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Great plot line makes up for long load times

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 11
Date: February 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

In Mafia, you play a lowly taxi driver who slowly moves up through the ranks of the local mob. It's a blend of Vice City with 30s era Chicago.

First, your environment. The maps of this city are HUGE and are sort of a mish-mash of all Italian cliches you can imagine. You've got bits of areas from New York City, from New Jersey (home of the Sopranos), from Chicago, and a few other cities thrown in as well. The resulting fictional city seems exceedingly authentic.

The maps are huge, detailed, and you can go down every back alley and around every corner. The downside to all of this is that the load times to move from area to area are simply AMAZINGLY long. I don't think I've played a game in years that has had such tedious load times. This is DEFINITELY a game that you play with a glass of wine (Chianti, of course) and plate of cheese in front of you, so you can snack and drink while you wait. It's a lesson in patience.

The graphics are quite nice, although not stellar. The cars in particular are a bit "shiny" most of the time and objects really appear to have painted-on skins rather than having textures. Still, you quickly learn to adapt to the look of the game and get drawn in by the plot.

The plot is where MAFIA shines. Other similar games have plots that often feel very contrived. You're being dragged along into missions just to achieve a cool stunt or go through a series of obstacles. In Mafia, you really get to understand the main character, his choices, his dilemmas. He doesn't always do what he's told. He's not an angel, but he tries to stay true to what he believes in. The maps' being large helps with the feeling that you are a real person making real decisions. There isn't any "Go directly left then go 2 steps forward" - you can take whatever route you want and if you take the wrong one, you have to figure out how to get yourself out of it.

This also makes replayability fun, because there are 80 different ways to handle each situation and you never know which one might be the most ideal.

There are a good collection of era-appropriate weapons (tommy guns, sawed off shotguns, etc) and a large number of cars for you to learn how to break into. The starting ones are, as in any game, the typical low-milage, low-speed clunkers. As you learn more about cars, you get your hands on better and better models for your garage.

The AI is reasonably good. If you're perched in a window, the enemy will figure out how to get behind you and shoot you from there. They will cover each other while approaching you. We did hit a few glitches where you aimed directly at someone from point blank range and the system jumped so it "missed". There were a few clipping issues too with the graphics, but that happens in just about any game.

Overall, the game is reasonably long, and can easily take a few weeks to play through if you go for quality over race-though-and-miss-everything. The free roam mode helps keep the game interesting for even longer. This is a game that is fun to blast away in, but also gives you things to think about and characters to relate to.

Recommended!

GTA - Italian Style

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: December 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have this game for the PC and it is a lot of fun. I have beaten it completely and, i gotta say, going through each mission and cutscene was like controlling a classic mob movie. The gameplay was great with hard, but not impossible missions. The graphics ran smoothly and the layout of the city was amazing. If you've ever wanted to ride through New York City in the 1930's while being gunned at by a group of mobsters, this is the game for you. The only flaw brought up is that the 1930's cars drive like 1930's cars. I think that by the time you get used to the driving controls, this won't even matter. Free ride is exceptionally fun, running or driving carelessly through the city, earning money for killing gangsters. So, in conclusion, this is a well-made game with a 5-star movie-like plot that will have you shaken up buy the end of the game. The only thing left is for you to buy it...

The best game of 2002 enters the world of PlayStations2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: January 24, 2004
Author: Amazon User

My sister's boyfriend recommended me to buy this game, and as soon as I launched the Czech PC version of the game - which is the version that I started with - I found it totally amazing. I am proud of my fellow Czechs who were able to construct this game - a game chosen as the best game of the year 2002 (at least in many European countries). The amount of data (contained on 3 CD's) that the creators had to put together is shocking, and initially it seemed to me that a team of 20 people would need several centuries to finish this task. Well, fortunately they have used a lot of modern technology, for example a system to scan the motion of the real actors which is subsequently translated to the motion of the artificial humans, and therefore the task was doable. There are many hours of "movies" in between the different scenes, and there is a lot of audiovisual effects everywhere. The individuals in the game have pretty good artificial intelligence, and you will be impressed how realistic all these objects and their motion are (unlike the cartoonish style of GTA, for example).

