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Just as the leaves fall in autumn and the birds migrate south, each August will see the release of a new Madden game. Millions of dutiful fans line up to buy it every year, while the rest of the gaming world looks on and wonders what all the fuss is about. Every year, EA is forced to up the stakes to keep the fanbase happy, but the more complex the game becomes, the fewer new recruits are drafted into the ranks of happy Madden players. Even

2008 is shaping up to be the year of the free-roaming sequel. In the coming months, fans of open-world games can look forward to Grand Theft Auto IV, Saints Row 2, Mercenaries 2 and Just Cause 2, for starters. And assuming its still-unannounced release date happens later this year, one of the biggest will be Mafia II.

Forget what you might remember about the first Mafia's crappy showing on the PS2 and Xbox. When it arrived on

 We’ve known about Mafia II’s existence for what seems like years, but it wasn’t until just recently that we got our first actual look at the game in motion. It wasn’t much – just a single mission – but it looked awfully polished for a game that’s still heavily under development.

There are a lot of myths and half-baked assumptions surrounding Mafia II – so let’s start by clearing them up. First off, this isn’t a GTA clone. It may have a crime theme, and have a limited amount of free-roaming, but it’s first and foremost a linear, story-driven experience. Secondly, it isn’t ‘just another gangster game’. That description does the game a huge disservice.

If there’s one thing that Mafia II seems focused on above all else, it’s detail. From its sweeping attempt to re-create the look and feel of the 1940s and ‘50s to the barely visible Z-shaped scar on the cheek of its hero, Vito Scaletta, the game does its best to immerse players in its fiction, its characters and the ever-more-swank underworld they inhabit. The music, cars, fashions and even the architecture are all reflective of the period, and all of them will change as the game transitions from the comparatively bleak wartime ‘40s to the flashy boom of the ‘50s...

Released in 2002, the original Mafia was pretty much one of the standout games of that year. It offset its admittedly mediocre driving (1930s bangers + speed limits = major yawns) with top shooting and a plot that honestly wouldn’t have looked out of place alongside Oscar-winning underworld fare like Goodfellas.