Mafia

The Good
This is not Grand Theft Auto 3. Let me make that a bit clearer. If you thought this game looked a lot like GTA3 then wipe the image from your mind. Mafia's only common ground with GTA3 is a living roamable city but that's where the comparisons may as well end. Sure that's a sizable similarity but Mafia has enough originality and style to shake the GTA3 clone stigma as soon as the game starts.

Set in the 1930's and telling the story of a simple taxi driver turned crime boss, Mafia has more gunfights, beatings and robberies than you can shake a tommy gun at, all told in such style and with such brilliance that you'd think it was written to be a film originally. As I said before, the script and story is expertly told and shot, keeping you on the edge of your seat and constantly wanting to see what happens next. The acting is first rate too for everyone from your own character, Tommy Angelo to the numerous NPC's that litter the streets. I honestly can't think of any other game to do the story telling and delivery aspect so well. It's really that good.

The whole experience is enhanced by making you drive to each mission in a living breathing city that changes as time passes. If you try to drive like you did in GTA3 you'll find the cops after you very quickly which of course is bad news unless you were after some trouble. Mafia is somewhat more sensible in regards to the cops than most games as Police can actually lose you and even call on a city wide search where every cop is on the lookout. Unlike other games of this type, just because they're after you doesn't mean they have any idea where you are. All of this is conveyed through some very pretty visuals and some of the best realtime human 3d animation yet seen in a game. Sound has also been taken care of with equal style. Old 30's music plays throughout the game and ambient noise is equally well dealt with.

Missions are very varied and each one takes you to very different and interesting places usually comprising of a driving element where you either must drive to/from somewhere or chase/evade someone, as well as on foot sections where the game takes a standpoint reminiscent of Max Payne and just as stylish. Those who own force feedback steering wheels are not forgotten with feedback fully supported for the driving sections (highly recommended.)

There are over 20 missions to get through, each one is highly different from the last and takes place in staggeringly varied environments. Even better is that once you've finished the game you can take any car out on the town in the Free Ride mode which, as the name suggests allows you free access to the entire city so you can just cruise for trouble.

The Bad
The game may sound perfect so far but sadly, it isn't. Some of the stages are quite unbalanced and you may find yourself struggling through one stage then breezing through the next. The driving/chasing also plays a big part in the game and since the physics are fairly realistic you may find yourself having a bit of trouble without an analogue controller handy, particularly during a race that pops up (you'll know it when you see it.)

There are also save points that seem to have been positioned perfectly for players who have already finished the game and know exactly where to go and what to do. This often leads to immense frustration because you have to repeat areas you already beat, some of which are very tough.

AI is utterly thick on other cars on the road. They'll act as if you aren't even there most of the time meaning you'll be rammed into a lot if you don't watch it.

The game also features it's fair share of bugs, some of which include chipmunk speed voices on certain systems, crashes and refusal to load. There are also numerous in game bugs and irritations that I won't go into here due to spoiler material and as of this review there is no patch.

The Bottom Line
Mafia is a stunning game with a brilliant story, delivery and atmosphere but is also very frustrating at times and carries it's fair share of bugs.

Despite it's flaws however, it's definitely worth getting ahold of.

The Good
The atmosphere of this game, brought to us by the sound, music, and incredible graphics have never been this good for a mafia game. There may never come a better mafia game.

I don't know jack about cars, especially cars of the era, but the graphics sure do look good, so I'm going to go ahead and say that all the cars are realistically portrayed in the game with realistic physics and sounds. But one thing I noticed that I particularly liked was that you could really damage them. Unlike most games, if you hit a car, it will become dented in a certain predefined way. But in Mafia, every spot on the car seems to have a unique damage area, with scratches and bullet holes contributing to it. Tires will pop and windshields will break, your mirror will break off and your car can explode. Most of the time in the game, whether you're walking down the streets of Lost Heaven or driving through the winding countryside roads, it feels like you're an actor in a movie. A great movie.

Throwing away your ammo clip will actually cost you some ammo! Finally! Odd that this long-awaited realism was brought to us by a game that doesn't focus entirely on guns.

The game's story spans about a decade and you will be engrossed in the life of Tommy from the opening scene up until the final battle. Every mission you go on tells a tale that adds more to Tommy's character, as well as the other characters in the game.

