Mafia II on PlayStation 3 Demo Impressions.

Just moments earlier we'd been knocking back coca-cola while perusing a copy of Playboy magazine. Such is the life of a gangster.

There's a good sense of place in Mafia II. Almost meticulously so. Take for example the afore-mentioned Playboy magazine. It includes genuine, licensed photoshoots from the mid-1940's period the game is set in. The music too, is periodic. In fact, 2K claim that as the time period shifts in-game, so too does the music.

The world outside is just as meticulously detailed. While Mafia II boasts an open-world environment, the demo restricts us to ten minutes in the great out-doors. The world's bustling however. NPC's go about their daily business, stopping at intersections and interacting with each other. The world's got a similar flavour to Grand Theft Auto IV; it feels alive. This tends to be the downfall of most sandbox games, as the setting loses its sense of illusion through scripting and bugs. But Mafia II's fictional Empire Bay (a city based on New York and San Francisco) feels distinctly real.

Our first task is to drive to the destination where we'll meet the target we'd earlier been assigned to, well, eliminate. The period cars handle well, with a good sense of weight and inertia to them. Driving through the city is a surprisingly enjoyable experience actually. We opt to take the journey slowly, and observe the scenery around us. Visually the game is strongly detailed, but the performance is a little sluggish. There's notable tearing as we rotate the camera, and a real lack of aliasing detracts somewhat from the location.

Character models, on the other hand, are stunning. As we initiate a cut-scene showing interaction between our character, Vito, and his two partners in crime, there's a distinctly cinematic flavour to the action. Not much happens during the cut-scene, but the dialogue's enough to give us a taste of the characters. As black cars speed into the alley we've been watching, our partner hands us a machine gun. "Take out the fat guy," he says.

We take out much of the alley, but lose the fatso. Speeding out into the street, we launch ourselves behind cover and pick off some new arrivals. The shooting feels notably satisfying. Enemies fall quickly, giving your weapons a sense of power that a lot of games lack. Sadly, shooting is mapped to the R2 trigger (when will developers learn?) and there doesn't appear to be a way to change it. A small gripe, but we'll keep whinging about it until developers get the picture.

We rush into a nearby warehouse and tackle a large-scale shoot-out with three other armed guffs. We snap into cover with the X button and pick them off with simple head-shots. Then we leg it into an old-fashioned lift. The journey feels wobbly, but our partner has time to swig on some liquor. "It's good stuff," he informs us.

At the top of the lift we're greeted by a group of guards armed with tommy-guns. As their bullets deform the door-way between them and us, we get a good taste of the game's destruction engine. Anything in the game can be shot and will react appropriately. It's a neat touch that adds impact to the gun-fights. We flank the machine guns and pick them off, before heading upstairs and finding our target.

Turns out he's armed, and he manages to shoot our partner, Henry in the leg. In a rather grotesque fit of fury, we blow the fatso's brains out, and rush downstairs in search of a get-away car. With Henry complaining of a "golf-ball sized hole in his leg" we try to out-run the cops, but just as we're surrounded our demo ends.

A short groan later, we reflect on some pretty positive impressions. The shooting in Mafia II feels really good. There's a decent sense of weight and response to the shoot-outs. The attention to detail is also out-standing. But the characters are what have us invested. Good writing, and good dialogue has made us feel invested in the trio of characters featured in the demo, and we want to know more about them. Thankfully, we've only got a short wait until we can find out.