Review Body

Reviewed: March 14, 2004
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Released: March 12, 2004
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Mature

5
5
6
7
6.5

Supported Features:

There has always been something fascinating about the seedy underworld of organized crime, the mob, the Mafia, or whatever you want to call it. While big-time crime is often glamorized in books, movies, and even HBO’s hit show, The Sopranos, there are many aspects of this dangerous lifestyle that are often overlooked…until now.

Mafia is nearly two years old, releasing on the PC in August, 2002. Mafia took the driving and shooting fun of the Grand Theft Auto games and filtered it through a lengthy and linear set of missions that reached epic proportions of storytelling. Mafia was ahead of its time, not only in style and presentation but in hardware requirements. It was only late last year before I had the PC hardware capable of running the game as it was meant to be experienced, so when I heard the game was being ported to the less-powerful console systems I was understandably concerned. If my 700mhz PC was choking in 2002 what was my 733mhz Xbox going to do with the same material? To make matters worse, rather than doing a custom Xbox port from the original PC version the programmers chose the already-deficient PS2 version as the source of this port.

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.

Mafia introduces you to the basics of gameplay with a nice informative tutorial that is basically a 30’s version of Driver’s Ed. You will quickly learn that nearly 80% of Mafia takes place behind the wheel of more than 50 unique cars specific to the era. These cars have been meticulously researched in both design and performance with input from classic car buffs and actual owners of these historic machines. The Xbox controller works nicely for controlling the variety of vehicles in Lost Heaven but things get a little clumsy when you start moving Tommy around on foot and when it comes time for some gunplay, watch out!

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. This realism may prove frustrating for those who are used to games with speedy sports cars and high-speed chases.

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. There's nothing more embarassing that yanking some guy from his car and having him beat you down with a bat.

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. The city of Lost Heaven has upped the speed limit for the Xbox, so you are free to drive around often as fast as the cars will actually go without fear of a speeding ticket.

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 that will take about 20 hours to complete. 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 movies are pre-rendered on the Xbox using the game engine then played pack as movies, so they take a step down in visual quality and they no longer maintain the pure level of continuity between the game world and the cutscene.

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.

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.

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 final battle in the art museum is very difficulty and will test the skill and patience of most gamers.

While the driving portions of Mafia are nearly on par with the PC version the on-foot elements are really bad. The camera control which is also used to aim your weapon is very stiff making it nearly impossible to target anything. To help even out this deficiency the AI has been greatly dumbed down and you can now use the black and white buttons for auto-targeting (actually it's more of a camera assist since you don't really "lock" a target) turning Mafia into a simple shooter where you run around capping morons in pinstriped suits. Even then, the combat physics are way off. Shooting at close (point blank) range results in unexplicable misses and using clubs or bats is troublesome at best.

The Xbox version of Mafia sweetens the deal by adding a new Race mode that offers a small selection of custom tracks. It's a noble effort but I found the racing a bit lacking since the cars aren't that fast and the tracks aren't that creative. Bottomline, if you have a PC over 1.4Ghz and a decent 3D video card then play Mafia on the PC. It's only $10 and it looks and plays infinitely better. I did find it interesting that the PC version played better with a gamepad for driving and a mouse and keyboard for everything else, but since you'll be saving $40 on the console version you can pick up a good gamepad and still have cash to spare.

The PC version of Mafia recommended a 700Mhz and the Xbox equals that recommendation but the result is still a disaster. Load times are slightly faster than the PS2 but still horrible and there are a ton of them. The PC version had a slight hiccup (a sign of loading) when you crossed the major bridges but thanks to the limited RAM the Xbox is forced to load in new information about every ten blocks and it's more noticeable than a hiccup - try a 20-30-second load screen about every ten minutes of gameplay.

Mafia has style, plain and simple. 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, and it all pales in comparison to the PC version.

Obviously, the Xbox is unable to handle a game this complex. While significantly cleaner than the PS2 Mafia shows off some disappointing jaggies, and horrible pop-up that make this look like a budget port rather than a game being released two years into the life of the console. The framerate is horrible and the draw distance is about two to three blocks so you can only imagine the pop-up. The skies that were once filled with buildings are now disturbingly bare, and all traces of blood (something that frequently painted the sidewalks) have been removed despite the game's M rating.

Even worse than the pop-up is the level of detail which has cars actually changing shape before your very eyes. The textures on the buildings are much more repetitive and many of the unique buildings are gone. The city looks much more repetitive and boring. The PC offered hundreds of pedestrians and random traffic, but most of this is now gone. Lost Heaven now looks deserted, and it's not nearly as fun to just cruise around between missions sightseeing.

On a positive note, the cars, which are a significant part of Mafia, all look amazing up close and in the Carcyclopedia. 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.

The sound and music are right on par with the PC version. The score is performed by the Bohemia Symphonic Orchestra and creates some of the best ambient and mood altering music I’ve experienced in a game like this. The music cues to the action when appropriate and the score during the cutscenes sounds like something lifted right from “The Godfather”. The car radio wasn't invented until 1929 and even in the 30's it wasn't being included in cars. You had to buy and install them separately. So while you don't get the GTA3 radio experience, you do get 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.

There are no difficulty settings in Mafia and there are several missions that offer significant challenges that border on game stoppers. The Grand Prix race is one of the first such missions that many will find the need to repeat more than once. With more than 100 individual mission segments spread across the 20 chapters, other stumbling blocks will certainly rear their ugly heads from time to time. Most of the problems you will likely encounter on the Xbox version will be directly related to the poor graphics and twitchy controls.

If you have the endurance to stick it out you can expect a 20-hour game for the Story mode. The Free Ride mode lets you cruise around town without fear of the police and the Extreme Free Ride mode lets you drive around town doing various challenges to unlock some of the hottest wheels in the game. This mode is good for another 10 hours.

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." That was a quote I used to describe the PC version of Mafia but I think several of those words describe the conspiracy behind this Xbox port, although I hope no one got killed over this game; maybe just a broken kneecap. This is simply a game that should not have been made. Even when it hits the $20 bargain bins it's still going to be a bad game. I can't stress enough that if you have a PC remotely capable of playing Mafia then please get the PC version. It's $10 in the jewel case edition and worth every cent.

Mafia manages to keep its engrossing story and wonderful audio package but loses everything else. The graphics are laughable by next-gen standards and the clunky controls and frequent load screens make Mafia an excercise in frustration. If the Xbox is your only option and you are starved for another game along the lines of Grand Theft Auto or True Crime then give it a rental otherwise steer clear of the Mafia.