Mafia II has a wonderful sandbox environment. Lighting and weather are a marvel to experience; you need gameplay though and overall, I would say that I quite enjoyed the DLC. I don't usually like driving in games, but I kinda got to like it in Mafia II. Just as well, there's a lot of it. The DLC are not wonderful or great, they are just about good. The problem is there's too much repetitive grind and overall they often lack challenge in the missions. They just about kept me hanging in there with occasionally varied tasks to complete the end story, but it was always only just enough, not awash with thought and planning. Joe's Adventures are the worst of the DLC though, jarring arcade elements are introduced and the missions are far too much of a grind with little variation. However the base gameplay is good enough to keep you going through the DLC and there are just about enough lengthy, complex shooting missions with the added challenge of being against the clock to keep up the interest.

A good base game that handles driving very well and does a reasonable job of character development. The fps element of the game is a solid cover shooter that allows for multiple routes to targets and makes good use of the environment to destroy, hide and explode to your advantage. This is highly enjoyable. There are varied weapons that sound, reload and feel different and obviously do different levels of damage. ammunition is plentiful (I played on medium difficulty) and the draw distance and collision detection is generally excellent so get your sniper skills in actions because enemy AI is distance triggered and this allows you a hack in some of the more open moments.

I would recommend the game, but you won't be missing out if you passed over the DLC.

Mafia II has a wonderful sandbox environment. Lighting and weather are a marvel to experience; you need gameplay though and overall, I would say that I quite enjoyed the DLC. I don't usually like driving in games, but I kinda got to like it in Mafia II. Just as well, there's a lot of it. The DLC are not wonderful or great, they are just about good. The problem is there's too much repetitive grind and overall they often lack challenge in the missions. They just about kept me hanging in there with occasionally varied tasks to complete the end story, but it was always only just enough, not awash with thought and planning. Joe's Adventures are the worst of the DLC though, jarring arcade elements are introduced and the missions are far too much of a grind with little variation. However the base gameplay is good enough to keep you going through the DLC and there are just about enough lengthy, complex shooting missions with the added challenge of being against the clock to keep up the interest. A good base game that handles driving very well and does a reasonable job of character development. The fps element of the game is a solid cover shooter that allows for multiple routes to targets and makes good use of the environment to destroy, hide and explode to your advantage. This is highly enjoyable. There are varied weapons that sound, reload and feel different and obviously do different levels of damage. ammunition is plentiful (I played on medium difficulty) and the draw distance and collision detection is generally excellent so get your sniper skills in actions because enemy AI is distance triggered and this allows you a hack in some of the more open moments. I would recommend the game, but you won't be missing out if you passed over the DLC.