Review: Mafia

Website: http://illusionsoftworks.com/

Minimum Requirements:
- Windows 98/ME/2000/XP
- 500 (700) Mhz
- 96 (128) MB RAM
- 16x (32) CD-ROM
- 1.8 GB hard-drive space
- 16 (32) MB video card
- Direct X 8.1

To my knowledge, there hasn't been even a handful of Mafia oriented PC games. There was "Gangsters", an isometric strategy game, and unfortunately that's all I can think of. Either way, "Mafia" by Illusion Softworks and Gathering of Developers picks up the slack. Though it was released in 2002, after completing the game I have since considered it a timeless game - and with it being set in the 1930's, such eras never really become "old". Mafia brought me a memorable experience. But enough preamble, here's the dish.

Story
Your role is as cab driver Tommy Angelo, in the fictional city of Lost Heaven, which is nicely inspired by the urban locales of New York and Chicago. During a night on the job shift, the sound of gunshots grabs your attention and little had you anticipated you would become the next tool in the local mob toolbox. Some of Don Salierie's gangsters immediately pressure you to drive them away from a rival mob, and this is where the gameplay begins. Once you've successfully evaded and lost the rival mob and dropped Salierie's men off at his bar, you are given an offer by one of the gangsters to join the Salierie family.

Well enough, gameplay picks up upon the next day, back at your job escorting customers to their desired destinations - only to be foiled by some Morello family gangsters, who want your blood for helping the Salierie gangsters get away. After evading them on foot, you revisit Salierie's bar. You reflect on whether you want to live your life working in your current job, rather dismal and not so well paying. Or, you could join the family and come to riches. The real answer is, if you don't join now, the Morello family will get you someway. Now you are no longer Tommy the cabbie, but Tommy the gangster. Throughout the game, Tommy learns more about himself and the inner conflicts of his decisions, manages to find love but at a price, and much more.

Gameplay
The really neat thing about this game is that story is correlated via cutscenes of Tommy conversating with a detective about his history in the mob. Tommy wanted to give up the mob life, while his entry into and out of the family and everything inbetween, is primarily the gameplay. Your first mission since joining the family is taking revenge on the Morello gang, and destroying a handful of their shiny new cars with a baseball bat and dynamite. If you're just not ready to jump into action however, you can take a tutorial on combat and driving, which is a nice addition to orient yourself with.

Mafia features two main play modes: combat and driving, either of which you can and will do at anytime throughout the game. The city of Lost Heaven is immense and fairly detailed - over 12 square miles of inner-city and country roads, skyscrapers, landscapes, traffic, pedestrian and police. As you progress throughout Mafia, you learn to lockpick a variety of cars and trucks - from the basic buggy types to streamlined 30's autos - 60 individual model variations, though all with fictional brand names. If you're looking for a vast selection of getaway cars, you'll have no complaints here. You are also given a selection of 1st person and 3rd person driving views. Joystick, gamepad and wheel users should be happy to know that you may use these to drive, instead of the keyboard and mouse. If you are stealing a car within sight of any police officers, you will be chased after and arrested if caught, otherwise you are able to evade and lose your arrest warrant. Handling of the cars is an important issue, and I found that even with a keyboard and mouse, the handling was well done. It should be noted that these cars obviously are nowhere near the power of the sports cars of today, but I thought speeding at 70 - 80+ MPH was fairly fast. Driving up steep hills is really a chore though, and you typically can't reach beyond 15 MPH going up them. By law you cannot exceed 40 MPH, and there is a handy speed limiter function you may turn on in case you wish to avoid getting a speeding ticket. As long as no cops on foot or on car patrol are in range, speed all you want! Just watch those sharp corners.

This also brings up a handy feature, a basic radar in the upper left corner of your screen. Cars are represented by light-green marks, cops by blue, cops or mafia in pursuit of the player in red, and yourself in white. The radar has a basic 360 degree range that is a bit short but not too problematic. I only wished cars weren't represented by mere line ticks, but by dots or squares. The car driving also features auto or manual gearing, limited fuel (you can fill up at gas stations), a horn - which is useful for clearing your path of pedestrians, and the ability to shoot a one-handed weapon out the side of your car, while you are driving. This mode brings you to a 3rd person view, whereby you can manipulate your aim with the mouse. Drive-by's aren't the easiest facet of the game, however. Usually up to 4 or 5 people can fit in a car, this includes you (typically but not always the driver) and other passengers throughout the game. Lastly, a very cool facet of the driving gameplay is the ability to blow out tires - whether by bullet or wreckless driving, shooting off the wheels themselves, and blowing the car up by hitting the gas tank.

