We recently had a chance to play a new demo of Mafia II--an open-world action game set against the backdrop of organized crime families vying for power in the 1950s. At the beginning of the demo, we saw Vito Scaletta--the game's lead character--inside of his home just as he receives a phone call to meet up with some of his compatriots to find and eventually kill a man from a rival crime family. But before we went outdoors, we spent a few minutes looking around Vito's house when we happened upon a vintage issue of Playboy magazine. Upon picking the magazine up, it automatically opened to an actual picture from that issue--so just as a word of caution, performing this action in a public place with onlookers isn't the best of ideas.

With that little bit of not-safe-for-work tomfoolery out of the way, we made our way outdoors and headed toward the garage next to Vito's house. Once inside, it seems you can select from a few different types of cars that are faithful to the era. We selected our vehicle and headed out onto the streets, and while the temptation to wreak havoc by running over pedestrians or slamming into other cars was great, we stuck to the designated route on the map. Thus, we made our way to the meeting point--a distillery located a bit closer to the downtown area. Driving seems responsive, but the vehicle physics still feel accurate to the way the cars of the 1950s handled, so don't expect to drive at full speed and then stop on a dime or make a hairpin turn.

We steadily made our way over to the distillery and were careful not to attract attention from the police officers in the car in front of us. We finally reached our destination and took up a position in the building across the street, waiting for our target to show up. When he finally arrived, all hell broke loose as we manned a machine gun in the window and tried to take him down before he could seek safety in the building. Instead of aiming for individual hoodlums, we aimed right for the engines of the cars, which--after a few bursts of machine gun fire--exploded and took out the goons behind them. But the target still managed to get away, so we were told to give chase, run out of the building, and follow him into the distillery.