TheXboxLife

There’s no doubt that sports games have lost the simplicity that made them so accessible back in the days of the Genesis and Super Nintendo, when player models were nothing more than 2D sprites on the screen. In those days the expectation for a realistic depiction of the sport was minimal. That has changed recently and has sadly left the younger generation of gamers without much of a footing in the sports world. That’s where Little League World Series 2010 (LLWS 2010) comes into the picture with its simple gameplay and easy-to-learn feature set. There’s no doubt that it’s lacking in many of the hardcore baseball areas, but as a casual title meant for newcomers to the sport, I think there just might be enough to warrant your time.



The two most complicated elements for the MLB 2K series – hitting and pitching – have been simplified significantly in LLWS 2010. They both hinge on you holding and releasing the right trigger at a certain time. For hitting, holding the right trigger starts a simple power meter that, if timed just right, will get you maximum power when you release the trigger. Pitching works in an almost identical way, but has been handcuffed further by the fact that every pitcher has the same offering of three pitches and you can only move the pitch’s location right or left. Fielding is automated, your only worry being to throw the ball to the correct base and making sure to wiggle the right analog stick to light a fire under your players’ butts (read: make them run faster). If you can’t tell by now, the gameplay in Little League World Series is extraordinarily simple with only the most basic of actions left up to the player. In other words, if you’ve never touched a baseball game before, this one is for you.

Adding a bit of spice to the mix is the inclusion of power ups and talent cards. Talent cards can be played at any time during the game to give your players certain abilities or detracting from the abilities of the opposing team. You can earn a binder full of more than 50 cards, five of which can be assigned to any one game. These cards do things like lessen the speed of the other team, increase your hitting power, and make your team run faster as well as other abilities. You can see that the development team knew that the gameplay needed some spicing up, but the talent cards don’t quite take the step needed to keep things feeling fresh after several hours of play.



The artificial intelligence could also use a bit of work, especially since the game relies on the AI of your teammates for so many crucial actions. Too often players will make bad decisions when running the bases and there’s an interesting issue when the opposing team hits the ball slowly down the first base line and pulls the first baseman from his post.



Another downer is the general lack of innovation since the game launched on Wii back in 2008. Many of the same mechanics make their way into the Xbox 360 version with little changes to speak of. At the very least the developers should have added online multiplayer support. Sadly all you get is leaderboard integration and the same offering of mini-games to play locally that we saw on Wii. That doesn’t take away from the fact that kids will find something to enjoy, but they could’ve done more to differentiate the two packages.

The only area that has seen a bump when making the transition to the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is the visuals. They’ve been nicely bumped up into the HD era and enjoy more detail, brighter colors and a framerate that holds strong throughout. Granted, nothing you’re going to see should push the system, but that hasn’t stopped other games in the past from experiencing technical issues for no real reason.

For Vito it is very much a case of ask and ye shall receive. Within minutes of starting the latest Mafia II demo, Vito and his mafia gang are laying waste to the Crazy Horse, the favorite speakeasy of a rival gang of slick-haired greasers. The objective is to pump all 150 bullets in your possession into the bar before throwing a Molotov through the window. You, in picturesque Mafioso fashion, are sending a message. The sequence shows off the fancy physics engine – with glasses shattering, bottles spraying their contents into the air and even the letters of the bar’s sign thumping down into the ground – but also bears an uncanny resemblance to the kind of antics you’d see in a Scorsese classic.



The 2002 cult original, Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven is now so ancient it’ll have been forgotten by all but the most devout of PC gamers. It was an interesting sandbox game set in the 1930s that forced you down a very linear path with realistic (read: absolutely dire) driving when the rest of the genre was all too happy to have you firing rocket launchers into crowds of pedestrians. There was noticeable schizophrenia in the design, the game slapping your wrists if you broke the speeding limit one minute but throwing you missions where you gun down entire hotels of rival Mafioso’s the next. This was all part of a design master plan by Illusion Softworks (now 2K Czech) to have you imitating the lifestyle of a real wise guy, or at least how they appear in the movies, by playing down your squabbles, feuds and grabs for power in the public eye but dishing up plenty of law-breaking brutality behind the closed doors of Lost Heaven’s seedy hotels, empty restaurants and abandoned factories.



