Publisher Take Two announced its revised release slate during a call with investors on Monday afternoon, timed to elaborate on news of the BioShock 2 delay.

The company "currently plan[s] to release all four titles in the first half of calendar 2010," company CEO Ben Feder told investors. He included the caveat that the company always strives to find the "optimal" time to release their titles.

The publisher also has announced games for the second half of the year, though he declined to name what they will be. Speculation among investment analysts is that one of those late 2010 titles could be a new Grand Theft Auto, given the development patterns of franchise development studio Rockstar. When asked directly by analysits on the call if a new GTA was coming late in 2010, Feder and Take Two chairman Strauss Zelnick declined to confirm, deny or offer any specifics.

The plan to release four big sequels in the first half of 2010 is a byproduct of Take Two's expressed desire to maintain a standard of high quality for its games, a claim also used to justify GTA IV's push from its original fall 2007 release window to spring of 2008.

But Zelnick also said that the BioShock 2 push was also partially due to a softness at U.S. retail, where the company is seeing orders for new titles come in lower than expected and where, he said, the number of high-quality titles may crowd the marketplace. While that may be the case, early 2010 is beginning to look crowded as well with the Take Two foursome joining God of War III, Dante's Inferno, Mass Effect 2 and several other games slated for early next year.

One analyst asked if BioShock 2's delay could be blamed on the PS3 version of the game or on its series-first online components. "The pushback of BioShock 2 is related to development overall," Zelnick said. "I certainly wouldn't want to pinpoint it to any one platform or any one feature because that's not the case."

Because from what I saw of the game today, it's looking like a game that may actually challenge, and in some ways perhaps even surpass, Rockstar's supremacy in the genre.

I sat in on a 30-minute presentation of the game in 2K's booth yesterday afternoon, in which the developers played through a long, major mission of the game, from the initial driving section through a staged firefight to a getaway sequence involving a wounded passenger and a ton of police cars.

First thing I noticed was that, even with the game not due until next year, it was looking good. Realistic characters, great effects on things like explosions and sunlight, nice clean textures. Gave the game a very realistic look, which is appropriate since that's what it's going for (as opposed to GTA's slightly comical take on life).

Cover works in a similar fashion to games like Uncharted or GTAIV, as you can stick to walls and objects to hide behind them at the push of a button, and gunfire can damage, or even destroy, the thing you're hiding behind. Combat seemed responsive, but since we were only watching, and not playing the game, it's hard to tell just how well it works.

Driving seemed...slow. Of course, it was even slower in Mafia 1, but then, when a game is set between 1945 and 1955, slow cars is what you're stuck with. Me, I can put up with it (at least for a short time) in exchange for a car radio soundtrack that's easy on the modern dance stuff, and heavy on licensed old-timey music that will sound familiar to fans of Bioshock and/or Fallout 3.

As far as improvements over the original Mafia go, the city will be bigger and more realistic, will feature a smart checkpoint system so that failed missions won't have to be entirely replayed (sparing you from a slow drive) and will span an entire decade, with each new year presenting new lighting, new weather effects, new ground textures, etc (1945, for example, is set in the dead of winter, with snow all over the ground and roads).

There were a few cinematic sequences shown as well, which displayed a surprisingly clever sense of both gangster lingo appreciation and comic timing, suggesting the game's story could move beyond an amateur gangster tale and give us something a little more substance.

Perhaps the most important thing I picked up from the demo was, however, a sense that this was still Mafia. That despite the seven years since the first game, despite the arrival of more than a few GTA titles in the interceding years, there was still a clunky, solid, slow car, a satisfying ranged combat system, wise-mouthed Italians and a city that is as much a tribute to a bygone era as it is a sandbox for crime and destruction.

In other words, all of the things that earned the first Mafia a cult following. Only this time, they look much better.

Both titles were slated for a somewhat vague Fall release, but have been delayed today to, at the earliest, November 1, 2009. Take-Two has re-scheduled the pair of games for a release in the first half of its fiscal 2010, which runs from November 1 to April 30.

Yes, that means you might not see either of these titles until next calendar year. With the publisher's second half of 2009 getting a little bit more crowded, thanks to the confirmed arrivals of Grand Theft Auto: The Ballad of Gay Tony, Grand Theft Auto: Episodes From Liberty City and BioShock 2.

Take-Two's official reason for the bump was "to allow additional development time for the titles and to maximize their full potential in terms of the quality of the player experience and market performance." Say, that reminds me. We got a peek at Red Dead Redemption not too long ago and will be able to tell you more about the Western-themed adventure later this week.

