Your name, Vito Scaletta. Where? The suburb of Little Italy in Empire Bay. The year, 1943.
You start your journey through this game as a nobody. A young italian american looking to make it big one day. Like the ‘Made Men’, the Mobsters. This game will take you from 1943 through to 1951. You do various jobs and slowly make your way through the ranks and become a ‘Made Man’. Along with your long time friend, Joe Barbaro, you earn your status.
The game is similar in many aspects to something like the GTA series. The missions tend to be more set out than sandbox type. If you had played the first Mafia game you would understand what I’m saying. It is a LOT prettier than its predecessor though. and quite a bit more entertaining. Once you’ve gone through all the misisons I’m sure you’ll find yourself roaming the streets of Empire Bay for many more hours.
The start of the game is done well. You get caught for a crime, and get presented with a choice. Prison or the frontlines. You get sent to fight in Italy. This is where you get introduced to the games action controls. Gunfights, moving around, and the use of the cover system. This is where you can really appreciate the PhysX system that the game utilises. Bullets and explosions!
As you move further in the game and get introduced to new activities, you get a bit of a tutorial in that activity. Giving you a chance to master it before having to incoporate it in a proper situation. Learning how to ‘box’, picking locks, and the like. Allowing you to become a skilled fighter and thief.
One thing that might recall from Mafia I, was the constant annoyance that the police force were. It felt like they were there to police you. Keeping an eye on your every move. Not stopping at a traffic light, speeding through town, fender benders. They were there to catch you. or at least chase you around town until you got rid of them. In the sequel this has been toned down quite a bit. While they will catch you for offences, they will pursue any offender. If rival gang members shoot at you and the police are notified, they will pursue and fight those offenders.
A large array of classic vehicles, as well as the music used in the game make it feel very authentic. It could make or break your driving time through Empire Bay. The music is a bit limited though, which means you’ll either be humming along OR turning off the cars radio as soon as you jack it.
Another feature of this game is Nvidias PhysX. (heres an article from extremetech to follow up a bit more on that, http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2368499,00.asp). It adds the extra touches in the game that you can stop and appreciate. The flutter of a coat, the shattering of glass, any environmental behaviour. The only possible problem with this would be if you are an owner of a non-nvidia card. You will notice a huge impediment to your framerate with this running. The article from extremetech debates whether the beauty of PhysX is worth what you give up in framerate. Pretty Interesting.
The other factor is that this game is based on steams gaming platform. While I have no problem with that, I know there are a bunch of people that don’t like it.
I’m only about 2/3 of the way through the game thus far, but I’m enjoying it a lot and can see myself playing it for many more hours. There is lots to see and do in this title. With downloadable content (DLC), the life of the game will surely be extended. The second DLC is “Jimmy’s Vendetta”, this is due around 7 September. Extract from the wiki page: ” offering arcade-style gameplay along with new missions and leaderboard competition. In Jimmy’s Vendetta, the player once again controls Jimmy and helps him clean up messes around Empire Bay – the game features the same online and leaderboard features as the previous DLC” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_II
Preparation for this game was less than ideal. The practise that was arranged for the Thursday night fell through due to the other team forgetting about it. We then organised a quick warmup time on Sunday evening. Just to give us some exposure to the map. Focussing on the middle point.
White Pass is a linear map. It has three capture points in a straight line. A, B, and C. The area around the middle of the map, combined with the buildings and shrubberies make it possible to perform flanking maneouvers undetected. if you dont keep vigilant they can sneak by.
Alcohol – Tobacco – Firearms (ATF) were largely unknown to us. All that I knew was that these guys could frag. Right at the start of the game they informed us that they only had 7 guys available.
As expected much of the game was contested around the middle portion of the map. At times ATF did send one guy around the side to try capture another flag, and draw some of our troops away. This worked very well for them. The remaining six then faught as a unit. A few times they tried to make use of a sniper with Mortars. It didn’t work out for him or them.