Every mission is unique, though most require you to kill a lot of bad guys. Some missions require you to go out and assassinate someone, others you might just have to "rough someone up" a bit and damage their cars, some others might just be trying to escape from the cops or an opposing gang, wildly flying down the roads and taking sharp corners while bullets decorate the back of your car and your buddy hangs outside the window with his tommygun blazing.

While most of the game you're either supposed to be going somewhere or escaping somewhere, you can take advantage of times when you're not under the clock or in trouble by just driving around the very large city of Lost Heaven...maybe get out of your car and beat the hell out of a pedestrian for looking at you funny, too. Or steal a car and run the sucker over like in Grand Theft Auto. Yes, this game can quite easily turn into GTA for the 30s. There is even a special playing mode specifically designed for this. And when you complete the game, another mode unlocks that lets you go nuts in the city without any police resistance!

There are many guns of the era to play with in the game, and those which require one hand to use you can even use while driving! Driving and shooting...it IS as hard in the game as it might be in real life. But if you're good, you might shoot out the enemy's tires and watch him fly off the road into a pole.

Running into a wall at sixty miles and hour WILL hurt you. It can even kill you. They didn't have airbags back then, you know.

As your cars take more and more damage, they become less reliable and well...useless to drive. It isn't just the "your car slows down" thing of most car games. No, your tires, your engine, anything that has been damaged will seperately contribute to your car's performance.

There's law in the city! You can't run over the speed limit, you can't crash into people or walls, you can't run a red light. Hey, how about that? You might just get a ticket - but if you step outside with a tommygun in your hands, the cops will either try to arrest you or blow you away.

Your actions on one mission carry over to the next. I wrecked my car on a turn in one mission, and when I played the next, the car was still there, toppled over on the side of the road.

Between missions, you can do secondary missions for a guy who'll tell you how to steal cars and where to find a nice car to steal. These missions usually involve racing accross the city to get to a guy before the cops do, or helping a guy escape from the cops.

Everyone talks about "that damn race level". I felt that it was greatly exaggerated. I finished it on my fourth try, and it was fun! I went back and did it again just for the heck of it. Anyone with any experience with racing games should be able to finish it with ease.

The excitement that builds up in the game can spawn some great stories to be told to your friends. Like when I had every cop in the city - as well as a rival gang - after me, I was driving this really slow car and I hit this ramp that went over this fence at a very slow speed. I touched the ground not far from the fence, but the cops and gang members who were chasing me hit the ramp fast, and each one after the other flew over my head, crashing into each other like something out of Blues Brothers. I remember another time when me an' Pauly had to go 'whack' somebody, but I was very badly injured. I was about one hit from getting killed and we were walking down this alley. I was peeking around the corner, seeing who was there, when I saw a man sneak up behind me. I didn't have time to turn around, and just as the man raised his bat to strike me down - which would have been a killing blow - BLAM! Pauly blows the guy away just a split second before my death. Or another time when I was able to survive only barely after having my car shot to pieces on the side of the dock. I got out of my car and hid behind it, ready to jump out and start shooting. But then my car exploded and sent my hopefully already dead body into the river. Or maybe the time when I pulled over while a rival gang was after me, and while the cop was writing the ticket, the rival gang car pulled right up next to us, the gang members leaned out and shot us to hell with their tommy guns! Ah, I laugh out loud just remembering the non-scripted elements of the game.

Cars don't just drive around aimlessly (though they'll circle blocks a few times and stuff like that). You'll see cars park and then pedestrians get out. Taxis will pick up people and drive away. You can even drive a taxi in the game.

The city is gigantic, the game is huge, the story is incredible - I nearly shed a tear at the end - the graphics rock, the sound is great...this is one of my all time favorite games.

The Bad
Driving around got a bit boring at times. A lot of missions require you to drive accross the city a few times to do things, and after you've "seen the sights" a few times already, it just feels like a chore. Especially if you do something stupid and end up getting arrested by the cops, thus ending the mission, and have to do it all over again.

Hey, why am I getting pulled over because some other idiot broke the law?! Sometimes, the civilian cars are...well...just kinda dumb. I've seen them do some crazy things. Like drive on the wrong side of the road, run red lights, fly out from nowhere, hit me, and just drive on. And if they hit YOU, even if you were not at fault, and a cop sees it, you'll probably get ticketed.

