Recent reviews by Mattia Sbinotto

I don't really know why it is evidently so hard for video game developers to make a game that actually works on a technical level at the point of its release. My hardware is comfortably above the minimum requirements (Ryzen 7 5800X, RX 7600), yet the game puts the autodetect graphics settings to somewhere around low to medium depending on the setting. Even on these settings (where the game does not look nearly as good as it does on the screenshots), there is a lot of stuttering any time your character does literally anything. Move the camera? Stutter. Move your character? Stutter. Attack an enemy? Stutter.

I'm usually not one who complains about low framerate in games, as long as the framerate is actually consistent. Consistent 30 fps feels much smoother than whatever it is this game delivers, it does reach 60 fps some time, but when it stutters, it drops to 20 fps or below, which is literally unplayable. By "literally unplayable" I mean literally, I had to stop playing after less than an hour because the stuttering was actually making me nauseous.

This is the video game ever

This used to be one of the best singleplayer shooters out there, but unfortunately it has just been updated to force you to use common malware known as the "2K Launcher". The game worked great before, the addition of the launcher literally just made the game objectively worse by adding stuff that does not have any benefit for the user at all. There is no way to downpatch the game or not use the launcher. The game worked great for literally 9 1/2 years, but now out of nowhere they have to force a shovelware launcher on the user. Of course they also have the absolute audacity to call this a "quality of life update". I used to always recommend this game to anyone looking for a good singleplayer shooter, but there is no way I can recommend it to anyone anymore. Do not buy this game.

This game used to be really good, but unfortunately it has been updated and now comes with malware known as the "2K Launcher" with no easy way to disable it. There is an option ingame called "disable launcher", but that does literally nothing and keeps resetting to default if you change it. If you start the game, you will be greeted by a the 2K privacy policy, there's no way you'd ever hit "accept" if you read and understood all of it. You don't have to accept the privacy policy to play the game, but if you refuse it, you will get nagged by it every time you start the game. The game also keeps nagging you to create a 2K account, which again you don't have to do to play the game, but if you don't do it, the game will keep annoying you with it every time you start it.

If you buy Mafia II Definitive Edition, you will also receive Mafia II Classic, which is the superior version as it has neither of these anti-features added later. There is no way to buy the original version individually on Steam anymore, so you'll still be paying $30 for an 11 year old game. If you really want to play this game, get the original version via retail or whatever, but don't buy the Definitive Edition.

Definitely one of the games ever made

You can decline the data collection agreement and it doesn't affect your ability to play the game in any way, even online.

Fear not the man who has released 1000 games, but the man who has released one game 1000 times

Don't install this. It has a massive impact on performance and stability unless your PC is significantly above the recommended specs for this texture pack. The download is literally twice as large as the base game, but the visual difference is barely noticeable in most cases.

really cool game, probably not the kind of game I would play for 1000 hours, but it's worth checking out

I played this game a ton when it came out and I used to enjoy it a lot. When I started playing, the most modern vehicle in the game was the F-86 Sabre, there were no tanks yet and aircraft were divided in 20 levels you progressed by earning EXP, just to give you a perspective of how long ago that was. However, I cannot remember any update in the last 5 years that has actually made the game better. All that was added is endgame content to make the game even more grindy than it already was before. I have basically played only one single nation in the entire 1650 hours I have right now, and I still am nowhere near close to the most modern aircraft, let alone the most modern tank that is available in the game. I have not even touched the navy or helicopter gamemodes aside from 1 or 2 matches when they came out. There is also a player level, which represents a combined experience earned across all game modes and all nations. You start at level 1, the highest possible rlevel is 100, after 1650 hours I am level70-something and the progress from rlevel 99 to 100 takes about as much XP as the progress from level 1 to level 50.

The game is deliberately designed for you to be able to progress super easy through vehicle ranks I-III to get you hooked on the game. Ranks IV and V are still very much possible to unlock within reasonable time, although progressing through rank IV will take you approximately twice as long as the progress from ranks I to III. After rank V, the point where the game progression originally stopped, the research progress becomes painfully slow, unbearably so, unless you are spending real money by buying a premium account or premium vehicle.

The entire time you are grinding for one vehicle, you will be unsure if you are even having fun, but once you unlocked the fancy new vehicle and drive it in battle for the first time, you will be certain you are not having fun. The grind does not stop after spending 100s of hours in the game to unlock the vehicle, you have to spend another ~50 hours grinding for even the most basic modifications to make the vehicle somewhat competitive (things like spare parts or fire extinguishers, stuff no sane tank crew would ever go in battle without) so you don't get ♥♥♥♥ on by literally everyone else in the match.

Of course, all of the long grind can be sped up or entirely bypassed by spending real money on the game, which is exactly what Gaijin wants you to do. The grind is deliberately designed to be slow and frustrating enough for you to consider spending money on the game, but not as slow and frustrating to make you quit outright. Because no premium vehicle offers an inherent great advantage over a fully upgraded standard vehicle from the same "battle rating" (score that ranks the effectiveness of the vehicle), Gaijin maintains the position that the game is not pay to win, but rather "pay to get things earlier", which is something I agreed with in the past. However, considering how long the grind for the new higher rank vehicles now takes if you do not spend any money, I would 100% consider it a pay to win game of the same tier as some obscure mobile game.