The Lost Heaven City is a completely realistic city, designed according to the actual buildings in the New York City and Chicago of the 1930s. Everything seems to work perfectly in this city - including the gas stations, public transportation, banks, hotels, shops, restaurants, prisons, car races, ships, small airport, and so on. Imagine more than twenty squared miles of the urban architecture where everything responds in a realistic fashion, including a plenty of things that are unnecessary to fulfil the game's twenty main missions (e.g. you decide jump from the bridge in order to see the ship from another side). There are 60 different models of the cars - that you can steal on the street if you learned how - that were carefully copied from the real cars in the 1930s (but they were renamed). All these cars respect all the laws of physics and they are described by approximately 100 physical parameters each. If you shoot at the car (or use some explosives), it's getting destroyed in a very realistic way.

Moreover, there are about 30 fan web sites dedicated to the game, and the people who understand computers well enough can have a lot of additional fun with modding the PC version of the game - changing the cars, textures on the buildings, music, sounds, and so on. The PlayStation2 version does not allow you to do it, I guess, but it has other advantages over the PC version - it seems that the graphics is even smoother.

The game has a tutorial where you learn how to control Tommy (which is you). On the PC version, the arrow keys and other keys on the keyboard are used for motion (and changing the weapons, jumping, and so on) while the mouse allows you to change the direction where you look (or shoot), and this combination is very natural. You can practice as the taxi driver - you will learn geography of the Lost Heaven City after some time (the map is recommended). The main game has 20 main missions with 106 checkpoints or so where the game is saved, and afterwards you may continue with the "free ride extreme" - 19 special tasks. Nevertheless, I needed about 50 hours to complete the main missions.

The story seems as a good piece of literature - you are a taxi driver who accidentally becomes a member of Mafia - an offer you can't refuse - and you are getting increasingly difficult tasks. Well, you will have to shoot a lot of people, but from a moral perspective, I am sure that at the end you will agree that being a mafioso is not the best (and easiest) option for your life - especially because your friend will betray you, and you will have to kill him. After the war, they will kill you anyway.

The game was banned in Italy for some time in 2002 because the authorities viewed it as a perfect textbook to become a criminal. The most natural audience for this game are almost definitely Americans, but the publisher company of the PC version did a bad job when they promoted this game in the U.S. and the success in the U.S. was much weaker than the game's achievements in Europe. Therefore you are sort of lucky to read this review. Mafia might be the best game ever (so far, as of January 2004), and it is much less known in the U.S. than it should be (so far). Don't get manipulated by the advertisements of various less perfect games. Buy Mafia, and you will be impressed.

This Game Should Sleep With the Fishes.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: February 26, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I never seen this game on the PC, but when it came out a few years ago, it got rave reviews. So, I decided to check it out on the PS2. Uhm, I shouldn't have. It's one of the GTA 3 clones, and the worst one yet.

First off, the graphics are great for a console. The city resembles a little of Chicago of the 1930s. The gameplay is decent, the navigation is easy. There are no random search for items, backtracking, or impossible missions. The constant save points tend to limit replaying the same part of the level over and over again. The cutscenes, though sometimes are really dull and cliched, are decent enough to be watched.

Though it tried to be like GTA3, It's unlike GTA3 in that the city and the missions are not seamlessly integrated. It's basically drive to one place, and cut to the third person perspective. Not that immersive.

The driving is horrendous. Definitely not as bad as the Getaway, but really slow and dull. The police will sometimes stop you for speeding. It's really more irritating than realistic. The cars themselves are pretty clunky, though they improve somewhat later. Finally, there really is nothing fun to do while driving. They made it as dull as, well, driving across town in a station wagon. Mostly all the missions require you to drive from a bar to some other part of town, and it's really mostly the same road. There is no fun in exploring. The music is some 1930s slow classical jazz that either annoys you or puts you to sleep.