The first round was a pretty tight affair. With no team willing to budge. Our focus remained unchanged for the duration of the match, keep two flags and work from there. ATF found it very difficult to break us down on flags. Which resulted in the second round being a more one-sided affair.
It was a tough game as I expected. The ATF guys really brought it to us with everything they had. I respect that a great deal. Well played guys!
Rocket-Boy had the following to say about the game: “ATF was a seriously strong team, they played very well together as a team and at full strength would be a force to be reconed with”
With better preparation we will be rewarded with better results.
Armour Squad:
TheVovo
Rocket-Boy
Grimlock_za
LazerGunz
The game was scheduled for Sunday, 29 August. The SGS clan servers were up but nobody was able to log into them. Due to all the chaos on Sunday evening we had a practise session on the GRRR server. Which was pretty good as it turned out. We’ll definitely have sessions like that again in the future. The game had to be postponed to Monday. During Monday the game was again postponed to Tuesday night @ 20:30. This was a bit frustrating as we had to omit a core player from the infantry squad, Bushweasel, as he was unavailable for that night. Psychosis filled his position.
This map is quite balanced in that the Russian side can get to Flag A first, but it takes them longer to get to Flag C. Whereas the US side can get to Flag C first, but will take a bit longer to get to Flag A.
The first round we played as the Russian side. The armour squad got to Flag A before SLS did. There was a brief skirmish with some troops who had arrived on a quad, and then we were free to take on the APC. Which obviously didn’t last. We then got settled in at A and remained there for the rest of the round. Fighting them off in waves.
The infantry squad capped B Flag and then faught over Flag C. They were forced to move between flags due to the advantage that the US side have on that side.
Inbetween rounds the server died and came up again without a password, but we didn’t care and just carried on.
The second round was the opposite of the first round. With the Infantry squad having the advantage, and the armour squad having a bit more of a struggle at Flag A. We lost the initial fight on Flag A and were kept busy there for the remainder of the round. They used AT mines, which actually worked more against them than it did for them.
All in all we were too well organised on the night. The practise sessions that we had, left us in good stead to deal with most teams that we could come up against on that map. Well organised squad work, and a good understanding of the map secured us the win on the night.
Suppose this will take care of the riff-raff and tone down the tard behaviour on the pub servers. Anything is better than what is currently going on right?
Please take note of this, as any such ban may see you missing a BC2 clan game or practise.
Link to Source on SGS or here is the initial post explaining the “Community Bans” system:
Today, SGS introduces a new system called “Community Bans”, which gives players the ability to deal with offensive trouble-makers themselves.
The Rules Of Engagement states that swearing and other offensive speech is prohibited on SGS servers. In the past, volunteer admins have enforced this rule. In more recent times, there has been nobody to enforce this rule. Now, you can enforce this rule yourself using “Community Bans”.
How it works:
SGS logs the contents of in-game text chat. When offensive language is detected, the offense will be listed on the new Community Bans website. Anybody with an SGS forum account can log into the Community Bans website and “Approve” the ban.
Technical information
You need to use your forum username and password to log into the website.
After an offense is committed, it can take up to 10 minutes for it to be listed on the website.
Offenses older than 72 hours are deleted.
Bans last for 4 days (96 hours).
For reference purposes, your forum username will be assosiated with the any ban that you approve.
At the time of writing this, only Call Of Duty 4 is supported.
As we all know after rAge last year BF2 was put on the shelf, laid to rest from the competitive scene. Its successor, Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (BC2), has arrived. It has captured the attention of players beyond the scope of the previous Battlefield series. It is drawing players from other First Person Shooters (FPS), and proving to greatly popular.
There are some minor issues surrounding the game at this time though. There have been two patches soo far, with seemingly more on the way.
One of the factors hindering the switch to BC2 is the PC specs required to run the game at a satisfactory level. Not everyone can make the upgrade, and some wont be able to make the upgrade now. There are also some minor issues with the graphics cards. Apparently Nvidia compliant cards allow for faster load times between levels. Leaving the ATI users lagging somewhat behind at round start time. Hopefully these issue will be sorted out in the near future.