For the world's first look at the game, 2K Games demoed a single mission about halfway through the game's branching storyline. Vito and his number two guy – think Tommy DeVito from Goodfellas, only twice actor Joe Pesci's size – are trying to take out a mob boss during a business meeting in a high rise hotel. The plan involves disguises, explosives and young getaway driver, Marty, who's itching for a chance to shoot somebody.

At the risk of spoilers, let me just say it didn't go down well for our heroes. The whole thing was over in 20 minutes and left off on kind of a downer. But it was the perfect way to showcase what Grace calls the three main elements of Mafia II: an authentic city with a strong narrative and intense gunplay.

*Begin Spoilers*

Mafia II straddles 10 years of time in a city that looks an awful lot like New York between the 40s and the 50s. The game is broken down into flashbacks that weave between the two time periods and tell the story of Vito, the son of a young immigrant out to capture a piece of the American Dream. If this plot sounds familiar, that's because the writing team – same guys who penned Mafia I – stuck to their Goodfellas inspirations to craft a tale of loyalty, revenge and corruption in the mob syndicate of America. Exact story details were sketchy in the one mission 2K showed; most of the story in the "Room Service" mission the developer demoed was told through in-game conversations between characters, as opposed to theatrical cut scenes.

Room Service started out with a 50s-era car parked along the side of a road. In a short cut scene, Vito shows up and chews Joe out for inviting noob getaway driver Marty along on the mission. Then the gameplay starts with the player having to drive the car to a fancy high rise hotel.

Grace took this downtime in the game to talk about the car radio in the game as atmosphere. Sounds like you won't get to fiddle with it; depending on where you're driving and what time, the game decides what you're listening to and this somehow will contribute to whatever setting you happen to be in.

Damned if I got any impression of that during this demo, though. The debug Xbox 360 chugged like a frat boy as the car moved through the giant sandbox-ish city (remember – Mafia games are unlike Grand Theft Auto in that the sandbox is built around a linear story instead of the other way around). According to Grace, there are no loading screens in the game, so I expect the new Illusion engine has a lot of work to do in these early pre-alpha builds.

Once at the hotel, a short cut scene shows Vito and Joe leaving their getaway driver in the basement parking garage of the hotel. In a bit of video game pedantry, the game drops the player back into the game to walk the equivalent of like 30 feet to open a door, only to go into another cut scene where Joe tells Vito to put on a janitor's jumpsuit as part of the plan. I get the impression that these cut scenes dotting long sequences of gameplay where nothing happens while characters talk while moving are supposed to make me feel like I'm watching a movie. But since I wasn't playing the game, it just came off as annoying. And pedantic almost as if the game is saying, "Look, this is what we can do with storytelling, yay!"

Once the jumpsuits were on, the interrupting cut scenes went away for a while as Joe and Vito worked their way up the hotel via the elevator to infiltrate the mob boss's conference room under the pretense of "cleaning up a mess." While they're on their way, they pass so close to the mob boss they intend to kill that they overhear snippets of his conversation with some other mob bosses – something to do with "the mess."

This section of Room Service is an example of the story being told mostly through in-game sequences. While walking, Joe went off about how the guy was right there and they could just whack him. Vito talked him down under his breath and urged Joe to stick to the plan.

"The plan" is this: plant a bomb in the conferences room, run the wires out the window (because remote controls don't exist in the 50s), go up to the roof and ride the window-washing scaffold down to the conference room window, hook up the bomb and then go back up to the roof to set it off. You don't have to be very creative to think of at least three ways this plan could go tits-up.

In the conference room, there is a giant smear of blood on the floor – the "mess" Vito and Joe are supposed to clean up. While Joe throws wires out the window, the player can move Vito freely – to look at the blood smear or just gaze out the window at the massive city spread out 30 stories below.

Here's where I could see the beginnings of that "authentic city" Grace was talking about. While it doesn't mimic New York as closely as Grand Theft Auto's Liberty City, the sheer size and detail of the world outside that conference room window was enough to evoke a sense of immersion, even without having complete freedom to explore it all. I could see the little dots of cars moving on the streets, the lines of people down on the sidewalk, and even that shimmering heat illusion coming off the nearby buildings as the sun blazed down on the busy metropolis. And all of this was rendered on a build that's only pre-alpha – imagine how the finished product will look.

Joe announced the trap was set and the demo master steered Vito out of the conference room – blood stain still conspicuously un-cleaned. But I guess you can't count on NPCs to act completely realistically, whatever Grace promises; unless you'd rather suffer a carpet-cleaning minigame. But, Grace did say that the mob boss's goons would start shoving you around if you dared walk too close to the mob boss – or just stood around too long, so there's all the realism you need, right?

