The Mafia II Demo a 3rd person shooter was made available to PS+ subscribers 24 hours prior to it's general release, it took about thirty minutes to download and install. I couldn't wait for the demo to finish downloading thirty minutes seems like an eternity or it seemed that way because I was watching it download, after it was done I fired it up to see if it could deliver or was it hype.
Graphics
The native resolution is 720p while it looks nice, I'm a tad bit spoiled so I fired up the AVR and converted it to 1080p ahhhh much better. I for one am rarely impressed by demos but I have to admit this one caught me by surprise the attention to detail is amazing, the clothes, cars, hairstyles, homes, and home furnishings are accurate for the time period. The cutscenes were also rather impressive but this usually means the gameplay graphics take a backseat..... not this time, I was in the middle of storming the warehouse I took cover behind a column to reload I could see bits of the column fly past me while a couple of wiseguys unloaded on my position, from what I can tell if it looks like you can destroy it you most likely can.
Gameplay
I have a small issue here in regards to camera positioning, when you first start out you are at home waiting for a phone call which happens immediately I took the call after that I started to investigate my surroundings. When walking around in a small area it became hard to see what was going on since the camera would focus on the Vito's head and not on the surrounding area but other than that it was fine.
Almost everything in the home is interactive go to the closet and change clothes, faucets, grab something from the fridge if your hungry, radio, windows etc..etc. After taking a look around I decide it was time to get to work, walk out the front door then a timer starts I believe it's ten minutes can't say for sure since I wasn't expecting it this is your allotted time you have for driving, the garage is on the right said press the action button and you will have a couple of cars to choose from after you make your choice it's time to ride.
Now the driving aspect took me a minute to get use to since the accelerate is the R2 button and brake is the L2 button (Default) now the car handling is pretty much what I expected since they are cars from the period you can't go whipping around turns without sliding and there is no power steering so it handles just like it's real life counterpart. If you look at the map on the lower left you will notice a red line this is the fastest route to take to get to your objective.
Now the gun play was good there are a few different types of guns in this demo and here is a list of what I found.
M1911 (.45)
MG42 (Light Machine Gun)
M1928 (Tommy Gun)
Remington 870 ( 12 Gauge Shotgun)
Shooting was easy enough L2 to aim R2 to fire and R1 and X to take cover, there is no jump & roll option (because Mobster don't do that). Shooting in general my take sometime getting use to for some or they may just not like it at all. The voice acting was good no lip sync issues to report, I found the demo fun if I had to give it a score I would say a solid 8.5 for a demo while it has somethings that took me a minute to get use to it wasn't a deal breaker for me. If you haven't downloaded it yet do so now....... stop reading this and go download it already.
