Mafia

aka: Mafia Classic, Mafia: La Cosa Nostra, Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven
Moby ID: 7190
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Tommy Angelo was an ordinary taxi driver trying to make a living on the streets of Lost Heaven until one day an unexpected meeting changed his life forever. Two men jump into his cab, telling him to drive as fast as he can. Bullets begin to hit the cab, and a car with armed pursuers gets closer. Barely escaping a violent death, Tommy obeys the instructions of the two men and delivers them to a bar of their choice.

Impressed with his driving skills, the men pay him and offer him a job in the mafia. The next day, while Tommy is taking a coffee break, his cab is smashed by two rival gangsters. After this, he recalls the proposition from yesterday, and, without much hesitation, joins the Salieri family, making his first steps on the path of organized crime. While performing missions for Salieri, Tommy gradually begins to regret his choice. However, it turns out that joining the mafia was much easier than leaving it.

Mafia is an action and driving game set in the 1930s in Lost Heaven, a fictional city in the USA modeled after New York and Chicago of the Prohibition Era. Similar to GTA games, it consists of free-roaming (driving or on foot) in a large city, completing missions to advance the narrative. The missions often include driving to various locations, car chases, and one race; however, most of them are structured like fairly large and long third-person shooter levels.

The player will have the chance to drive over sixty vehicles that are reminiscent of the 1930's period. Each car handles it differently, with various degrees of damage. It is possible to smash windows, destroy bumpers, lights, and mirrors, dent the car, shoot out the tires, or shoot the tires so much that they fall off. To add to the realism, if the car's gas tank gets punctured, gas will slowly leak out until the car totally empties. There are gas stations scattered throughout the city, allowing the player to refuel. With these vehicles, the player is able to explore twelve square miles of the city, visiting areas such as Central Island, Chinatown, and the Downtown district.

Complementing the vehicles is an array of weapons, such as pistols, tommy guns, shotguns, explosives, baseball bats, and crowbars. While driving a car, Tommy can perform a drive-by, sticking his hand out the window and firing. Trying to impede him is the police force; they will act on anything suspicious. If they see Tommy carrying a weapon, they will attempt to arrest him. Going over the speed limit, running red lights, crashing into buildings, cars, or objects will result in fines.

Tommy is often given new cars to use during the missions, usually provided by Ralph, the mechanic of the Salieri family. The player can also save hijacked cars in the backyard of the bar belonging to Salieri. Weapons can be acquired at the beginning of a mission by Vincenzo, the local arms dealer.

Spellings

  • Мафия - Russian spelling
  • מאפיה - Hebrew spelling
  • 四海兄弟:失落的天堂 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

196 People (195 developers, 1 thanks) · View all

Development Director
Producer
Lead Programmer
LS3D Engine Director
Music
Director Of Photography
Art Director
Written and Directed by
Level Design
Programming
Collision, Facial Animations and Cutscene Editor
AI Programming
Physics Engine Programming
LS3D Engine Team
Additional Programming
LS3D Editor Plug-ins
Character Design
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 85% (based on 53 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.1 out of 5 (based on 215 ratings with 9 reviews)

So good I would join the Mafia to get it! Capisci?!

The Good
The first decade of the 21st century was marked by a rise in creativity in Eastern European game-making. Among the new games that were developed in those countries that used to dwell in the shadow of communist regimes, the Czech Mafia stands out as the one that found its way into the mainstream and became an instant hit within its genre.

Mafia was truly one of those "games you can't put down" for me. From mission to mission, my appreciation to it grew and increased. It was so clear that the Czech developers loved their game so much and invested everything in it, left in it a part of their souls. When a game is created with so much dedication, you just feel those vibes coming at you.

Since Mafia was conceived as a GTA clone, the inevitable question is of course "how does this game compare to GTA games"? I can only give you this advice: don't compare. I started playing Mafia while thinking of GTA, and that was a mistake. It took me some time to appreciate this game for what it was. GTA games are great at what they do, and Mafia is great at what it does. Their goals are different. GTA is about pure fun, diversity, and humor; Mafia is serious and realistic. In GTA, you are happy to perform all kinds of crazy things even though you know they are impossible; in Mafia, you are immersed into a genuine life of a mafioso. GTA is arcade-like fun, while Mafia is hardcore action. GTA is about insanely versatile and totally unrealistic missions tied by silly plots sparked by satire; Mafia is about down-to-earth assignments and serious third-person shooter gameplay crowned by a meaningful story. They are different, they are both great, and we need them both.

That doesn't mean that there is no fun to be had in Mafia. Oh no, there is plenty of it. Just like in GTA games, you can wreak havoc in the city, running over pedestrians, shooting people, blowing up cars, etc. You can hotwire and hijack cars and just drive around, enjoying the beautiful scenery. But it is clear that the focus of the game is not on that. In GTA, driving was clearly more important than shooting; in Mafia, it's the other way around. The "meat" of the game are its missions, in which shooting sequences take much more weight than the driving ones.