The third person perspective is fine, except for a couple of glaring glitches. When an enemy comes up close to you, the firing mechanism just entirely fails. They just ignore your shots and punch you to death or kill you with one shot. Another bug is the fact that shooting at someone is completely random. It might take one shot to kill a guy, but if you repeat the mission, it might take six head shots the next time. Vice Versa the other way. You might get blown away in one shot, while other times you'll traverse a huge mission while only losing ten percent of your health.

Finally, the continuity of the game is just wrong. Almost every mission starts off with a load time and a cutscene, and another load time. Then you have to get a gun right down the alley, this entails another cutscene. Then a car right down the stairs, which has another cutscene. Then you leave the head quarters, which triggers some more load time. Usually you have to drive to the other side of the town. The worst part is, while driving, the other half of the city triggers another load time. It takes about ten to twenty minutes to actually start the mission. About one third of my playing time was devoted to this stupidity. Really, they couldn't just have given me the car, weapon, and start me off at the correct building and saved my sanity? Really? Also, in other parts of the missions, the automatic save points and other loading times lull me into sleep. Some of the hardest parts of some missions was staying awake.

Pros:
Good graphics
Easy Navigation
Cutscenes are good
No walkthrough needed
Automatic save helps

Cons:
Dull driving
Loading time
Useless driving
Missions contain useless parts
Close range firing bugs
Uneven combat
Lack of continuity
Cannot save at any point
Bad music

Time to complete: 15 hours

Difficulty: Easy to Medium

Frustration Level: Medium to High

If you like GTA...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: October 13, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have this game for the PC; and I loved it. If the PS2 rendition is as good as mine than expect excellent graphics (like The Getaway), an authentic sounding soundtrack, 1930's era weapons and vehicles. Vehicles need refueling and a bullett hole in the gastank can be a problem. Shoot out tires windows ect. The cops will also give you tickets for things like speeding and running redlights..so beware. I loved Both GTAs and The Getaway...If you did as well than you'll love Mafia.

What can you do while you wait for the game to load? Make a sandwich!

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: October 10, 2005
Author: Amazon User

My buddy and I were bored as hell one night, and I had let him borrow this game and we both agreed the load times kill this game. We wanted to see if we could make a sandwich in the time it took to load a level. I finished one and got almost halfway through making another one when the game started up again. The story however is pretty good, well a lot better than what I had expected. Driving sucks!!! The manufacturers were probably trying to make it a little more realistic than the successful GTA games, however it just got really annoying when you get pulled over for speeding. Some levels get pretty hard, especially the ones where you have to chase someone in a car. Combat also had it's minor flaws. I would buy a cheap used copy of this and play it for its storyline and decent gameplay.

Pretty Lame

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: February 01, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Any game that belongs to the same genre as GTA will be compared to its defining game, Vice City. Simply put this game has almost nothing to offer in comparison. I'll start with the good: the city is interesting, clearly intended to be a New York look alike. The voice acting is pretty good and the plot is linear and clear enough to hold your interest. And, it's a good idea. Who wouldn't want to run around in the role of a 1930s gangster? In some ways, the idea of Mafia itself is more compelling that of Vice City. But that just goes to show you how a well executed average idea can be a great surprise while a poorly executed great idea can be the most disappointing thing of all (think The Matrix sequels).