On-foot combat is handled entirely in 3rd person. You may carry several weapons, but you cannot conceal all of them. For instance, if you have a Tommy gun and a rifle, you'll need to usually drop one of them somewhere, and you can hide the other within your coat. You cannot leave a weapon in a car, unfortunately. Weapons range from a variety of handguns, rifles, shotguns, grenades, brass knuckles, molotov cocktails, a baseball bat (my melee favorite) and of course your bare fists. By holding the fire/attack button for about 5 seconds, you can charge up melee attacks for a stronger hit. By doing this with the baseball bat, you can typically knock someone out cold while walking up behind them. Weapons should also be hidden from public view - this means pedestrians and cops, or else the cops will be looking for you and will arrest you. If you find yourself in such a predicament, you still have the freedom to defend yourself from the cops, run or drive away to lose their tail and your "Wanted" level, or all of the above. Sometimes you will find yourself flagged down by a cop in the heat of a battle or in a quick getaway. The ensuing chases can be quite fun, though sometimes frustrating, as the cops are very hardheaded about arresting you and will slam your car, setup barricades or fire at you. One little thing to note - you are free to walk around holding a baseball bat, as it is not considered a weapon - although if a cop sees you beating on somebody with the bat, they will still give chase.

An entirely seperate play mode entitled "Free Ride" allows you to do pretty much as you please throughout the city or countryside during day or night. You can set the abundancy of traffic (this includes police cars), pedestrians and police patrols. A similiar but goal-oriented mode is "Free Ride Extreme". By playing this mode, you can unlock various extra cars - some realistic and some just crazy hot rods or very fast race cars. You may then use these cars in the normal "Free Ride" mode as well. "Extreme" is no exaggeration either - this play mode is quite tough, but either "Free Ride" option provides a fun means to take a break from the story and goof around. On an unfortunate note, it seems that the developers never released their proposed patch that would implement a multiplayer mode, which is too bad - that would be loads of fun.

Experience
Your 20 missions throughout Mafia are well varied in goals and difficulty. A few memorable missions are a bank heist, an assassination on a steamboat, a challenging car race, and a rooftop escape. In the bank heist mission, things start out quiet and fairly normal but only for a short time. Your mob pal Paulie informs everyone that this is a heist, and keeps things in check, while your goal is to get to the safe and grab the dough, all while avoiding security guards. Once you've gotten the loot, it's time to escape quickly as possible via car to a hotel.

The steamboat assassination is rather fun. Before you board the boat you need to con your way onto it. Once aboard, it's smooth sailing from there, provided you can escape unscathed to a nearby boat. The boat was a memorable location because of the social groups gathered around with their own conversational dialogue, and even a band performing on the upper deck, while the city can be seen along the horizon and the sun is set.

The rooftop escape takes place after another assassination and may be one of the more difficult missions, having to watch around and above you rather cautiously for policemen with handguns and rifles.

Given that the game has no checkpoint or quicksave features, such missions are likely to be frustrating attempts. It would have been nice to have at least a limited number of saves per mission. Despite the way things are handled in this context, replaying a mission isn't always so bad, because usually the locales are big enough to allow different strategies or paths to complete the missions. Control of Tommy on foot and in car generally felt well done, but if you wish you can use a gamepad, joystick or wheel in addition to keyboard and mouse.

Throughout the game I felt like I was watching a movie. The characters involved in the story really have a believable depth and personality to them. This is partially due to some very nice voice acting. Dialogue is not exaggerated or "cartoony". It generally sounds convincing (although does sound a bit as if read straight-from-script). Though Mafia is just a video game, I did have a kind of emotional understanding and attachment to Tommy's life, conscience and his personality. I really can't vouch for many games that pull me in and move me to some degree, like a movie could. Trust me, the story and character elements are definitely not overlooked in Mafia.

Conclusion
If you want 3rd person action, convincing characters and story, and an all-around well done game - Mafia is it. With it's varied gameplay, extra play modes, suspenseful and tense shootouts and car chases, Mafia is a definite classic.

RATING: 5 out of 5

Pros:
- photo-realistic graphics
- believable characters and story
- long, challenging and variable action-oriented gameplay
- extra play modes
Cons:
- promised multiplayer patch never released
- no manual save system