Mafia Review

Lets admit it, who wouldn’t want to be a member of the Mob? Gangsters, guns, drive-by’s, money laundering and gals falling all over you. So we squealed with delight when Mafia fell through the door. <br /> <br /> In development for what seemed like aeons at Illusion Softworks, they of Operation Flashpoint fame, the game places players in the role of Tommy Angelo, a cab driver who’s about to see his whole world upturned in one moment. <br /> <br /> The games introduction takes place in a café in 1938, Tommy arranges a meeting with a cop and tells him the story of his last few years as a member of the Mob. The actual game takes place eight years ago from that first chance meeting, back during the peak of the Mafia. It’s a very clever way of integrating the storyline into the game, and mimics the likes of Usual Suspects and other classic films in creating a superbly crafted cinematic experience. <br /> <br /> As soon as you get into the game you’ll be amazed by the attention to detail, everything looks as you’d imagine a 1930’s American town to look. The cars, the buildings, even the colours and the way people talk is pretty near perfect and essential to creating that illusion. Perhaps Mafia’s strongest point is in creating such a strong cinematic experience; cut-scenes are aplenty and thanks to the LS3D engine they look fantastic, characters sport amazing facial textures and lip-sync, whilst the camera direction really helps to create the finished product. <br /> <br /> The actual game is like a more realistic and grittier version of GTA3, as with that title there’s a living and breathing city free for you to explore. Thankfully this one has more attention to the little details; get caught speeding or passing through a red light and you can expect to pay a fine, whilst more serious crimes will see the police try to arrest you – mission over – or even worse baying for blood. In this respect Mafia goes one better then GTA3, the illusion that there are other people living in this city is absolutely amazing at times, as cars pull by the road and people get out, you can even hop on the tram and ride it around town. <br /> <br /> As with GTA3 the game is structured into different missions that you’ve got to take on in order to progress, unlike GTA3 the structure is a lot more linear with little scope for doing what you want to; get a mission, complete it, get a mission, complete it… <br /> <br /> Thankfully most of the missions are an absolute joy to play, with enough variety between each of them to ensure you’ll keep on playing. The game starts off with Tommy as a taxi driver and so the first mission sees you getting accustomed to the layout of Lost Haven, collecting fares as you do so. Slowly the missions will become more sinister, and see you performing money collection duties, seeking revenge on other gangs, assassinations, body guarding right up to racing in a motorcar race!!! The variety is what keeps it fresh and ensures that you want to see what the next mission has in store, along with the next fantastically created cut-scene. <br /> <br /> A big element to the game is the number of vehicles available for you to drive. Over 60 feature in the game, each with their own handling and an excellent damage system that produces both visual and handling damage. To start off with you can only break into a few cars, however as the game progresses certain characters will teach you how to steal different cars and so the scope increases. You can also collect cars that take your fancy in the garage behind your home location, which are then available from the start of your mission. The cars also show the tremendous attention to detail that’s been paid to the game, if you’re in a shoot-out watch out as characters unwind their windows in order to shoot. It’s not just other characters that can shoot whilst in the car; an excellent system allows you to do both at the sacrifice of having less control over the car. <br /> <br /> A special note must go to the camera system, which is easily one of the best we’ve seen to date. The camera moves around effortlessly when you’re on foot, hardly ever getting into a position to cause you problems. In fact we’d go as far to say that it’s even more intuitive then the wonderful system that was used in Max Payne! <br /> <br /> Visually Mafia looks amazing; textures on buildings feature some very crisp and intricate details, whilst there’s some very nice lighting and shadow effects seen beautifully in the games day-night cycle. We’ve tested it on both a GeForce 2 and GeForce 3 equipped PC’s and both versions look superb, it’s worth the investment to a GeForce 3 as the full-scene anti-aliasing combined with the higher resolution and improved lighting really add to the atmosphere. <br /> <br /> Another note that we must mention is the wonderful musical score that runs throughout, ranging from epic orchestral moments to the sections of classic 30’s jazz. It’s just another element that helps to enhance the cinematic nature of the title, a virtually unknown prospect in videogames. <br /> <br /> Unfortunately we did have a few problems with bugs, on numerous occasions and on a variety of machines the game would just crash out for no apparent reason. We’ve tried clean installs, defragging hard-drives and still the problem arose…