Mafia

The Good
Oh man. I was just blown away really. When I bought it, I had serious fears that it won't run at all, since I only have a 750Mhz computer with 128Mb RAM and Voodoo3 card (which doesn't pull GTA3, for one, which is why I can't compare this game to that one very well) - but it did run, and I fell worshipfully down before the beauty of it. As far as I'm concerned, this game has set the standard for mafia/cops and robbers games that the releases of the next few years will have to measure up to. And point 1 of that standard is this: COVER EVERYTHING. Every single thing from all those crime and mafia movies that you've played out in your childhood with model cars and toy soldiers with fat plasticine cheeks sticked on (each to his own) - you get to do it LIVE, in glorious Technicolor, 3d and all beautifully designed, from the laundry drying in the yard to the lead characters' remarkably done faces.

Let's see if they've missed something: a Tarantino-style break-in in a mansion full of armed bandits holding your wounded mafioso-mate hostage (complete with a gangster coming out of the toilet), check, shooting it out with the police on the rooftops and fire-escapes, check, shoot-outs in the church while hiding behind an altar (!), check, a massacre of policemen trying to escort a valuable witness onto an airplane, check, a shootout in a multi-story car-park, check, protecting the Don in an ambush as you're hiding behind an upturned table in a restaurant with a battalion of hoods firing at you from the street, check, massive shoot-outs in the docks among ships, trains and cranes with bandits on top, check, assasinating important people in public, check, sniping off politicians giving speeches from an abandoned prison tower half-a-mile away, check, a massacre in the city museum, check, and of course car chases galore - fleeing, chasing, drive-by shooting, taking it out at chasing cars with a tommy gun from the back of a truck, shooting down an airplane taking off - check, check, check, check. Oh yeah, and a bank-job too, of course.

In short, it's all here. And they've done it with style. No budget cuts here - beside your basic huge GTA3-style city, beautifully done locations include a church under repair, a five-story brothel, MASSIVE docks, an airport, country roads (seems it's always autumn in the country), a bank, a cruise ship, an abandoned jail-house, a restaurant, a bar, a huge museum, an apartment block, a rich villa with a surrounding park, a road-side motel and a realistically done 1930's racing track. And the level design is intense, unpredictable and action-filled, tying in plot elements and using the locations excellently. For example, you're meeting somebody who has some booze to sell: dark night, lightning, storm, a broken door creaking, a bunch of farmhouses on a lonely road miles from anywhere and these guys want you to go there alone to check out "why no-one's here yet" (make a wild guess); suffice to say that at the end of this one you're on the top story of one of those barns, with a mafioso mate bleeding to death on the floor next to you, and you shooting through the window at a bunch of cops outside.

The essence of the game is the heart-breakingly beautiful changes of pace from the excitement of a wild chase (though you better make sure you have a faster computer than I do to enjoy it all properly) to the cliff-hangers that are most of the shoot-outs. Forget your Quakes and Jedi Knights and Half-lives: in this game, you can't charge into a room and just shoot a bunch of people dead - in this game, the bunch of people shoot YOU dead before you manage two steps inside. Basic survival tips for you FPS-type people: 1. crouch; 2. hide behind objects (preferably ones that don't blow up); 3. wait until the enemy reloads, pop up, let him have it; 4. shoot in the head; 5. keep the distance - people with shotguns and sawed-offs will blow you away with one shot if you come close enough; 6. watch your back, watch every tower, crane or upper-story window, and expect surprises. The level design is tricky to say the least and the AI is devious - people will move about and surround you; one moment they'll hide, the next they're charging at ya, and blowing you away with their portable cannons. Together with the no-save-games approach, it makes the combat missions not entirely unalike to walking a tightrope blindfolded over a bottomless pit with some level designer bastard shaking the rope about on the other end. It's a thrilling ride that'll probably make you cross the street the next time you see a warehouse or a hangar coming your way, waving their hands in a friendly greeting, but it'll also make you smile wryly the next time somebody forces you to go to a museum or a church.

