Posted on: February 13, 2019

jsisidore

Games: 55 Reviews: 12

Most cinematic game ever made?

Ah yes The City of Lost Heaven. How hooked I was to this game, nothing would ever compare to it, it was like playing in a Scorcese movie, playing as a naive taxi driver who's life has changed overnight and now working his way up as a mobster, he's not very ambitious and has a soft spot for women, sorry I meant dames... but I said too much already! You will love Tommy. This was the times of GTA3 and Max Payne but Mafia took the best from both, here you have the tight cinematic writing from Max Payne and the immersive city hustle and bustle of GTA3 which was heralded as something special until Mafia came out and made it look like an arcade game. Every mission is memorable and will stay with you for a long time. Two decades have passed since I played it first time and it feels like yesterday. Cruisng on a beautiful car through the Hoboken on a chilly morning in Autumn, listening to some fine jazz on the radio, the stool pigeon has to die.

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Posted on: October 19, 2017

trusteft

Games: 1968 Reviews: 122

Great in 2002, Very good now

This review is about the game Mafia on the PC, but not the GOG version which I don't own yet. When the game was released not all PCs could run it with max gfx settings, but if you were one of the few who could, you would play in a gorgeous game which blew out of the water any other similar game. The graphics may not have aged well, but then again most 3D games do not age well. I still believe the graphics have aged better than other similar games of the time. The sound effects are good, not perfect, but good enough to not be an issue. The one major issue this game had was with the controls. It will take you some time to set the options to make the game feel ok to you. For anyone who has played PC games of the period (late 90s early 2000s) which had you control a character from a third person perspective, you will remember how they were mostly terrible to say the least, at least compared to today's games. The character would feel very stiff and the car would feel too sensitive to control with ease. That is the case with this game too. It wasn't a unique issue with the game, most 3rd person games were like that on the PC. But, if you sit down, try different settings and then stick with the game for half and hour to an hour, you will get used to it and finally manage to explore this beautiful fun game. Unfortunately many people are not willing to spend that time and give up on it. Their loss but with their negative comments/reviews they might make others not even try this game. That's a shame. As for the game itself, it follows the story of a couple of "mafia" movies, I won't mention which to not spoil it even a bit. You find yourself suddenly working for a local mafia family, doing missions for them and rising up in status as you do. Most of the missions involve driving somewhere and then shooting lots of people. There are some difficulty spikes here and there, but they are that, few spikes. Overall the game is fun to play and IMO worth buying.

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Posted on: February 21, 2019

Seronyx

Verified owner

Games: 345 Reviews: 6

Mafia, the Classier Grand Theft Auto

In Mafia, you play a man who stumbles into a job with the mob. I saw Mafia on the shelves back in 2002, but it was not my cup of tea back then. Recently I played through GTA III, and while both are within the same genre, Mafia is a classier version of GTA. Gameplay: Majority of gameplay takes place on foot or in cars. Combat usually takes place on foot, although some car chases also involve gunfire. Controls are simple, although control feels weak at times, particularly in combat where aiming can be a pain. Most missions involve driving and shooting. Every now and then, a mission introduces a brand new mechanic. It doesn't happen often enough, but when it does, such as in the mission Fairplay, it is neat. The game even has a working elevated train, but it's only used once. Characters/Customization: The characters are stereotypical American-Italian mobsters. The protagonist does undergo a full story arch, but the only customization that you have in the game are vehicles and occasional weapon choices. Story/Atmosphere: The game borrows elements from mob genre films and then blends them into its own original story. The story is linear, although you do options to take on side-quests. Lost Haven, the fictional city, where 90% of the action takes place is large. Most buildings are not accessible, but the city is definitely alive with pedestrians, cars, and cops. The city is mostly scenery as you drive back and forth. Graphics/Sound: I preferred the graphics of Mafia to GTA III, its rough contemporary, and while the graphics are somewhat outdated by 2019 standards, they are not a distraction. The original music may not appear in this version of the game due to expired licensing, but it may be possible to obtain it via the internet. The spoken dialogue is adequate though predictable. Replay Value: None. I only played through the main story, but an additional mode that allows you to play freeform missions. Overall Score: 8/10. Played in 2018-2019.

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Posted on: May 31, 2019

take_marsh

Verified owner

Games: 155 Reviews: 4

Good, but not as good as I remember

This game offers a fairly good story-based open-world experience. It's truly a sum of its parts. Positives: Story-wise, it pretty much satisfies everything sterotypically Mafia/Italian. There's a love scene that'll make you laugh. How these are positives, I'm not sure. There's something enjoyable about it maybe. The gunplay and controls are generally solid. The vehicle controls are still pretty good. Don't go in expect to play with a controller, nor would I recommend trying since this game can be quite unforgiving. Negatives: I say unforgiving because with playing it, I recall why I only played through the story once. The gameplay is pretty solid, but there are issues with the checkpont system, the artifical intelligence, and the health system. For the checkpoint system, there can be times where it's extremely hostile. When you load back into the game from a cutscene, you may be thrown into a firefight and you will already be hit once or twice, immediately losing much-needed health. This game often relies on luck when it comes to artificial intelligence. The AI can range from being extremely dumb to Terminator 2. This leads to issues with the health system: whether there be a cutscene or a loading screen, Tommy's health is consistent throughout the chapter of the game. Did you just survive by a hair that last firefight? Well, you'll have to live with that hair unless you're lucky to have health box placed into the next fire fight. Otherwise, you may be required to go back two check points to try and do better. This is the thing that I remember hating, as the health boxes are placed almost nonsensically. Overall, it's an enjoyable experience. If you can get a trainer for this game, I recommend it for those rare times where you may find yourself restarting the last checkpoint a dozen times.

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Posted on: November 23, 2017

Wolfinston85

Verified owner

Games: 541 Reviews: 62

It hasn't "aged" well...

The game has an incredible world built around the idealization of how the Mafia used to operate back in the 1930's, everything from the characters, dialog, and narrative, are simply fantastic. Everything is presented in a clean, clear, and straightforward "fashion". However, ... The gameplay elements, as well as the bugs that the game has, have been enough to "butcher" my experience. For starters, the game its fairly difficult, there are simply just too many ways to fail missions that go beyond further dying, or having your car totaled. You need to care about the speed in which you're driving your vehicle, otherwise you might find yourself getting followed by a police car, which if the player is not capable of losing, can turn a simple "ticket" into an arrest. This system its charming in a way, but quickly it becomes a bit tedious, mostly when you consider the maximum speed limit its very slow. Pair that up with a botched waypoint, and map system, and well... You need to drive to a specific part of the city you're in to partake in mission objectives, the problem it's that in Mafia you have to cross bridges in order to get to other parts of Lost Haven (Mafia's fictional city in which the game takes place). With nothing other than a compass to go on, you constantly have to resort to explore around the city, which sounds interesting, until later when you just want to get to your objective, or alternatively, when you're in missions that impose a time limit, represented by an incredibly confusing clock that "dangles" above at the top right corner of the screen. Then there's the shooting mechanics, and the melee system, in which half of the times it matters more who shoots first than the accuracy of your shots, it's the same for the melee system of this game, getting clobbered around, makes you incredibly vulnerable given that you can't block, and it's difficult to walk away. Also, characters get stuck sometimes in doors, preventing you from progressing...

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