Back to the plan that will never work. Vito and Joe made their slow way up to the roof via the stairs. I found myself wondering if boredom counts as immersion, or if the developer was trying to avoid rendering cut scenes by having these lengthy in-game nothing-is-happening-so-let's-chat sequences. The dialog between the two mob buddies was amusing, I suppose – but for someone who's seen Goodfellas half a hundred times, it was nothing special.

Once on the roof, a short cut scene showed two mob goons hanging out on the roof hocking loogies at pedestrians down below; Joe gives Vito a gun and the game lets the player take control again. Grace took a moment to explain that you had a choice in resolving the issue of expectorating goons. You could be non-violent and go back the way you came, skirting around a different path to the other side of the roof, he said. But because that third element – the intense gunplay – hadn't had the limelight yet, of course our demo master opted to shoot the place up.

I'm not familiar with the melee and gunplay system in Mafia I, other than hearing that it was broken, so forgive me if I make stuff sound new that's old. But what I saw was a cover system, over-the-shoulder aiming, regenerating health, almost now heads-up display icons (besides a targeting reticule) and tactical AI that also uses the cover system. It looks like you can knock enemies out of cover with a careful shot to the knee or the shoulder – but what you really want to do is score a headshot before you take roughly three or more hits and die (sort of like you would in real life). According to Grace, this combat system is very much improved over Mafia I – and again, being that this build is pre-alpha, it's probably only going to get better. I'm just pleased that there's a shotgun you can pick up after offing the enemies on the roof.

With the goons shot up, our heroes then bound and gagged the real window washers and stole their ride. Yet again, we got the nothing's-happening lull in action – but this time at least you could ogle the city on the ride down to the conference room. Once down by the conference room, you could turn and look inside – which later causes problems with Grace's realism claims.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Once the wires were connected, the game entered a cut scene showing the scaffolding ascending the hotel. Then suddenly – gasp! – the bomb went off early, shattering the window right below our heroes' feet. Joe took the scaffold back down to have a look at their handiwork and – surprise, surprise – the mob boss wasn't dead. He stumbled out of the bathroom, wondering aloud (rightly so) what the hell just happened.

Here's where where the realism falls apart for me: if you could look into the conference room, wouldn't you have seen that the boss wasn't there? Or if he was – do you really expect gamers to believe that in the three seconds' lapsed time between the wiring of the bomb and the cut scene showing the bomb going off that the mob boss could have gotten up from the head of the table and made it all the way into a toilet stall?

Whatever. The game resumed with Vito and Joe inside the blown-up conference room in hot pursuit of the mob boss. We got to see more of the gunplay and that shotgun came in handy as Joe and Vito shot their way past mob goons, innocent passers-by and room service carts to get to the elevators, get down to the basement and get into the getaway car. Another short cut scene informed us that Marty was dead (big shocker) and then the game resumed with Vito and Joe in their getaway car in pursuit of the mob boss's getaway car.

The Room Service mission was over and Grace ended the demo with a little Q&A. The take home points he had for the media are that Mafia II is a game that will be more polished than Mafia I, with a better combat system and supposedly a better police system (which we didn't get to see). He also stressed that while this is a sandbox game in terms of size, it's still a linear story that the player is following to one of the possible four endings.

So while there are what you'd call "side quests" where you're building your mob reputation by "helping" people, the progression of the story is not measured in persistent day and night cycle. Everything feeds back into the fiction, Grace said, describing how police interference would actually go down over the course of the game as you gained more mob influence because you'd presumably have cops on your payroll (his words, not mine).

I'm not sure precisely how this "sandbox with structure" will work since we weren't shown a time jump between the 40s and the 50s. Grace tried to describe it with an example where, if you did a mission that brought a lot of heat to you or your crew, the game wouldn't just pick up the next day with you guys doing the same old thing. You'd have to hide out for a while and the game would move forward in time to a couple of weeks or months later, when things had died down.

Overall, I'm optimistic about Mafia II based on what I saw. The span from 1944 to 1950-something may not be as exciting as mob life in the Prohibition era, but it's still a change of pace from the Grand Theft Auto and Godfather games. I like zoot suits and shotguns and Cadillacs; I'm sick of cell phones and movie tie-ins and annoying cousins that want to go on man-dates. So even though I haven't played the first game, there's probably something for me in Mafia II. I just hope it doesn't involve too many more nothing's-happening moments than what I saw in Room Service.

This comes across the pond from Norway so, be prepared for lots of "laster" (I guess that's "buffering"). Settle in and enjoy four minutes of Mafia II gameplay and cutscenes.

You can get a feel for the cover system and the gunplay, and the first-rate visuals - especially that destroyed office interior. Mafia PC was loads better than console Mafia, maybe the sequel will redeem all of that for fans of the organized crime genre.

Første Spillscener Fra «Mafia 2» [Thanks Valero!]

