Mafia 2′s City Only a Third the Size of GTA IV’s
Grand Theft Auto IV is hailed by many as the best open-world title on PS3 to date, releasing in April of 2008. The biggest highlight of the title, of course, was the setting – Liberty City – which boasted an incredible living, breathing world. However, one of the disappointments of GTA IV was the graphics, which fell a bit short for many gamers. This was because Liberty City was just, well, too big for its own good. With open-world competition increasing this year, including the release of Mafia II, graphics are being scrutinized more than ever. The size of the games world? Not so much.
Although the graphics in Mafia II clearly exceed Grand Theft Auto IV, the city in the title – Empire Bay – will be “less than a third” that of Liberty City. In the latest issue of Xbox World 360, the magazine stated that the smaller size contributed to the game’s visuals, which are apparently of “startling” proportions.
“Calling up a waypoint, it’s immediately noticeable that Mafia II doesn’t boast the biggest of maps – certainly not in comparison to GTA IV (we estimate that the game world must be less than a third of the size of Liberty City). Yet size doesn’t always matter and it’s obviously allowed 2K Czech to furnish Empire Bay with a startling level of polish that even genre masters Rockstar would grudgingly admire.”
Mafia II hits August 24th in North America, and shortly after with an August 27th release in PAL regions.
[Via]
5 Responses to “Mafia 2′s City Only a Third the Size of GTA IV’s”
Even though its smaller I’m still looking forward to this. But no matter what I don’t think there will be any open world game that can top GTA games.
Just Cause 2 is right up there too, snow capped mountains, jungle, deserts, cities, villages
underwater, planes, & more. I think Red Dead will have a lot to explore also.
ya just cause was pretty open… i pklayed demo lots….(if she told you size doesnt matter…she lied to you)
Really? Gamers scrutinized GTA4′s graphics? That game looks amazing. Maybe some of the textures up close aren’t too nice, but most games are like that.
They recreated NYC perfectly, and this is coming from someone who has lived here 12 years.
Everything in that game looks amazing. The explosions, car damage, cars themselves, everything.
Only rough patches I feel are the character models, but they look just fine too.
GTA IV was supposed to be in NYC? what? since when?
anyway – really micro? i would have never used the term amazing in conjunction with that game. There was a mild improvement over San Andreas – but nothing in it really struck me as next gen.
on the actual topic at hand though – I’ll take quality over quantity in this case. Although lately many games have been falling way short of par when it comes to length, and maybe this ever present analyzation of graphics is to blame. Some games look beautiful, like killzone2, but then just aren’t any fun, and I’m left wondering if they spent way too much time making it look pretty. Open world games like this tend to have way more side missions and mini games than I ever care to do though, so I won’t miss that as long as theres a decently long main story.