Take-Two "very proud" of Mafia II

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 2 September, 2010

Expects it to be profitable.

Take-Two has backed divisive gangster game Mafia II and hit back at comments from an analyst that it will fail to be profitable.

The parent company of Mafia II publisher 2K Games said it was "very proud" of the title, and described developer 2K Czech as "extremely talented".

Eurogamer gave Mafia II 4/10 in its review.

It currently enjoys a 75/100 rating on review aggregation site Metacritic.

Despite the mixed response from critics, Mafia II has enjoyed a sales success.

This week it replaced Square Enix's Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days at the top of the UK all-formats chart.

However, Wedbush Morgan's Michael Pachter last week predicted sluggish overall sales for Mafia II.

"Mafia II's average Metacritic score of 74 is well below expectations, and consumer interest appears to be waning, as the game's position has dropped in many best-seller lists in its first week. With six years in development, we believe the game is unlikely to achieve profitability," Pachter said in a note.

"We're very proud of the game," said Take-Two CEO Ben Feder in a third quarter earnings call this evening, "which features incredible action including car chases, explosive gun play, compelling characters and an engaging narrative that meticulously recreates the 1940s and 1950s.

"Mafia II was developed by 2K Czech, an extremely talented studio. Based upon the initial launch we expect this to be another profitable title for Take-Two," he added.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (40) Latest comment 1 year ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • coolbritannia #1 1 year ago

    LOL

    looks like every idiot who bought this will minus me. Go ahead, press the button of shame.
    Edited by 1 at 03/09/10 @ 01:20

  • Haloboy #2 1 year ago

    27 hours in and I just hit 55% complete. And yet others state they have completed it in just over 2 hours? Pull the other one. Driving takes up so much of your precious time I've actually nodded off at the wheel while playing it very late at night. How's that for immersive? -_-

    Playing Mafia II on hard really makes you appreciate the game far more than you ever would on easy or medium.

    Also, Michael Pachter is a cock of unrivalled proportions and should be maimed and lynched at the first public opportunity.

  • mk-1601 #3 1 year ago

    You gave the game to a complete amateur to review, they failed in their task. This is starting to look like a very shabby bid to court controversy.

  • ISmoke #4 1 year ago

    Thought the game was quality

  • bad09 #5 1 year ago

    John Teti - LOL/10

  • Sunyavadin #6 1 year ago

    But will it make back the amount they spent on advertising it on every available surface and in every medium known to man everywhere on the entire planet?

  • jeebthegreat #7 1 year ago

    I was pumped for this game before release, then as reviews trickled out my interest started to wane a bit, even after playing the demo. But I've been watching my brother play through it, and from what I've seen it's a bloody brilliant game, looking forward to getting a copy myself soon hopefully!

  • WukWhiteWolf #8 1 year ago

    The game itself was not bad, but we all expected to be better than original Mafia (witch is one of the best games ever) and it turned out Mafia 2 was just good, not excelent, just good. So thats why I belive the ratings are mixed. (And to all who want free ride in game, just search ,,Mafia 2 free ride mod,, and download it and soon ,,Mafia 2 Multiplayer mod,, too ;)

  • makariel #9 1 year ago

    If Pachter farts in a Jungle and no one is there to hear it... it would still be big news on every gaming website out there.

  • BBIAJ #10 1 year ago

    Started this on Thursday, 1000 G'd it on Tuesday, with somewhere in the region of 30/40 hours gameplay time, and loved every second of it.

    The attention to period detail, and sense of time and place, not to mention the fantastic soundtrack, all add up to one Hell of a game in my opinion.

    You'd be a fool to just take EG's word for it.
    Edited by 1 at 03/09/10 @ 00:26

  • Lord_Gremlin #11 1 year ago

    Ok... Game is shit anyway, I think they're bluffing.

    Well, "shit" is my opinion. You may call it bad or average, or whatever. Point is, it's a fail. An epic one.

  • metamorphic #12 1 year ago

    It might have been "successful" in the UK, but not in the US, where it has been an abject failure. It did not even rank amongst the top 20 games on Amazon in its launch week.

  • weejok #13 1 year ago

    Eurogamers 4/10 score is a joke, I've loved every minute of this game, not perfect but still a lot of fun.

  • Stoatboy #14 1 year ago

    @weejok: You loved it all? You loved the cleaning the toilets part ? Really? That's what you want from a video game? Cleaning toilets? The "carrying some crates" missions must have been nirvana for you. Wow! A promotion from cleaning the fucking toilets. Level Up!

    You could be ruling the fucking universe (or at least destroying large parts of it in spectacular style) in dozens of other games and yet you're happy cleaning the toilets in this one?

    Anyhoo! I see the Vanquish demo's just finished downloading to my Xbox. I'm off to do some flashy showboating as some kind of bastard-hard space ninja cyborg. Feel free to borrow my bottle of toilet duck if you've still got any stubborn stains to clean in your toilet though. I don't think I'll be needing it. I'm off to be fucking awesome for a while.