So what makes this game so bad? Well - the game itself offers almost none of the freedom of Vice City, or even GTA III for that matter. You can take cars, once you learn how to drive them by completing missions (which is a pretty stupid reward system; your character is a cab driver so presumably he knows something about cars), but not during a mission. You are allowed to run around on your own either by selecting that option from the start menu or just fooling around after you complete a mission, but once you start a mission and fail, you can't simply walk off and do something else, you either have to start again to try to complete it or exit to the main menu. Normally that wouldn't be so bad but the load times are nearly as long as the load time for Vice City. Which brings me to my second category of badness:

the game offers none of the glitz of Vice City. The cops are non-existent, the cars handle badly and move slowly, and you can't get a ride on anything but a car - no motorcycles, no boats, obviously no planes or helicoptors. The denizens of Lost Heaven are also pretty boring. They will jump out of your way if you're driving recklessly but don't do much other than that. The damages to cars is unrealistic and boring. For example, a low speed bump into anything will make your headlight go out but won't do much visible damage. Higher-speed collisions may do some damage but nothing like Vice City. And when cars do blow up, the explosions are small and the cars disappear. That's right, they just fade into nothing. Same thing with people you beat up or kill. The bodies disappear immediately. Finally, the city is light during the day and dark at night. There are none of the interesting lighting effects that the GTA series has offered. So there's no reason for the game to load so slowly.

As for the AI, as I already mentioned, the cops are practically not even there. You get a ticket if you drive too fast (which is pretty much impossible). Wow. If you get enough tickets or do something really bad, like kill six people in front of them, they will chase you, but you can't outrun them because the cars are so slow. Let me tell you, low speed car chases are about as fun as they sound. Also, the NPCs are useless, even though they frequently accompany you on a mission. They often just sit in the car while you are being shot at. Oh, yeah...

It is very easy to get killed in this game. There is no in-game healing system that I've managed to find, meaning that once you get hit, you are that much closer to being toast (and having to *sigh* wait 45 seconds for the game to reload or exit to the main menu to do something else and then wait again).

Basically, you have a watered down version of Vice City. It's still very violent, but it takes itself way too seriously, which is a problem in games like this. Although this game presents itself as gritty (the opening sequence has superimposed text like "AMERICA LOST ITS INNOCENCE", which is laughable), while you're driving the same boring, up-beat faux-jazz is playing on the radio. You can't turn it off and you can't change the channel. You can't even change the music volume. It's distracting and adds nothing to the feel of the game. Also, when you run people over your generally don't kill them. In fact you might not even knock them down. Now I'm no car expert, but I'm pretty sure the even 70 years ago, getting hit by a car was enough to hurt you pretty badly. And, this game seems pretty small-scale as far as I've played it. In one mission you're sent to trash the cars of some members of another family. You get a bat and two molotov cocktails. They all do very little damage and are decidedly unimpressive. Add that to the fact that cars and people disappear as soon as they're dispatched, and you have a game that looks more like it was made in the 1930s than like it takes place in the 1930s.

I have only completed about 5 or 6 missions in this game, but I don't see how I can complete the rest - I want to be interested, I really do, just like I wanted to like The Matrix sequels, but when it comes down to it, a crappily executed idea, no matter how great, is just crap.

Amazing!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: December 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is by far one of the best games that I've played. The story itself, the cut-scenes that lead to the next mission, the cars, characters...it's just all amazing. I love this game! It has good AI too. This is one game you DON'T want to pass up. (PC VERSION)

prequel to GTA

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: September 28, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game reminds me of a prequel to the GTA series. Set as a gangster in the twenties one can grow in popularity in the crime mafia. Set hits and fight for place at the top while driving a model T in this fun computer remake on the ps2. This game is very life like and will become the next big thing.

Mafia for Playstation 2

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 18, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is very fun. There are some bad points, but they are overshadowed by the good ones.

Some Good Points
-The game is realistic (ie. speeding tickets, speed of cars).
-The story line is great and draws you into the game.
-The missions are very fun.
-The characters are pretty well developed.
-The auto save feature is very nice.

Some Bad Points
-Sometimes if you are too close to someone, it is hard to shoot them.
-Load times are pretty long.

This game has its faults, but it is still VERY fun. It is not as fast paced as GTA, but it is more realistic and has a better storyline, which in my opinion, is good.

This is definitely a game I would recommend to anyone who likes a nice, violent story.

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