Mafia 1 vs Mafia 2

Mafia 1 wins hands down. It was just much better. Mafia 2 had more modern gameplay and was enjoyable but nowhere near its parent game.

I like Mafia 2 better because it didn't just focus on the streets of New york but also overseas (I forgot where, Italy?) and prison. I loved the first one but Mafia 2 story was a bit better but Mafia's ending is definitely better

Mafia II doesn't even come close.
The gameplay is very "on rails" and arcade-like.

The first one was very gritty and realistic, and the gunfights were actually very tactical and difficult. You had limited health which did not regenerate either, as well as limited weapons and ammo, so you had to practice conservation and possess quick wits. The enemies were quite deadly as well. One man with a high powered weapon could *beep* your day up, even if you survived him, because he could still take a huge chunk out of your health.

The driving was also much more realistic I thought, less arcade-like than the second. The cars were almost exact replicas of their 1920s/30s counterparts, even down to how they drove. This added anther unique challenge in piloting these old relics. As such, fast and well handling cars became invaluable.

There were also more side missions as well, and in Mafia II there were NONE. ZERO side missions!

There was a bigger variety of story missions as well. There were missions where you had to destroy cars, steal cars, race cars, stealth missions where you break into somewhere, timed missions, protection missions, fighting missions and others. Plus each mission was like a puzzle and you had to figure out how to solve it. You had to find out how to get the gun from the bathroom on the steamship mission, you had to figure out how to sneak the safecracker into the mansion in the stealth mission, you had to figure out how to kill everyone scattered throughout the church in The Priest mission. It was just more open ended in a way. Every gunfight and encounter became a small puzzle. In Mafia II you're basically guided throughout all the missions, told where to go, who to kill, and how to do it. Very linear, unlike first one.

I'm not even going to talk much about the story. Vito Scaletta and Joe Barbaro were a couple of unlikeable junkies. Tommy Angelo was a good natured man who was betrayed by his peers and sought to save his family.

Plus Mafia II was much more cartoonish and dumbed down in its design compared to the first one, and it didn't have nearly the mission length or replay value of the first.

Mafia II is mediocre. The first Mafia was a near masterpiece of open world and story gaming, seamlessly blending the two and effectively rivaling the GTA series. Mafia II abandoned its uniqueness of the first game and sought to become GTA. What a shame.



I said I never had much use for one....never said I didn't know how to use it.

Mafia II, definitely. I don't think the first Mafia is a very good game at all - it's annoying, buggy, and just not very fun. The story is boring, if I'm honest, and the voice acting is nothing special - even for the time, apart from the graphical quality, it's nothing special at all. I'd give it 5.8 out of 10.

However, Mafia II was a much better experience - more fun, great voice acting, pretty much bug-free and a very, very good story, even if the gameplay isn't perfect. 9.0 out of 10.

"I am a mushroom-cloud laying motherf-cker, motherf-cker!"

Both games have flaws but Mafia 1 was a joke even back then.
It was completely scripted with no freedom at all. The AI was non-existant, every NPC walks/drive the same pre-programmed path and the Cops were completely retared (Try it out for yourself: Get the cops on your tail and park your car with the driver side close to a wall and laugh about them running around like braindead morons or the Mission where you have to stop a Truck Driver. If you shoot at him, he drives away at fast speed but since he follows a pre-programmed path, you can just wait a minute and he will arrive at the same spot again. It's horrible)
Compare that to GTA 3 or Vice City which was released at the same time and is ten times better in every category.

The missions are always the same "drive there, shoot this, done" procedure. At least Mafia 2 has some stealth stuff and lockpicking.
Both games are cliche-ridden to the max though i thought that Mafia 1 was worse in that regard.

Mafia 2 has a bit more variety in the missions, better AI and of course way better Music