It also forced you to sit and appreciate life at a slower pace before letting you run amok in a sweet trilby. Mafia II is no different, so before you’re allowed to blow up bars with Molotov cocktails you’ve got to do things like sit down at a dinner table with your Mamma and little sis and say grace before tucking into, if I recall correctly, some delicious baked pasta dish. As the forks are busy hitting the plates you also discover that Pappy borrowed some money from a loan shark before he started pushing up the daisies. This, I presume, is just an average day in the life of an Italian-American family in the middle of the 20th century.



Heading out into the new Mafia playground, Empire Bay (a much better name than Lost Heaven, for the record) is a ten square mile slice of yesteryear that encompasses all walks of city life. The mission 2K had on show started with a jaunt through a breezy summer afternoon, dotted with patches of verdant grass so vibrant I felt like somebody might have accidentally turned the saturation dial a little high on the monitor. The city teems with nostalgia, from the checkerboard flooring of your apartment, peppered with cigarette butts and cracked tiles, to the range of beehives and short curls donning the noggins of the ladies of the city, who I imagine are strutting around thinking about good old fashioned family values and what to cook for dinner.

It’s all about making you “feel like you’re playing through Goodfellas,” according to producer Alex Cox. We’ll ignore the anachronism – the game spans the 1940s and 50s (and possibly the 60s, if the epic scope of the original is any bearing) – and focus on the sentiment. Even from the introduction, as your partner-in-crime Joe Barbaro drives you across the deep blue hues of Empire Bay at night, it feels like a living, breathing portrayal of romanticised yesterday. It’s an admirable attempt, with the polished presentation made complete by a meticulous attention to detail. There’s very little danger of the game veering off into a Heavy Rain territory, though: Mafia II is playing up to its open-world conventions. Goodfellas would need a scene where Henry Hill dashed around a disused foundry and shot an entire gang of filthy, two-bit greasers in the face with a pistol to feel exactly like Mafia II.

Plenty of action is promised. When the confident swaggers and sharp suits fail to stop the proverbial hitting the fan, the game quickly becomes about making swarms of goons say hello to your collection of little friends. With a competent cover system that’s closer to Gears of War rather than GTA IV, Vito happily ducks and weaves his way around the usual assortment of chest-high objects that have found themselves haphazardly scattered all over the place.

It’s good that he does, too, because for an ex-soldier he’s a little on the flimsy side. He wouldn’t last twenty seconds in Call of Duty 2. The difficulty settings are still being finely tuned, but limited health regeneration strikes a nice balance between old and busted health packs and the new hotness of health management. Cower behind cover for a few seconds and your health will tick back up, stopping a bit short of the whole bar. Keep getting hit and you’ll quickly find yourself regenerating only half a bar of health. 2K Czech want the game to be challenging but it’s worth remembering that these are the same masochistic developers who were forced to patch the original Mafia after users complained about the infamous Race level being impossible.

The rest of your squad includes Steve, a grizzled capo who shoots first and garrottes later, and Marty, a neurotic who acts like Steve Buscemi after a few venti lattes. They shoot the odd baddie from time to time and provide refined dialog such as “bring it on, dickcheese” and “time to meet your maker, f**kface.”

Mafia II’s combat is perfectly functional, but the mission I played lacked a genuine sense of excitement. But a giant, sprawling game such as this is impossible to encapsulate within a single abbreviated mission. At the moment, though, it’s clear that the game’s real skill comes from its exemplary presentation and competently handled environments. Even the radio stations, the ever-reliable atmosphere generators of the sandbox genre, pick tunes to fit the mood of what’s going on. In my playthrough I got The Robins – “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” and a discussion about whether the credit card would catch on. A song about lust and rivalry alongside a debate about acquiring wealth? Sounds like the core of Mafia II to me.