Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Mafia II and Cusumano Nero D'Avola

When the scene pictured above showed up in Google Image Search, I knew it was the one for me to use in this post. Mafia II has thus far consisted of a lot of driving to Joe's house and then driving home. And then driving to Joe's house. And then driving home. And then stealing some things, and then driving to Joe's house, and then driving home. And then going to prison for 6 years, scrubbing toilets, and fighting guys in the shower in order to avoid being sodomized. I say all of this in utter seriousness. There have been a handful of occasions where I have enjoyed running around and shooting at rival mobsters, but the aforementioned "missions" have probably made up at least two thirds of the portion of the game that I have played through so far. I do admire the game for its breaks from convention, contrived as they may be.

Perhaps a less conventional pairing would have been more appropriate for a game that is, at times, surprisingly off-the-wall. I have written before about both avoiding and embracing obvious choices when pairing video games with booze, and this time I chose to embrace the incredibly obvious. Earlier tonight, when sitting down to my fourth or fifth session with Mafia II, I opened a bottle of Cusumano Nero D'Avola. This fairly ubiquitous Sicilian red has a boozy aroma of cherry hard candy. In addition to this sour fruitiness, it tastes of earth and smoke, with liberal tannic bitterness to balance it out. It reminded me that any wine that I normally wouldn't drink without food to buffer it probably shouldn't be paired with a video game unless I have food on hand to buffer it. Unfortunately, I ate all of my leftover cassoulet before I started playing Mafia II, so I was out of luck.
This pairing was obvious, though not as superficial as some that I have described in the past. Mafia II, unlike many video games, immerses the player in a relatively real and specific culture. Thematic cultural specificity in video games can be a great aid when it comes to finding worthwhile booze pairings, though it can also be a red herring. In this case, I'm afraid it was. Red wines upwards of 14% alcohol by volume usually fail to bolster my resolve when playing games that involve the occasional pressings of buttons to scrub blood out of carpets or load crates onto trucks. These activities may be important for the dedicated mafioso. But just as I prefer my stomping on turtles and traveling through plumbing to be filtered through a colorful, fun-filled interface, there are reasons why I have not tried to join the mob in real life.
I plan to keep playing through Mafia II. If I find a better pairing, I'll be sure to write about it. But there is something far more important going down on this very blog tomorrow night. For the first time, an epic video game and booze pairing will be live-blogged. It will start at 9PM CST. I hope you can make it!

8 comments:

  1. I love this post, having both sampled the mentioned video game and the wine. Not at the same time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So, is the live blog appropriate for all viewers? Any tech advice? Just show up here?

    ReplyDelete
  3. The live blog should be no more offensive than any of my previous posts. I've been promised some live trolling will go down, so I can't make any promises about the comments that might be written... Anyway, it's going to consist of rapid updates to a new post. Not very high tech at all.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Seth, what did you think of the game?

    ReplyDelete
  5. I thought the game themes and characters were a little too similar to those in GTA IV, but I enjoyed the style of the game, especially the attention to detail surrounding the passage of time and the soundtrack. Shenmue is one of my favorite games, so for me there wasn't nearly enough warehouse box-loading in Mafia II.

    The game was also pretty easy; I played on the hardest difficulty and never died in a gunfight until the very end.

    It did bug me a little to know that some of the Chuck Berry and Little Richard songs were being played on the radio a decade before they were actually recorded, but since I love those songs it's a minor gripe.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The key is to load boxes for a while, and then reset the game just before it auto-saves so you can load the boxes again. The fun never ends.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  8. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete