2026-08-24 · blog
Mafia II (2010) — a city built this well, with this little to do in it
Episode 37 of “Today Is Release Day”: Mafia II, released in North America on August 24, 2010 and elsewhere on August 27. It was developed by 2K Czech in the Czech Republic, published by 2K Games, for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows. The setting is the fictional Empire Bay, the years 1945 to 1951, and the lead is Vito Scaletta, home from the war. Eight years separated it from the 2002 original, and the LS3D engine was replaced by the purpose-built Illusion Engine. Three radio stations play licensed period music, and the PC version used NVIDIA PhysX for cloth and destruction. Opinion split hard: Metacritic averages of 75 for PC and PlayStation 3 and 74 for Xbox 360, with Game Informer at 9, GameSpot at 8.5, IGN at 7 and Eurogamer at 4. In Japan, GAME Watch wrote that the city is “so beautiful, so vast — and yet there is very little you can do.” Cut content became its own story after release; designer Daniel Vávra confirmed an entire Sicilian chapter had gone. The Japanese release followed that November from Take-Two Interactive Japan at 7,140 yen.
