Mafia II: Is Applied PhysX Worth It?

In most first-person shooters, menswear usually takes a back seat to blowing off an enemy's head. But 2K Games' Mafia II is not like most first-person shooters. Set in the 1940s and 1950s in the fictional city of Empire Bay, which is controlled by three constantly warring Italian-American crime syndicates, it's a rare title in which style is absolutely crucial. Not just in the gritty, filmic composition of its graphics, but also to the characters: In addition to gun shops, car-repair places, and restaurants, the game also lets you go to clothing stores. If you're not sure why this is when you're first starting Mafia II, it's because your character, Vito Scaletta, hasn't yet made enough from his mob activities. Once you've got a few hundred dollars to rub together, you'll be buying a fine tailored suit that catapults Vito from crass to classy.

The strangest thing about that suit, though: It's not just its basic design or color that's so striking. It's how it hangs on Vito's body, the jacket cascading down the back of one knee and draped over the other when he's blasting away some enemy or other with a submachine gun. When he walks or runs, the coat flaps behind him; when he stops, it does, too (but only after a couple of seconds). Yes, these inclusions are incredibly minor—as are the way the cars you drive kick up snow behind you, or the way glass and rubble accumulate in jagged piles during violent showdowns—but they're part of what makes this otherwise everyday experience into an extraordinary one (at least for the eyes). There are so many of these little touches in Mafia II, in fact, that you can't help but wish they were a game themselves—cataloging these minute details is often much more fun than spending countless minutes driving between plot-point locations, or otherwise killing mundane time while waiting for the next firefight to start.

But are any of these graphical innovations worth it if they hamper the game experience for most Nvidia card owners—or torpedo it altogether for those whose PCs use AMD discrete graphics? Because they're all related to the game's physics processing, which is provided by PhysX (the technology from developer Ageia, which Nvidia acquired in early 2008), they can be as temperamental as they are intriguing, and as annoying as they are attractive.

Once you've seen the game with the PhysX features, it's hard to go back to the old way—they add just that much zest to the visuals, and Nvidia has been right to tout Mafia II's PhysX handling. As it's been a while since we last examined how PhysX is acquitting itself in PC games, Mafia II seemed to provide a good opportunity to see if the old issues have been addressed or whether they're still spoiling the sauce.