Reviewed: September 3, 2002
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Gathering of Developers

Developer
Illusion Softworks

Released: August 27, 2002
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Mature

9
10
10
9
9.7

System Requirements

Mafia is the latest epic saga from those wizards at Illusion Softworks (Hidden & Dangerous). It is a clever mix of interactive cinema and an organized crime simulator, and while many comparisons will undoubtedly be made to the reigning godfather, Grand Theft Auto 3, each game tackles crime in its own unique and stylish way.

My first look at Mafia was in a very private press screening at this year’s E3 show where I was blown away by a huge living city, some impressive car chases, and a cinematic shoot-out in a parking garage that could have easy been ripped right out of the movie, The Untouchables.

The concept of Mafia is so simple it’s genius. The opening scene has Tommy (you) meeting a cop in a diner to recount his life of crime, basically informing on the mob and turning state’s witness in exchange for protection for him, his wife, and daughter. The game itself becomes a series of flashbacks that take place through much of the 30’s. As you progress through the 20 chapters you will jump ahead from year to year. There will also be the occasional return to the diner to remind you that this is all a story being reenacted for your gaming enjoyment.

By design, Mafia is a storytelling experience, so the missions and gameplay may seem a bit linear – some may even say restrictive. And while it is true that you can’t stray too far from the plot at any given time, there are plenty of opportunities to explore the huge city of Lost Heaven, both in the main game and in the Free Ride and Extreme Free Ride modes.

The scope of Mafia is enormous. Lost Heaven is a massive city that encompasses three distinct sections not to mention the outlying suburbs, a sprawling countryside, mountain roads, and cliff-side trails along the seashore. To capture the sheer size of Lost Heaven for this review I got in one of the typical cars and drove the width of the map – from the gates of the Speedway to the top of the palatial estates of Oak Hill – a drive that took 12 minutes, and that was with me running red lights and generally exceeding the speed limit. A law-abiding citizen can expect to triple this time.

Heading north out of town leads to the airport and beyond with twisting mountain roads, a huge bridge (under construction) that spans a massive gorge, a large dam, an old motel, and some of the most gorgeous scenery captured in a computer game. Just driving across the rolling hills looking at the beautiful trees and colorful skies occupied many hours of my time even after I had finished the main game. It’s downright therapeutic.

Since so much of Mafia is driving, you will certainly want to consider alternatives to your keyboard. While a steering wheel may be overkill, I found my Gravis analog gamepad to be highly effective in controlling my cars at all speeds in all driving situations including the one level that finds you in a 1932 Grand Prix race.

This realism may prove frustrating for those who are used to games with speedy sports cars and high-speed chases. For the most part, the cars in Mafia are lucky to get up to speeds of more than 50-60mph. There are even times when cars will come to a crawl when going up steep hills such as the winding road leading to the Oak Hills estates. A few cars actually make it into triple-digit speeds, but you won’t be driving them in the story part of the game with the exception of a “borrowed” racecar.

Car jacking may seem like old-hat for anyone who has played GTA3, but Mafia puts a unique twist on the sport of car theft. Tommy is only allowed to steal cars that he has been previously taught on how to pick the lock. Near the end of the game the entire city is your personal garage, but in the beginning you will have to pick and choose your cars a bit more carefully. Some drivers, especially those in highly desirable cars will carry bats or even guns and defend their rides with extreme force.

Lost Heaven has an aggressive and highly observant police force. Even cops walking their beat will “blow the whistle” on you if they see you speeding and give chase on foot. Since this is the 30’s and two-way police radios haven’t been invented, it does take time before cars give chase and roadblocks are established.

Your criminal activity is ranked on an increasing scale of offense. If you are spotted speeding or running a red light a ticket book appears indicating that if you stop you will pay a fine. Money is never an issue in Mafia, so your only reason for not stopping would be any time limits you may have on your current mission. It’s easy to outrun a foot cop but if you are being chased by a patrol car and fail to lose them with some clever driving your “wanted status” increases to a pair of handcuffs. If you are stopped now the mission will need to be restarted from the last checkpoint. The final and highest wanted ranking is when the gun icon appears. This means you have killed a cop or performed an act that warrants the cops to shoot on sight. Expect a very aggressive pursuit and strategic roadblocks on bridges and key locations around the city.

To help keep you honest, Mafia includes a speed limiter toggle that prohibits you from exceeding the speed limit. Since speed limits are never visibly posted, a tap of this key is a great way to check the recommended speed for an area, but sustained use of the limiter will almost guarantee failure on most of the time-sensitive missions.

