Overall: 7.5/10

Story: 9/10
I had heard good things about Mafia 2’s story before I began my initial playthrough. The fans were 100% correct. The story itself is captivating, the tone and character interactions are reminiscent of the film Goodfellas (one of my favorite gangster/mafia movies of all time). The story is what really makes this series stand out. Joe and Vito’s relationship is charming and believable. I found myself invested in the outcome of a lot of these characters. Some of Vito’s acquaintances lack a certain depth or uniqueness to make them memorable and takes away from the story and immersion when I can’t remember who is who and what role they play exactly.

Graphics: 7/10
The game itself is quite beautiful, especially the environments. The environment is colorful and lively and provides a nice change of pace from more of the dull open world environments we see nowadays. Facial animations are still a bit rough. I’ve encountered the occasional visual bug. One example that comes to mind was Vito’s hair clipping in unnatural ways during a cutscene. The lip sync is rough at times, perhaps the remaster could’ve gone further to polish some of the less than stellar animations.

Sound: 6/10
The soundtrack is immersive and is one of the highlights of the game. The radio stations play music accurate to the 40’s and 50’s. My biggest complaint comes from the lack of variety in the game’s radio stations. There really isn’t much going on and I found myself turning the radio off to avoid hearing the same song for the 10th time in an hour. Audio bugs were more frequent than visual bugs. Most notably there were a few missions in which the same dialogue is repeated 2-3 times in quick succession which made it hard to understand exactly what is being said. Overall bugs and lack of variety leaves a lot to be desired.

Gameplay: 7/10
Mafia 2 plays a lot like a cover shooter with some stealth elements. Playing with both keyboard and mouse as well as an Xbox One controller felt responsive, and I have almost no complaints with either. The KB+M bindings can be configured to your liking if you find the default control scheme awkward. Very standard third person open world gameplay.