Important things Mafia II Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

Playing on the lowest difficulty setting is only recommended to players having problems with action games or interested in finishing the singleplayer campaign without even once having to die. Choosing the normal difficulty settings will make Vito less resistant to enemy fire, however you can expect the game to be a challenge only on the highest setting. My recommendation is to start on the highest difficulty level right away, because as long as you're careful you're only going to have to repeat a small number of fights and you'll receive two achievements for completing the singleplayer campaign (on the normal level and on the hard one).

Using the realistic driving mode will make most of the driving missions much more difficult. Expect trouble early in the game - in the final part of the third chapter.

The situation is entirely different with the realistic driving mode, because you won't receive any bonuses for finishing the game with this feature being turned on. As a result you should treat it an optional challenge and disable it each time when you have problems completing a driving mission. This can be done from the options menu.

The game doesn't allow to save the progress and it doesn't even support storing checkpoints for future use. It's not a problem when you're completing missions, but it may be a problem if you're trying to find all collectibles. Make sure to explore each area you visit, so that you won't have to replay the entire level in the future to get to the collectible you've missed on your first run.

All the collectibles you've found (Playboy magazines and wanted posters) are automatically added to the list of your items, so you may end the game or reload the level without having to worry about picking them up again.

Unless you have a proper DLC installed on your system you won't be allowed to continue exploring the city after finishing the game. This means that all items and secret have to be collected during mission. I would recommend choosing the fourteenth level and the task to earn the rest of the money, because you'll be allowed to venture wherever you want to without having to worry about completing mission objectives and without anyone else in your team (Joe for example can be a problem, because he tends to attack cops and other gangsters).

You can always skip a cut-scene by pressing the ESC key and clicking on a button seen in the lower right corner of the screen. This is very useful if you're replaying the mission to find missing collectibles.