavory thing you might want, and there are tons of those things. New outfits, new cars, new furniture. And if you get tired of just running around, you can deliver pizza, fight fires, fight crime as a vigilate or as a cop, take people to the hospital, or just explore an alive and vibrant city. As you drive around, there are lots of things to do, and the only way to do more is to be a bigger criminal.
But Mafia 2, well, this is a horse of a different colour. Remember my review of Spec Ops: The Line? That game wasn't fun either, and the lack of fun of it made the story better. Shooting soldiers and civilians in that game wasn't fun, but you had to do it to progress. Similarly, the gameplay in Mafia 2 isn't fun either. Oh sure, it's the standard shoot 'em up style firefights where you hide behid stuff and pop out, returning behind cover to get your health back, but it's what happens between those firefights that is really interesting, in that it's boring.
Between firefights, at the beginning, end, and through most of the middle of missions, you drive through the city. And the city is huge. It's huge, and there's nothing to do except drive through it to your next destination. That's it. Even if you kill civilians, they don't drop any money, if you kill the police, they just send more police. That wouldn't be so bad if the distance was smaller, and THAT wouldnt' be so bad if the police in Mafia weren't super-attuned to the slightest fender bender. Yes, you can get busted for driving over the speed limit in a car from the 1930s, which is barely faster than walking. No jokes.
This mechanic of having a dull commute at the start of the mission, and then right back home at the end of the mission, with nothing to do afterwards, really hammers home the notion that maybe being in the Mafia wasn't such a great thing after all. Oh sure, it seems fun, because the only parts we ever get to see are the fun parts, the parties, the money, the power, all that stuff. And that's the Mafia that gets presented to you. In Mafia 2, you mess up a job delivering illegal gas ration stamps, and then go to jail for seven years. And no, it doesn't just cut away and say '...seven years later' with you getting out, no no no. You go to jail and have to walk around in jail for what seems like, well, seven years. You have to do laundry, you walk very slowly around the jail, the guards rough you up, and that's what happens. In all the GTA clones or equivalents, if you get arrested, it's a momentary blip where the cops might take your guns away if they're feeling overly sassy. In Mafia 2, they take your time away. Just like real jail.
Why is this so important? Because of the point the game is making. Unlike GTA, not only does crime not pay, it isn't even fun. As soon as you seem to get rewards going on, as soon as you get a house with a pool and pink flamingoes (seriously) in it, it gets burned down by a rival gang. Because all your property is stolen, you have no real claim to it. Ultimately, the real take home lesson is something that you might find jammed right in the middle of the book of proverbs - The righteous have enough to satisfy their appetite, but the belly of the wicked is empty. There's a great passage in Proverbs 9, which says
The foolish woman is loud
she is ignorant and knows nothing.
She sits at the door of her house,
on a seat at the high places of the town
calling to those who pass by,
who are going straight on their way,
'you who are simple, turn in here!'
And to those without sense, she says
'Stolen water is sweet,
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.'
But they do not know that the dead are there,
that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.'
Proverbs 9:13-18
Do you ever wonder how actual gangs get recruits? Mainly because that seductive element is there, and real people go for it. That's what happened in this game, and I went for it. I thought I'd be Al Capone, or at least Joe Pesci from Goodfellas, and you know who I ended up being? A low level scrub, just like all the other low level scrubs. No jokes. I fell for it, in the same way as anyone else might. Folly was there, whispering to me, saying 'you know what would be fun? Joining the Mafia, wearing a fedora, and shooting the place up.' And you know what happened? I got to commute very slowly around Empire Bay, driving actually important people around, and those important people eventually tried to kill me. Hooray.
This is what actually happens when you just indulge your appetites for crime and violence. Do you know what happens? It's probably really boring. It seems fun, but ultimately, it's the same old grind. Maybe the rules that God left us were there for a reason. Maybe murder and adultery and especially coveting were forbidden by him for a good reason - because they make us worse. Famously, it is said that Jesus came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. This is something that I keep on trying to make clear to the youth group, confirmation classes, and so on, who come up through the church - that the Ten Commandments aren't there to bust you up, they're there to give you a better life. God knows how you ought to live, how we all ought to live, and he has given us a way to get there. And if we ignore it, well, we are welcome to do so, but then we get the conseuqences of our actions. At the best, it's a long, boring commute. At worst, jail or death, both of which happen in this game.
What's great about Mafia 2? That it's boring. That seems like strange praise, but there we go. Games can make points in all sorts of ways, and this one makes points by being dull. And it's a good point to make.
If they just accidentally made the game boring thinking they were making it fun, then I will withdraw any praise I may have given it.
Coming up next time: Probably the Binding of Isaac. Probably.