Mafia is above all a fantastic action game. It is challenging and sometimes frustrating in a good way. The large, varied, excellently designed levels, the tricky foes, the realistic way the weapons are handled - everything indicates a first-rate shooter. It is full of unforgettable moments - I'm sure each player has fond memories of how he crouched behind a wall with only two hitpoints left and no health kits in sight, with vicious shotgun-wielding maniacs waiting around the corner; how he desperately charged into a guarded building, diving to the side and giving the gangsters a taste of the old trusty Thompson; how he finally reached that checkpoint, read the magic words "the game was saved", removed the sweaty, trembling hands from the mouse and sat back, pouring a glass of water to quench the thirst of the dry throat...

Mafia never lets go, it is always ready to greet the player with yet another nerve-wrecking episode. There is always great variety in the shooting parts of the game: besides the usual "kill everyone" missions, there are stealth missions, melee fighting, sniping; the levels are massive outdoor environments, narrow corridors, a boat, an abandoned prison, docks, airport, art museum; each and every level is memorable, each and every mission is different in terms of goals and execution, but similar in the amount of pure suspense and adrenaline-raising action. Mafia would have been a great game even if it didn't have the driving parts.

But the driving is also great fun. The city in Mafia is a wonderful place to explore. Everything is done with outstanding care. The city is very large, with several drastically different areas: busy city center with skyscrapers, charming areas with old buildings, a rich district with villas, a workers' quarter, a lovely countryside, etc. There is a vast amount of different cars to steal and to drive; all of them have an authentic look and feel of the thirties. There are fully interactive trams and trains in the city that you could board if you are tired of exploring the city by car or on foot. While most of the driving serves as just a prelude to the actual missions, there are also several suspenseful chase sequences and an incredibly challenging (fortunately, with a difficulty level slider if you apply the much-needed patch), but excellent racing mission with the coolest cars you've ever seen.

Mafia has beautiful, detailed graphics, excellent music and sound effects. I just love the main theme (the music that plays when you access the main menu and also during the most important cutscene). It is done in the style of those heart-wrenching Italian melodies for gangster movies and it fits the game's story so well.

Speaking of which: Mafia is a very story-driven game, much more so than the GTA games, in which the stories were there mostly to tie the missions together and also served as excuses for bringing up as many satiric scenes as possible. The story of Mafia is very serious, tragic, and could in all honesty serve as a plot for a good gangster movie. There is something indescribably honest and direct in this story: it is warm and humane without being sentimental, concise without being dry or underdeveloped, and moving without being melodramatic. There is a lot of understanding in this story, but also a lot of realism, which is naturally not always pleasant, since it is a story about organized crime, after all. Above all, it is poignant and very sincere. The dialogues might appear plain in the beginning, but there is a lot of power in those precise, clear sentences. Characters tend to have moral discussions, so those dialogues are full of quotes that illustrate the happenings in the story and are stuck in the memory of the player. The story just gets better and better as the game progresses, with plot twists to follow, until it culminates in the outstanding ending.

The Bad
Mafia will satisfy you only if you don't come to it expecting crazy GTA-style antics. It is less ambitious and it generally goes only for what matters most. I imagine some people wouldn't appreciate its austere nature, sparse side activities, and relentless difficulty level. Be sure to apply the patch, since the race is almost unbeatable without it. Also, being killed by the last enemy left in the level and having to restart the whole mission is understandably frustrating. I don't like limited saving options in games and strongly oppose this treatment; but somehow, the gameplay here was so engaging that I almost didn't mind.

The voice acting could be called "uneven". Not just because some actors are better than others; the same actor's performance can range from convincing to adequate to almost fake during different dialogues. In a game with such a dramatic, serious story, everything that falls below "convincing" reduces the intensity of the experience. I also think that they could have worked more on the expressions on people's faces; they are absolutely bland. So many times Tommy is distressed, angry, or desperate; his face never betrays any of these emotions, and sometimes it just looks silly, especially when combined with the less than emotional voice acting.

The Bottom Line
Mafia gives you everything you would expect from a great action title: nerve-wrecking suspense and intense fights, great levels and atmospheric scenery; it also gives you a gorgeous city to explore while driving cool, stylish cars from the thirties; and on top of this, it has outstanding cinematic qualities and tells a good story. If you don't go and play this game now, I'll have to liquidate you on behalf of the Don.

Windows · by Unicorn Lynx (181780) · 2015

A good story, and great fun, if a bit short

The Good
The best thing about this game, in my opinion, was the storyline. The characters were extremely well-developed, and the voice acting was excellent. As a driving simulator, it's not half-bad either.

The flow of the missions was very smooth. With a couple of exceptions (detailed in the next section), nothing was too challenging or frustrating, although some missions were a tad on the easy side.

As for the actual driving part, it's a blast. The physics engine has a couple of issues, but on the whole, driving a 1930's era car actually feels like.... driving a 1930's era car. They're sluggish, and handle like tugboats, but later on in the game, you can pick up some real high performance cars.

