Why Mafia II Nearly Killed Me

It was the monitor's fault - a massive 20inch hulking monster that nearly gave me a hernia. Ok, so I could probably buy a decent 22inch flat screen monitor for under £100 (can I? I haven't even looked) but is it worth it if my PC gaming life is coming to an end?

The original Mafia (screenshot left) had a really nice feel about it and the driving especially was great fun and SO much better (IMHO) than the arcadey driving style of the GTA games. And so I thought that Mafia II would be worth a look.

So a demo arrived the other day (screenshot to the left) and I eagerly downloaded it through the very competent Steam. As is fairly typical with PC games, it ran but my TV just displayed a black screen. The game was running (I could hear it in the background). So I guessed the TV (a new Panny) couldn't hack it. It was easier (so I thought) to move my old monitor to where my PC is now. And that's when I nearly got a hernia. But the game worked fine. In fact a very respectable 50fps for a lowly Pentium overclocked to 3GHz and with a 2 year old ATI HD4800 graphics card, all running through the ancient XP. (Note:- framerate was only 40fps through Vista).

So the game played great, with demo-time-hacked et al and with what looks like a great driving engine. But will I buy the full game? Probably not; unless I move my PC back to where it belongs (rather than being next to the TV) OR I shell out some dosh for a decent monitor...