When you are not behind the wheel you are walking around Lost Heaven in a third-person view. The city is much too large to go any great distance on foot but there is an excellent public transportation system in place that lets you go anywhere via trolley or elevated train. Only one mission actually requires you to ride the rail, but I found the experience of viewing the city from the train and trolley an enjoyable experience I approached with the giddiness of a child.

The flow of the game is perfectly matched to the cinematic style of storytelling that Mafia uses. The game is broken up into 20 chapters and over 100 missions segments. Many missions are optional such as many of the missions for Lucas that involve side jobs in exchange for learning to steal some of the more rare and faster cars in town. You are often presented with these unique opportunities after completing a primary mission objective.

There is heavy use of cutscenes to tell the epic story of Tommy and his rise and fall within the ranks of the Mafia. These use the game engine to seamlessly integrate the game and movies, so you will see your characters driving specific cars and carrying specific weapons in the movies that they were using when you last left them in the game.

The world of Lost Heaven is highly interactive. You can approach and talk to everyone, even though everyone might not want to talk to you. You can go just about anywhere in the city or surrounding areas that you want, although some places are “locked down” until the script dictates their involvement. The traffic AI is very good to the point of becoming annoying. Cars follow the speed limit religiously and obey all automated signals. They will honk their horns and flash their lights if you are in their lane (on foot or in another car) and while they will try their best not to run you over, I have been run down while trying to jack a moving vehicle.

You can't be a criminal and not carry a rod, heater, iron; okay…a gun, and Mafia offers a small arsenal of era-specific firearms including a variety of pistols, Thompson machine gun, rifles, bats, shotguns, you name it. You even get to torch a car lot with some Molotov cocktails in one of the earlier missions.

So with all of these elements in place you basically get your assignments from Don Salieri who is based out of his restaurant in Little Italy. You then visit the guy next door who distributes firearms for each mission and then visit Ralph in the garage to get your car. Any cars you steal during the missions are added to the garage and are available for subsequent missions, although near the end of the game your garage will fill up and you will have to make some tough decisions on which cars to eliminate from your collection.

Mission variety is one of the best aspects of Mafia. You never know what you are going to be doing and how you will be doing it. You might be driving a truck full of moonshine on one mission, and working at a loading dock on the next. You might be tailing a prized German import across town waiting to steal it, or tailing a hooker through the park to find out where she lives. You might be sloshing through sewers under the old jail or leaping across rooftops avoiding pursing cops. Whatever you find yourself doing, it is always dangerous and it is always exciting.

Realism adds significant tension to Mafia. There is a very unforgiving damage model and health is not nearly as plentiful as you would like. Your cars take damage and you can take damage by crashing them. Weapons do damage based on their type and range and there is location-based damage including one-shot (to the head) kills for both you and your enemy.

Cop AI is relentless and while you can often avoid arrest it may take you longer than simply restarting the mission, but nevertheless, it’s a blast to try. I’ve spent hours dodging the law, learning all the hiding places, hopping trains and trolleys, timing jumps over drawbridges, figuring out when to run and when to drive. Avoiding law enforcement has become almost a game within the game for me.

My only complaints with the gameplay in Mafia are rooted in the designers’ insistence to force you to play certain parts the way they want you to. In a world so alive and free as Lost Heaven there are dozens of ways to overcome many of the puzzles, but all too often you are corralled into one certain sequence of events.

One mission that comes to mind is where I am required to load about a dozen crates of cigars onto the back of a truck within a certain amount of time that just so happens to be how long it takes for the foreman to go behind the building and take a leak…or so I think. I keep getting caught when the foreman returns and I am still loading so my first instinct is to follow him and crack him over the head with a bat. I do this in a totally safe and undetectable location yet every guard in the area is immediately aware of my treachery and opens fire on sight. Only by lengthy trial and error do you finally realize the sequence of events the designers want (and insist) that you do to complete the mission.

And in the end, repetition is Mafia’s only downside. Thankfully, there are more than enough checkpoints in this game, so you won’t be doing mundane tasks over and over such as driving from A to B. You usually get a save when you leave and when you arrive at a new area, but some of the combat and action sequences are trial and error with heavy emphasis on learning by failure. The combat sequence in the final mission took me nearly 30 attempts over the course of 4 hours to figure out.