And that's obviously the designer's intent. The game really DOES make you feel like a mafiosi - a nervous wreck hiding behind the steely blue-eyed glare of Tommy Angelo, the lead character, a cross between de Niro in Godfather 2 and that third guy in Goodfellas whose name nobody remembers (at least I don't). The other characters range from the brilliance of your best friend Pauli (an obvious tribute to Joe Pesci in the aforementioned classic) to the servicability of Don Salieri to the open plagiarism of Don Morelo (de Niro in the Untouchables) to the plain idiocy of the moron romantic interest, Sarah - but everyone's kept in line, and everyone is eventually sacrificed to the game's grand message: crime doesn't pay. I don't want to give any plot elements away here, but after Tom and Pauli shoot Salieri and side with his mortal enemy Morelo who then commands them to kill their former best friend Sammy - hah! Fooled you! That's not at all what happened! As I said, I'm not giving away any plot elements here. I'll just quote the lead character's final speech: "we wanted more from life than other people but we ended up a lot worse than most" - and you should have an idea how the superbly written story of the game proceeds. It starts out happy-go-lucky taxi-cab driver turns to mafia for help, then proceeds into stylish cool mafioso professional hitmen fun until it turns all dark and creepy and everything falls apart for a very bleak ending. All the characters are very well worked out, their personalities really drive the story and you can really identify with the lead character's point of view - "the world is not run by laws written on paper, it is run by people, and it just depends on whether you'll play by somebody else's rules or you'll create your own". In fact, the story touched me so masterfully that I didn't at all want to explore the game's free-ride options after I had finished the game - after the deadly serious ending, I wasn't in the mood for any light-minded car-jacking and gangster-killing. It really was that good.

The Bad
I won't say anything along the lines of, "two words - race mission". I actually liked that one - it took a couple of hours, but they were a couple of fun, realistic 1930's racing filled hours. I really have no idea why people would complain about that one so much - I guess racing sim fans and GTA3/Max Payne fans are seperate groups of people. The REAL problem with the game is with its attitude to the player. It's like there was this one sicko of a level designer who thought that his job was not to create an entertaining experience but to simply OUTSMART THE PLAYER: I guess the guy thinks like this, "huh, he thinks he's so smart that he got through that predicament; he thinks he's getting a save game now - what about a guy hiding behind that door instead, letting you have it from a double-barrel shotgun straight in the face, ha ha ha!" What a moron! It's like all his experience with level design was from those old cartridge Nintendo games, or "pre-postal experiences" as I like to call them. OK, I understand that you shouldn't be allowed to save games where you want in a game that depends so heavily on tension and realism - but why shouldn't I get the feeling that the game is my friend instead of my enemy? If I get through one major shoot-out alive, why do I have to make it through one more shoot-out alive and then one more and only THEN is the game saved? If I can't figure out how to get out of the third one, why must I replay the first two ones as well, the ones I've figured out already?

An illustration of the game's attitude: in the final mission, in the museum, you first have to shoot some 15 people in 3 or 4 separate small gunfights, then a cutscene comes - but the game is NOT saved - and you resume in the open, on some stairs, with people firing at you from all sides and you can't even see where they are and you get killed of course. So you have to make it through the first 15 people AGAIN, just to see where those people shooting at you are. In the process you get killed again. But now you have a strategy - so you go through the first 15 again, then employ your strategy, kill the 6 or 7 people shooting at you on the stairs, then go through a bunch of corridors and rooms crouching, killing people, your nerves totally on fire because you know that if you get killed now, you start all over. Thus you manage to kill another dozen. And then - you come to some stairs, tuck tuck tuck, huh, what's that?, BANG! Somebody threw a grenade down the stairs and you're dead! Start over! You could almost hear the level designer chuckling there! It's so incredibly frustrating - half a dozen times at least I stared at the CD and had to literally clench teeth and count to ten in order not to do violent things to it.