    Make sure you clean under the rim.
    Edited by 1 at 03/09/10 @ 01:50

  • EthanWoods #15 1 year ago

    The game's not perfect (a number of secondary characters should have been fleshed out more), and the ending is not a patch on the first game's, but the only fail in John Teti's review was John Teti.

    42 hours played, nearing completion of my third play-through. And then I'm gonna go again.

    @ Stoatboy.

    All you've shown with that comment is that you have the attention span of a 4-year-old.
    Edited by 1 at 03/09/10 @ 02:08

  • Stoatboy #16 1 year ago

    @EthanWoods: My attention span has nothing to do with it. I've built fortresses in Dwarf Fortress that most folk would never contemplate. I've spent more time playing Civilization than I care to remember. If I could have the time back I spent playing Disgaea I could probably learn a new language.

    My ambition however has everything to do with it. I want games to be fucking astonishing. And they can be. I don't want them to try to ape movies, and end up providing tawdry fucking experiences for the sake of trying to copy an established medium.

    Games can give players the moon on a fucking stick. They really can. They can deliver stuff that people can only dream of. Games like this just give you the stick though, and then only reluctantly. They make you mess around in toilets when they could be giving you the fucking stars!

    That makes me angry. That, and the fact that other people don't seem to see this. I hate other people!

    Time to go, I reckon. I hate you all. Good night.

  • Zaiz #17 1 year ago

    Someone else as malice and joy filled as me!

  • Miths #18 1 year ago

    It may not have been a "proper" open world game, it may have been fairly short, and borrowing the sub title "The Real Driving Simulator" from Gran Turismo would not have been entirely out of place :) (I would probably have gone stark raving mad if I had tried to play the PC version with keyboard and mouse instead of a 360 controller), but those 12 hours Mafia II lasted me nevertheless still made for one of my most enjoyable gaming experiences of 2010 - pretty much only beaten (though by quite a margin) by Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption.

  • SL33PY #19 1 year ago

    Time for Eurogamer to reorganize their staff. I'm currently on my second playtrough and loving it... My wife can't really appreciate it.

    This game should have gotten a 7 or an 8

    You guys will have to rectify this, you dropped off my favorite RSS feed

  • Slipstream #20 1 year ago

    Well it's holding my attention everytime I get home from work, not many console games manage that lately.

  • Moribundman #21 1 year ago

    I think Teti and Stoatboy are the only people that have supposedly played this and not enjoyed it. And its pathetic to describe the pri
    son bit as a toilet cleaning mission. You must have been really fed up during Shawshank Redemption that Andy and Red didn't light up some stogies and Uzi their way out of prison... spoiling the atmosphere by trying to immerse the player in the world...

  • UncleLou #22 1 year ago

    Very good game. Thank God I am not fool enough to read and rely on a single review, then go around parroting that review's opinion as my own.

  • Moribundman #23 1 year ago

    Oh and Metacritics "average of 74" can be landed squarely at the hands of John Teti. Remove EGs review from the rankings, or add EG Frances mysteriously absent score and everything changes dramatically.

    Well done EG. Good to see you have such luminaries as Michael Pachter fighting your corner. Any word yet as to whether Jack Thompson agrees with your views about Italian American stereotyping?

  • Haloboy #24 1 year ago

    @ Moribundman

    While I think the word pathetic is a bit strong I do fully agree with you. Prison life is prison life. Inbetween fending off overly large men (not in that way deviants!) and working out we all know the sort of duties that are expected of the inmates. Although I must admit Andy and Red with uzi's and spliffs would have made an awesome prison break style finale.

  • metamorphic #25 1 year ago

    Really, a lot of the people who were sucked into liking the game were attracted by what the Eurogamer review so correctly and aptly described as visuals only made to look good for the commercials. The game has woeful gameplay, awkward camera angles and the story is just a walking, talking stereotype that is a pale imitation of the usual gangster movies every Tom, Dick & Harry has seen. Even Daniel Vavra, the writer of the original Mafia, criticized Mafia 2 & Take 2's rushed and mangled production of it, so really, if the word of Daniel Vavra isn't good enough for the fanboys who've been sucked into Take 2's commercialized trashbin, I don't know what ever will be.
    Edited by 1 at 03/09/10 @ 08:50

  • Goodfella #26 1 year ago

    @ Stoatboy You loved it all? You loved the cleaning the toilets part ? Really? That's what you want from a video game? Cleaning toilets? The "carrying some crates" missions must have been nirvana for you. Wow! A promotion from cleaning the fucking toilets. Level Up!

    Wow, someone missed the big picture. You only spend a few minutes in the entire game doing that, and the whole point of them was to emphasise the awful mundaneness of prison and your characters desire to not end up doing dead end jobs, like his Dad.
    Edited by 2 at 03/09/10 @ 08:58

  • SAMagic #27 1 year ago

    @Goodfella : Exactly, like how the first game has Tommy as a taxi driver for the first mission in the original game.