The city of Lost Heaven is the most realistic city ever depicted in a game; yes, even bigger and more real than GTA3’s Liberty City. The city is alive with activity; pedestrians, traffic, public transportation, tankers steaming through the West River triggering the drawbridge, and so much more. There is a fully operational loading dock, a warehouse district, an airport, a racetrack, a used car lot, a casino, a brothel, and an art museum, all brought to life in amazing detail true to the era.

With a city this size and graphics this intense Mafia suffers from its fair share of pop-up, but for the most part this is easily overlooked in the overall scope of the game. In fact, the only single object that “popped” in the game that I always noticed was the giant red suspension Giuliano Bridge, and it only popped because it was composed of more polygons and textures than found in entire city blocks.

The cars are a significant part of Mafia and they all look amazing. Each car is unique in both design and performance. Damage is also depicted in various stages ranging from scrapes and scratches on the shiny paint to broken glass, crumpled metal, wobbly wheels, and even burned out hulls after a lucky shot to the gas tank. You can even shoot out tires.

There is so much detail that I cannot begin to describe all of it. One of my favorites is the excellent use of smoke whether it is a trail of rings from the tip of a cigar or the wafting clouds of smoke in Salieri’s restaurant during the busy dinner hour or the black puffs coming from the car exhausts or screeching tires.

Mafia features some of the best skies I have ever seen in a game. There was one mission where I was onboard a paddleboat standing near the stern. Looking out over the giant red paddlewheel was the most gorgeous sunset complete with lens flares. The sun glistened across the water and you could see the wake of the paddleboard. The entire scene was flanked by two American flags flapping in the breeze – truly a Kodak moment.

Lighting is also implemented quite realistically with several of the missions taking place at night, including one chilling mission out at an old farmhouse. You are wandering around these spooky barns lit only with a few lanterns while a thunderstorm is kicking up rain and spectacular lightning zigzags across the horizon.

I only had a few very minor complaints in the visuals. The city streets weren’t very reflective on the few missions that took place on rainy nights, and there were a few missed opportunities that the designers failed to take advantage of. There were several locations within the city that were under construction including a large skyscraper near the East Marshall Bridge and some other buildings in Hoboken. Since the story takes place over several years I was hoping to see these buildings slowly evolve into their finished form.

There were also a few mistakes that jumped out at me that will probably be overlooked by most gamers; the two biggest being American flags with 50 stars (Alaska and Hawaii didn’t join until 1959), and $100 bills featuring the new larger Ben Franklin image. I’m nitpicking of course, and if this is the worst I can say about Mafia's graphics then you know this game excels in the visual department.

Since Mafia predates car radios you don’t get the huge selection of radio stations and song choices that GTA3 players may be used to. What you do get are more than 40 songs true to the era, with great instrumental and even some vocal performances. While the average youngster will probably roll their eyes at the subtle tunes, anyone old enough to appreciate the era will enjoy the authentic and varied music found in Mafia.

Sound effects are implemented to perfection with unique sounds for all the cars and weapons, the droning of the police sirens, the booming horn of the giant tanker as it slips beneath the drawbridge, the subtle patter of rain on the roof of a barn or the thunderous clap of thunder following a streak of lightning across a pitch black sky.

No cinematic experience is complete without an excellent script performed by excellent actors, and Mafia has both. I’ve always been partial to the self-narrative style of storytelling that is often the norm in detective movies and games, and Mafia uses this style to relive almost a decade of decadence through the eyes of Tommy.

When he’s not actually telling the story we are treated to some of the best dialog performed by some of the highest caliber actors. Not only were all of the accents totally believable, you could feel the emotion and actually immerse yourself in the story as it was being acted out. I was literally held captive in this epic from the opening sequence to the dramatic epilogue.

My trip through the story mode of Mafia took me nearly 28 hours including some substantial replays on a few key missions including that 4-hour finale where I had to dig out my thesaurus to look up new curse words. I’m now thoroughly absorbed in the Extreme Free Ride mode where I can drive around town doing various challenges to unlock some of the hottest wheels in the game.

I have no idea how long this mode is going to last, but even when I have exhausted this police-free mode, there is still the normal Free Ride mode waiting that basically allows you to “exist” in the living breathing world of Lost Heaven, driving a cab, fighting crime, or doing whatever you want.

Whether you choose to play these non-story modes to their completion or not, you will certainly want to take a spin outside of the confines of the story to experience the entire scope of this game. There is so much to see and so many places to go, and you only see about 80% of it during the course of the normal game.

It’s a dark and gritty tale of betrayal, revenge, greed, deception, and murder. It’s crime at its best and its worst, and it’s the closest and safest you will ever want to get involved with those dangerous gangsters we all know as the Mafia.