Actually I did have to use a trainer in two missions. The first one was the 8th one I think, where you have to go against some thugs with a BAT. I'd like to beat with a bat the guy who came up with that idea. What am I doing beating people with bats in a mafia game? And it's so incredibly frustrating - you're totally outnumbered, you have to watch out for your psycho pal Pauli, and it's just so hard to get a good whack in when three or four people are beating you at the same time. And after you get through that lame idiocy of a fight, you're then thrown into a tough gunfight, no savegames again, and get killed. Fun. The other mission was the airport mission - I couldn't get through the hangar alive, and again was being frustrated to the point of CD-mauling. I just think this game could've done a lot better with what is common practice in most other games, ie, a difficulty setting. Real hardcore players maybe should've been allowed to even go through the ENTIRE game without any saves, but surely hardcore players constitute only a small percentage of the game's intended audience. So what gives? What kind of marketing strategy is that? I read in a Max Payne review on this site one guy advising to buy the game before the weekend and return it on Monday. So maybe these guys thought that if they'll make the game normal difficulty, most players will finish it quickly enough to cheat and get a refund? I just can't see any other reason for this - are there actually any normal people out there who'd rather have a game incredibly frustratingly hard just so that it wouldn't be over in a couple of days? Well, Illusion Softworks - if you want to make your games longer, just make more missions for godssakes!

As for other things. The battle AI, though sometimes very smart, was sometimes also incredibly dumb - you'd go up to a guy and he just wouldn't shoot you! He'd weirdly circle around you, crouching, trying to get an angle where he could see your head from down there, I guess. And would you just look at how people are driving on the streets! In one mission I had to follow a guy who was driving at approximately 25 mph in a SPORTSCAR, and he still drove over some grandma! And didn't look back or anything! Nevermind police cars driving over people, nevermind cars generally turning out to be driving around in circles if you take care to follow them for some time, nevermind them piling up behind your car if you've parked it on the verge.

Hilarious but true story: in one mission you had to stop at some house and wait until a car drives out of it and then follow it; so when you arrived at the house, you had a cutscene of sorts, which was sort of an interactive cutscene as it took into account the actual situation on the street as you had left it before the cutscene began: so, this black car drives out the house, and drives away, and your character is sitting in a car on the opposite side of the street, and says to himself, "whew, that was close!"; only thing is, there were five cars already piled up behind Tommy's car, all hooting (you could actually see it in the cutscene!) - those guys must've been bleeding BLIND not to notice that!).

And why do police cars only notice if -I- exceed the speed limit? I'm chasing some car which is obviously driving at something like 70mph (40mph is the speed limit), and the policeman doesn't give a hoot when it passes him by, but when -I- pass him by, he immediately turns on the siren!

And what's up with that Thief rip-off mission? Couldn't Looking Glass sue? This game is brimming over with original ideas, it didn't need to unimaginatively borrow stuff like that.

And one more complaint. This game takes the old approach of having your character enter the scene already after the events of the game have taken place, and narrate his life's story to some cop. All the actual missions are in fact flashbacks of sort. Well, in that case I can't help thinking how exactly did he "tell" the story of the carpark shootout to that policeman. Must've been pretty emotional: "oh yeah, man, and then I threw a grenade, and then, BANG, and WOW, like all the cars go up, and then I run, BANG, BANG, I shoot at the guy, he falls dead, I pull out a Thompson and shoot THRADDADDA, then Pauli shoots me in the back by accident but it's nothing I go bang bang again, there's this guy hiding around the corner, I crouch, pull back a little, jump out, bang bang, he shoots at me, I go like , ouch.... etc."

The Bottom Line
Well there was once a game called Syndicate. This game is like a 3d version of it, with a super-cool film-quality story thrown on and the squad tactics exchanged for some stealth/commando tactics. If you could manage with the no-save-games tactic of that game and enjoyed all the massacres and the cold-blooded realism, you're going to enjoy this game as well. Only thing is - I can't help thinking that Illusion Softworks must've tried REALLY hard to come this close to totally screwing up such a great game.

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
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.

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.

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.

The Good
Nearly everything is to like about this game.

You are Thomas "Tommy" Angelo, a regular day-to-day taxi driver back in the early 1930s. Tommy goes about doing his taxi duties, until one night while taking a break he hears a sound coming from an alley. Two men come out of the alley, one of them is wounded by a gunshot. They hold a gun to Tommy's head and tell him to get in the car and drive them to a certain restaurant. As he drives them, Tommy realizes the two men are gangsters who are running away from their assailants. From here on out the game turns into an awe-inspiring mafia story of epic proportions which basically plays out like a top of the line mafia film.