Note the Italian restaurant-style takeout container. That ain't pasta sauce splattered on the edge, there... Open it up and you'll find — not a severed hand — but an ashtray, which I totally can't use being that I don't smoke (now I know how my parents felt when I gave them all those clay-made ones from art class...) plus some nifty matchboxes.

Check back here Monday April 20 for an actual first look of the game.

Having received many questions regarding whether or not the Mafia II trailer was a real-time, in-game movie, Hrebicek clears the air in the written commentary below. He explains that all of the scenes were created using the same editor they use to create the in-game cutscenes, which allowed them to see the results immediately without needing to tweak the video in post-production. What you see is what you're going to get.

Check out the full commentary below for more on Mafia II, along with a picture of Tomas himself, rocking the bald goatee look.

Mafia II Trailer Commentary
January 14, 2009

Hi my name is Tomas Hrebicek, Lead Animator at 2K Czech, and I’m here to give you an overview of the Mafia II trailer that you are about to experience.

We’ve been receiving a lot of questions about whether or not the trailer was real-time and I’m here to clear the air. It really was. All the scenes were completely created in our editor the same way we create cutscenes for the game. Our cutscene editor is a very powerful tool. Besides, we can see it all real-time which makes our work a lot easier. There was absolutely no need to modify the resulting video in the postproduction.

Because everything was created solely in our editor, only our in-game scenes and models were used. So what you see here is great representation of the quality of work that you will see throughout Mafia II. Of course, this is not the end yet, and frame rate and other technical issues are still being tweaked in order to have the game working smoothly on all the platforms we create it for.

The common theme found in the trailer is the same common theme found throughout the entirety of Mafia II; strong interpersonal relationships. Of course, when playing you will experience all kinds of shootouts, car chases, and fights, but what I think is the most important is to identify yourselves with the main character and those close to him. Every single thing you do in the game causes a corresponding reaction. And it is only up to you what you do.

In the trailer, the relations are hinted at in the church sequence. However, we would not really like to reveal any more important facts; you have to experience it yourself with Vito from the beginning to the end.

I would like to emphasize that the game has a very dark humorous side to it. It definitely is not a superficial comedy. The story as such is quite varied so you could look forward also to a true, mafia atmosphere and strong emotions of all kinds. I can’t wait to see the first players actually play it.

I’m very excited to see the reaction of this trailer. Over the coming months, you will have plenty to look forward to in the way of Mafia II. In the meantime, please enjoy this trailer and look forward to more in-depth behind-the-scenes coverage next week!

Loitering around the site I also found what they touted as a new Mafia II screenshot. You can catch everything after the jump

The Mafia II screenshot is said to be set in DeLuca's Restaurant, even though this is clearly a warehouse shot. Not sure if that's a level title or not. But that's Vito, and it looks like he's about to waste a competitor.

And here are the other two Halo Wars shots.

Halo Wars Screenshots Revealed and New Mafia II Screenshot Revealed[Gamercenteronline]

Mafia II will expand upon the original game, giving players a chance to play through mob life in the 1950s, according to the publisher. 2K Czech, the developers for the original Mafia and of Hidden & Dangerous, are working on the sequel.

Mafia II

"We have an excellent working relationship with 2K Games and the utmost respect for them," said Petr Vochozka, CEO of 2K Czech. "We are pleased to become a 2K studio and are confident that this new partnership will strengthen our current and future projects."

Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Acquires Illusion Softworks

New York, NY - January 7, 2008 - Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:TTWO) today announced the acquisition of Illusion Softworks, a premier Central European-based game development studio with operations in Brno and Prague, the Czech Republic. Illusion Softworks has approximately 200 employees and will join Take-Two's 2K Games publishing label as its newest studio, 2K Czech.

Established in 1997, Illusion Softworks is the creator and owner of several hit video game franchises, including Mafia, Hidden & Dangerous and Vietcong. The studio is currently working with 2K Games on Mafia II, the sequel to the original Mafia, which helped establish the gangster genre and sold more than two million units.

"The acquisition of Illusion Softworks reflects our strategic focus on owning high-value intellectual property as we continue to expand our portfolio of triple-A titles," said Ben Feder, Chief Executive Officer of Take-Two.

Christoph Hartmann, President of 2K, said, "Adding 2K Czech to our network of development studios demonstrates our strong commitment to creating great franchises and building world-class creative teams. The 2K Czech team is responsible for several very innovative and highly-regarded franchises and we look forward to continuing to develop new and existing IP together."

"We have an excellent working relationship with 2K Games and the utmost respect for them," said Petr Vochozka, CEO of 2K Czech. "We are pleased to become a 2K studio and are confident that this new partnership will strengthen our current and future projects."