    The devs are obviously not trying to turn games into chores but to make a plot point.

  • Zebula77 #28 1 year ago

    I liked it quite a lot. No classic by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely worth a 7/10 imo. The review was terribly harsh.

  • 5h1nj1 #29 1 year ago

    2metamorphic: Vavra said/wrote so many stupid things lately, that I can definitely say that not only is his word not enough, it's not even worth listening to.
    The game is quite ok. It's not flawless (how many games are?) but certainly something worth to be proud of. Except the STEAM part in the pc version. I don't like being forced into these online services with single player games at all.

  • gremly #30 1 year ago

    I am currently playing through Mafia II....

    The review from Eurogamer.Net is completely unjustified. This should of been a 8 or at least a 7. The only problem I found was the game was a little TOO linear...But that dose not stop me from enjoying being a mobster :D

  • miiiguel #31 1 year ago

    Have to agree with the majority. EG.net review was a joke and probably because the guy had a bad day or holds a grudge against 2K or something weird like that. A reviewer shouldn't be that personal, and mislead his readers. No way this game is below average.

  • irve77 #32 1 year ago

    It does seem a little harsh to give this game 4/10 for what is basically only really suffers from being unspectacular and linear. Both this and Kane and Lynch got 4/10 .. the same score as Rouge Warrior which is barely more than a bad demo !

    I think both K&L and Mafia2 have some pretty big flaws , but neither is a below average game ( especially when most people think average is 7/10 ) i would expect each to get a 5/10 maybe even pushing a 6/10

    I think if you somehow like the characters in mafia 2 ( don't aske me how ) you would think it was a 7 or 8 .. but for most of us the plot was a major let down , it's not like GTA where you can do your own thing and prat about so the characters and storyline play a much larger role.

    i can understand T2 being proud of mafia 2 , it's toped the charts and have a meta critic score in the 70's to most people although they won't remmeber the game as a clasic they will get their monies worth.

  • LPXO #33 1 year ago

    Think the EG review was a bit of a joke Think about what else has been given a 4.. That time of the month?

  • UncleLou #34 1 year ago

    The game has woeful gameplay, awkward camera angles

    Er, the game has excellent shootouts, and a terrific driving model. No idea what you even mean with "awkward camera angles" - in the cutscenes?

    Really, a lot of the people who were sucked into liking the game were attracted by what the Eurogamer review so correctly and aptly described as visuals only made to look good for the commercials.

    Thanks for telling me while I (wrongly) thought I like the game, I now see the error of my ways...

  • chiz #35 1 year ago

    Loved the game, but it's an advert for renting. Way too short and an ending that will just annoy you. It will be profitable tho, simply because mugs will pay for the 5 DLC episodes to make up for the half game they bought.

  • ExplodingClown #36 1 year ago

    Terrible ending; silly fistfights (do none of these mobsters own brass knuckles or a knife?); glaring anachronisms (electronic police sirens? In the '50s?); Joe is an annoying prick who upon whom I earnestly wished death; woeful humour (some of the radio speech and street NPC dialogue are especially appalling and come off as a half-baked stab at GTA); tepid plot. And yes, scattering Playboys throughout the game did make it feel like the city was plagued by sneaky masturbators.

    Still enjoyed it though, a solid 7/10. Empire Bay is such an enticing backdrop that cries out to be explored, it just needs more content, and the underpinning mechanics are solid. Much as I loathe paying for DLC, there's still potential for greatness in this game.
    Edited by 1 at 03/09/10 @ 20:58

  • Cider-X #37 1 year ago

    Game is a solid 8/10 (maybe even 9/10 on PC) but it's time for people to move on and stop crying about the EG review.

  • miiiguel #38 1 year ago

    I don't realy mind Eg.net review, as a matter of fact I don't care at all as I already have the game - and I have no problem saying I have some crappy games - it's just a pity that some people might not get the game because of that. That's all. Anyway, time to move on.

  • orangpelupa #39 1 year ago

    i really love mafia 1
    i dissapointed with mafia 2.

    so many potential, and crazy complete detail in mafia 2 but it become unused because no mission is using it. It really surprised me when drive a car on asphalt Vs on pavement road.

    release Mafia 2 "the complete edition" and we will be very happpy :D
    or release mafia 1 remake using mafia 2 engine.

  • bwiancohen #40 1 year ago

    I enjoyed this game very much....so much that I managed to get my platinum trophy today. But, I do feel that it could have been so much more..... Who can you blame? The developers? How many games take 8 frigging years??? I wonder if the task was just too big for them.... The publishers? In parts it does feel unfinished....you can actually ask Bruski if he has any work to which you always get the same reply lol. I hope it is profitable and then the developers can get on with Mafia 3.