You have everything you would expect from a mafia story here. You have dozens of beautifully modeled cars with huge amounts of detail that look and drive just like old 30's cars did, and with impeccable damage modeling usage. Do not expect the cars to drive fast as it is the 1930s, the realism factor is very evident here. You have a wide array of weapons (from a simple bat to Molotov Cocktails to pistols and revolvers and automatic weapons and sniper rifles) and all of them are in great detail and operate as they should in real life.

The game revolves around a city called "Lost Heaven" which is basically a real life Chicago or New York back in the 30s. The city design is extremely well done and features high quality rendered buildings and street lights, roads, bridges, and anything you would expect. Since the city consists of certain islands which can only be crossed by bridges or by train, the water detail is impressive, the train tracks are nicely situated throughout the city for easy access. Boats are seen from time to time in the waters and airplanes appear up in the sky. People are walking and talking in the streets just like normal people would. The people models look very different from each other and with different clothing and hats that suit the 1930s era.

The main character models are the best around in any genre or system to date. With superb detail to every little aspect of a model's face or body or clothing. This is backed up with some of the best speech and acting around, to an extent that you can truly relate to and understand every character in the game.

Music in this game is perfectly suitable to the 1930s and it probably won't appeal to everyone (especially teens) as it features old Jazz and melodies of some of the best performers of the time. You won't find Pop/Rock/Rap/Disco/Dance/Soul/whatever here, so if you can't appreciate true music, please stay away. During the intense moments of the game, the game features a kind of dramatic music to increase the effect and it really does the job well.

The game features an incredibly strong and long story that will certainly keep you up during not so few nights, featuring superb car chases and gun-fights in the old style.

You can also choose to play "Free Ride" which is different from the story mode since it allows you to roam the city freely and do whatever you want. If that is not enough for you, once you complete the game once, you get to play "Free Ride Extreme" which basically consists of many little quests that you have to do throughout the city, with every mission you complete you get a new fancy car in reward. Those cars are nothing like the game's regular cars as they are some of the most bizarre cars (and fast too) you'll see.

The Bad
If one had to be VERY picky about this game I would say that it is somewhat disappointing that you do not have enough freedom and other activities to in the city outside of the main story mode.

Another little rant I may have is about the fact the you'll have to spend a long time driving just to start a particular mission and thus just getting to the point where you can start a mission may sometimes be a little tedious.

However, these little rantings should not keep you from missing a game of a caliber of this size and strength.

The Bottom Line
Bottom Line - You need to own this game already. It does not matter whether or not you like action games, this is so good it can appeal to everybody who can appreciate a true art of a game.

This is easily one of the most revolutionary games of all time and one that is at the top of my game list, one that I'll probably play when I'm 60 and one that I will forever remember and enjoy just thinking about. Folks, games don't get better than this and all should appreciate the art that is this game.

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.

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
Okay, I just started playing this game, but I already got my review.

First of all, the graphics are unquestionably amazing. The characters look finely drawn, and use of colours and textures are great. The cut scenes make you want to stay and watch, their more like a tv show than a video game cinematic. I found that the voice acting was very good. The characters look, well, like the mafia.

The sound was great. Once again, the voice acting was amazing, but what was also great were the sound effects. All the sounds were realistic and great.

The loading time was nothing. I played some games like Freedom Force where you just keep waiting for the loading time, but this game was a breeze on my PC. It was very quick, and there were almost no, no, NO slowdowns at all. Even when there was tons of action on screen, it kept the regular speed.

The folks at Illusion also managed another great aspect, there are many types ofplay. You can drive in a car around the city, shoot people in a Max Payne type style, or race in a track(I HATED THAT). Nevertheless, it was amazing to be able to do so much.

The control layout was good too, using the mouse and keyboard and creating shortcuts on the keyboard, whic were easy to remember.

The Bad
Music sucked. There's no question about it. Sure, it created the mood of the game, but I hated it. Couldn't they have gotten a less corny soundtrack?

Once again, that racing part was too hard!

The Bottom Line
Still, Mafia was an unquestionably amazing title that might just be what everyone had been looking for-until now. I give Mafia a very well earned 5 / 5 .