
I can remember being pretty excited every time I located a hidden package in Grand Theft Auto III. It felt cool to be exploring a random spot on the game’s huge map and come across something that the developers hid there just for me. It was like getting rewarded for checking out the city they’d built and for taking the path less traveled. But after doing the same thing in Vice City and San Andreas, finding hidden packages had lost most of its magic. And by the time GTA IV showed up, I was well over it.
Gratuitous hidden object collecting has since become a genre staple: Saint’s Row has CDs, Crackdown has those elusive blue orbs, and pretty much every other sandbox game I can think of has something relatively pointless for us to scour the far corners of the map for.
Well, 2K Czech has hidden something that you’ll actually want to find for more than just Achievement’s sake in Mafia II—vintage Playboy Magazine centerfolds. There are 50 of these classic 1950’s nudie mags for you to collect and each features a beautiful woman in the classy art-style of the period—no silicon here! More than mere cheap thrills, these centerfolds immerse gamers in the era and give you the chance to see something that was a big part of popular culture during that time period. And unless your grandpa is a pervy collector (which mine actually is), this may be the closest you’ll ever get to the genuine article.
Well done 2k Czech, well done.