Hands-on with (much) more of Mafia II

Finding Luca was easy enough, but after that we had to slowly chase him in one of those wonderfully tedious “don’t get too close or he’ll see you” tailing sequences made popular by GTA. Luca’s trail led us to a slaughterhouse, where he let himself in and locked the gate behind him. Talking to a nearby worker standing over a broken-down car revealed that the only other way into the slaughterhouse was through the sewer, which led to a lovely stroll through a filth pipe (complete with a hidden issue of Playboy to discover), during which Vito was drenched with a bucketload of raw sewage from an overhead drain.

Above: Try not to wear anything too nice for this mission

What followed was the first real stealth sequence of the demo, complicated by the fact that Vito now reeked – something that would become a running joke, as half the people in the rest of the episode remarked on it. It began when we crawled out of the sewer, only to attract the attention of a dog behind a fence, which we hid from as cars pulled up and the captive Balls and Beans were marched into the slaughterhouse. After climbing through an unattended window, finding them was just a matter of silently creeping past the guards and workers, listening to their banter as we edged closer to the destination blip on the radar.

Once we’d found Balls and Beans – who were hanging from meathooks and being interrogated, along with a third Falcone man who got his throat slit as a warning to the others – Vito’s stench gave him away. As he advanced on Luca with his pistol drawn, however, some big palooka clocked him from behind, knocking the gun out of his hands and forcing Vito into a hand-to-hand fight with him. Long story short, Vito got his gun back, Balls got loose and another shootout erupted, during which we were able to get our hands on a Tommy gun and a ton of ammo.

With Beans secured and Balls running backup, Vito chased Luca to a side office, where he’d barricaded himself in. He’d also apparently called for help, as a bunch of cars full of armed thugs quickly pulled up in the lot outside and began shattering the windows with machinegun fire. Taking them out turned out to be fairly easy, so long as we stuck to cover, aimed for the cars’ gas tanks and threw out a couple of Molotovs that were in our inventory.

After the thugs were down, Vito and Balls found a heavy cart and rammed through Luca’s barricade. Hungry for revenge, Balls dragged the half-conscious Luca back into the interrogation room – which, incidentally, was filled with meat-grinding machinery – and we hopped into Luca’s sweet black convertible, no doubt ruining the upholstery with Vito’s sewage-drenched clothes.

Back at the Maltese Falcon, Vito delivered the news and was immediately ordered to go take a shower. Instead, we drove to the nearest clothing store and bought some new clothes (which is gross if you think about it in real-world terms), and then, as an afterthought, we held up the clerk.

As it turns out, committing a robbery is a great idea if you want free money and/or merchandise, but it can immediately bring a whole lot of heat down on your head, so be ready to fend off some angry cops. Hauling ass out of the store, we jumped back in the convertible and, after momentarily ditching the cops, took it into a body shop to disguise it. After the way we’d been driving, it kind of needed repairs anyway.

Once safely back at the Falcon, Vito was congratulated by an old-mobster friend, Leo, who he apparently knew from a stint in prison. Leo told him he and Joe had been recommended for full membership in Falcone’s gang, which led to a ceremony – shown in full – during which Vito was anointed as a “made man.”

Cue a montage of Joe and Vito living it up and shooting punks with near-total impunity, and the storyline moved into the ‘50s – and into the next chapter, Room Service.