Mafia

The Good
The story: it's brilliant.

A tale of gangsters, well written, well narrated, well developed, with a bunch of well crafted characters, an interesting plot, violence, guns, the mid 30's and their beautiful cars.

The game is short enough for not being boring; it's not a endless series of senseless missions in a city where you don't die (you know what I mean), the missions always make sense, and if you die, well, you'll have to try again.

And you WILL die. At first, I didn't like this feature, but, if you think about it, you'll love it as much as I did in the end: when you are hit (and I mean, with a bullet), sometimes you won't be able to shoot or move, and sometime you will die if the enemies hit you in the right place, with just one single shot. "That's unfair" I hear... No, it's not, it's realistic. And it's great.

The cars are fantastic replicas of the classics from the 30's, and if the police catch you speeding, they'll chase you and eventually you'll have to pay a fine, and it's better to pay, or you'll end up in jail, and that means the game is over.

The enemies are not the smartest ever, but they can be quite challenging in some missions; they'll shoot and they'll take cover, to see if they can catch you by surprise.

The Bad
Most of the things I didn't like were related to the buggy game engine: pop-in distance, awful textures, loading between areas...

The music: it is always the same tune on the radio! It's just as catchy as annoying, and believe me, you'll be whistling it for weeks.

The game difficulty is sometimes not balanced: some missions are a piece of cake, and some others can put your patience to test.

The Bottom Line
If you are looking for a game with a good story, and you like gangster's movies, look no more. This is it: it shares a lot of things with Max Payne, Grand Theft Auto and the "The Godfather" saga. I loved it.