The <u>Free Ride</u> mode is a fun diversion, it's sortof like GTA3-Lite. You can drive people around in taxicabs and kill gangsters for money. Unfortunately, aside from driving around and exploring, that's all you can do in Free Ride, but it's fun to see how long you can last against the cops in a high-performance sportscar.

The city is also persistent - if you abandon a car on a street somewhere, and then come back hours later (at least, in Free Ride mode), your car will still be there, in the middle of the road. (In addition to about eight million other cars piled up behind it.) So, if you so desire, you can make use of some of numerous empty parking lots in the game to store cars in, when playing in Free Ride mode.

As an added bonus, once you complete the game, you unlock "Free Ride Extreme". There are a number of missions in this mode, and each one rewards you with a special, unique car. These cars can be used in the basic Free Ride mode.

The Bad
As mentioned earlier, some missions are very difficult, compared with other missions. Most noteably, "That Friggin' Race Mission". Completing this mission with keyboard controls is, at first blush, nigh-impossible, and caused no end of frustration. There is also one other mission where it's not really clear what you should be doing; I had to consult a walkthrough for this one.

While the music was well-done, it got repetative very quickly. I mean, very quickly. When toolin' around in Free Ride mode, I try to avoid Little Italy altogether, just because of its ambient music.

Do doot doot do de do...
Do doot doot do de do...
Do doot doot do de do...
Doot do doot doot do!
[.....]
Do doot doot do de do...
Do doot doot do de do...
AARGH! ENOUGH!

I mentioned the physics system earlier; it has one fault. At times, it's possible to knock your car on its side. No matter what you do, you'll never get it back on its wheels again. Ramming it with another car just pushes it around, instead of flipping it back over. Hope you weren't too attatched to that car...

There is one bug I've found with the AI, and it's actually almost a good thing, due to the humor it invokes. Check this out:

I got pulled over by the cops for speeding. I got out of my car, and paid the fine. The two cops went back to their policecar, and one of them got in the passenger side. The second cop opened the door, hauled the first cop out of the car, and climbed in. The first cop got back up, opened the door, hauled the second cop back out, and then SHOT HIM. The surviving cop then walked around to the driver's side, and drove off.

I'm still laughing about that one.

The only other drawback is that the actual storyline was over too quickly. I managed to complete this game in about a week, and it usually takes me forever to complete any game.

The Bottom Line
Fans of GTA3 may like this game. Even though it's not as freeform, it seems to be a lot more realistic, and the city feels a lot more "real". The excellent story more than makes up for the driving simulator's few shortcomings.

Windows · by Dave Schenet (134) · 2002

Almost Perfect.

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.

Xbox · by Tiroloco (15) · 2008

[ View all 9 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
References to heavy metal?! Simoneer (29) Sep 12, 2010
Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven Indra was here (20756) Sep 1, 2010

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

German version

The German version of Mafia has been censored. There is no blood when running over or attacking people. Also, pedestrians cannot be killed, they just lie down on the ground and take cover. Interestingly enough, the in-game cutscenes still have all the blood effects.

Phaeton

The game features a fictional luxury car called the Phaeton. Two years after the game's release, Volkswagen has released a new luxury car also called the Phaeton. Coincidence?

References

  • One mission has you entering a hotel named "Hotel Coreleone". Coreleone is the famous family name from the The GodFather movies.
  • Another mission has you stealing cigars from a box labeled "Scorsese Import/Export". Scorsese is in reference to the film director Martin Scorsese, who has directed many mob movies, including GoodFellas and Casino.
  • The names of the opponents during the car-race are taken from actual people, mostly frontmen of heavy metal bands, like Mark "Barney" Greenway from Napalm Death, Chris Barnes from Cannibal Corpse or Kirk Windstein from Crowbar.
  • The museum at the end of the game is a detailed clone of the "Kunsthistorisches Museum" in Vienna, Austria. Illusion Softworks, the Czech-based company who developed the game, obviously chose the building as an inspiration for the level.

Voice acting

In the German version of the game, Mogens von Gadow voices Paulie. Von Gadow is the German voice of actor Joe Pesci who performed in Scorsese's mob movies Goodfellas and Casino.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2002– Best PC Action Game of the Year
    • 2002– Best PC Action Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
    • 2002– #6 Best PC Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 2003 (Issue #225) – Best Music of the Year
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • February 13, 2003 - Best Game in 2002 (Readers' Vote)
    • February 13, 2003 - Best Action Game in 2002 (Readers' Vote)
    • February 13, 2003 - Most Innovative Game in 2002 (Readers' Vote)
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 11/2005 - #4 Game Which Absolutely Needs A Sequel (it eventually got in in 2010)

Information also contributed by Daniel Saner, Gargaj, Indra was here, Lumpi, Wizo and Zack Green

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by JPaterson.

Xbox added by Corn Popper. PlayStation 2 added by Horny-Bullant.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Isdaron, Jeanne, Zack Green, Crawly, Klaster_1, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Victor Vance, FatherJack, UgraUgra.

Game added September 4, 2002. Last modified March 6, 2024.