Whoowhee - don't believe what they tell you when they say you have the "recommended requirements". Running this game (on full detail) might chug a bit with even the fastest, most powerful computers. My computer is far from the best, but it certainly is good, and I had to nearly drip my detail levels to the lowest just to get a frame rate higher than 6 FPS while driving (though indoor areas ran just fine).

Your "wife" only appears in one mission, though she has references throughout the game. I wish they had done more with her, at least added her to a cutscene or something to give her a bit more depth.

Shooting while driving is pretty inacurate, and not because it's "hard to do", but because you don't have a very good reference while driving. All you really see is your arm hanging outside the window and a crosshair, but the crosshair doesn't help if your arm isn't aimed in the place, so it's impossible to aim correctly if the target isn't slightly ahead of you or right beside you.

Okay, the race level. I'll put it in "the bad" because most people hate it like the devil. If you've never played a racing game in your life - and don't have a steering wheel - it'll probably be hell for you, too.

I've heard people talk about bugs that prevent them from finishing levels and the like, in which they have to restart the entire mission - not just restart from the last save - in order to fix it. I did encounter this bug, in the very last level. When I told a friend about it, he remarked, "just the one?" so apparently it happens pretty often. Maybe I just got lucky.

On the last level, the gun guy's location isn't pointed out on the map. Grrrrr!

A multiplayer option would have been cool.

The Bottom Line
Combine elements of GTA3 with a 3rd person shooter and throw in a great immersive story that'll have you playing from beginning to end and you have this masterpiece. Mafia is an epic cinematic computer game that shouldn't be passed up by anyone (well, except those who have slow computers, heh)

The Good
Graphics:

The theme of the game is meant to be around the 1930's and it is done nearly perfectly. Im not saying that the actual graphics were the best i've seen but when I was playing Mafia I actually felt like I was driving around the city of Lost Heaven.

The cars you see driving around lost heaven look good as well. When i'm driving around the city in one of those I can fell like i'm a big mafia man and prove it by pummeling the guy who nipped my car. Another part of the graphics that adds to the atmosphere is the view when you are looking out off a building or looking over the water it always looks great.

Sound:

The voices of Tommy and all his boys sound surprisingly good compared to all the other voices i've heard in games lately (all the resident evil series etc.) The sound is actually one of the best parts of the game. The music is perfect for depicting a day driving (or walking) around the city around the era of the prohibition.

The cars sound awesome. If you have got a beast of a car then everyone will know that it goes off by the sound of it. Going around corners, your tires screeching while you can hear an enemy gang shooting there tommy guns at you all adds to the flavor of the game.

Gameplay:

The gameplay for Mafia was the best i've been lucky enough to come across (in the story mode anyway.) When you are playing through the missions running or driving away from enemy gangsters it feels like the game is unfolding like a movie. The story is great, I actually felt like crying when the ending was over.

When you are driving around Lost heaven you can to many things to keep you entertained if you are not doing missions. In GTA: Vice City you could shoot other cars tires and I thought that it was fantastic. Mafia takes it one step further and you can actually shoot the bolts in the middle of the wheel and make the wheel come of the car, even if this a bit unrealistic its still allot of fun to see a civilian trying to drive of with noi wheels on his/her car.

The Bad
Graphics:

I said above that the views look great, but that means you have to be far away. If you get up close the graphics on building, trees and people aren't exactly the best and saying that is a very big understatement.

Sound:

As I said before the sound is one of the best aspects of the game but there is one flaw. If you are driving along listening to the song and you need to look at the map or go to the main menu then the song will start from the beginning again once you get back in and so you could end up listening to the same song about 5 or 6 times and it tends to get a bit annoying after a while.

Gameplay:

The story mode of the game is one of the best I have ever played so I have no real complaints there apart from it being a bit difficult. But the real problem is when you beat the game and go to Free ride it gets boring after about 30 mins. After blowing up cars, killing a few people and getting shot by gangsters it just gets boring.

The Bottom Line
If you want a game with a great story line but not so great free ride option then this is a game for you. Don't expect secret packages and such like in GTA though.