Mafia Classic

LOOKS ok. not that great looking of a game. have to install bunch of random files to make it look bette rplus fix the fov. plus the price is asking way too much. get on sale for 5 dollars nothing more.

First off I love run and gun games and was excited for a Mafia type game. But I gave up on this game. Not much shooting with a whole lot of driving. Despite that I enjoyed the first few missions and in particular the shootout when collecting protection money. I thought ok, finally get some gun play missions. Not really. Then I got to the auto race mission. The problem is you must win the car race to advance and after at least 100 attempts I simply gave up on the game. Sadly I don't think this was very far into the game. Driving controls are tricky and it's very easy to spin out. Slow down for corners and you get passed or knocked off the road. Yup, other cars trying to knock you off the track and it only takes a couple of mistakes and you won't win the race. In all of those attempts I never made it 2 laps staying in the top 5 let alone 5 laps and finish 1st. Many of the attempts I was flipped over and out of the race, or sitting dead last, before completing one lap. To make it worse the previous mission was stealing the fastest car in the race to have it tampered with to slow it down. I even watched youtube videos on how to win the race. Didn't help. They were obviously very good at driving/racing games as one took the lead on the first corner and never once spun out on a corner and nobody got close to him after the first lap. The funny thing is I found many similar complaints going back to when the game was originally released. If you have played a lot of driving/racing games, and like shooters, you may enjoy this game. To me winning a five lap auto race is a rather stupid "Mafia" mission. It's a shame there isn't an option to skip it after a certain amount of failed attempts. A waste of money for me.

This could have been so epic. The world building, the atmosphere, the storytelling... all really strong aspects of this one. BUT - games are not movies. If i want to get into a really good mafia story, i watch The Godfather. Games are about interaction. And the game mechanics are just so bad. Shooting works best in comparison, and it is barely functional. The driving... oh my gosh, don't get me started on this one. And worst of all, the mission design. So many missions are pure trial and error. You do them again and again, and by sheer luck you succeed sometimes. I absolutely loath trial and error, and it ruins everything else for me. If you prioritize storytelling far above game mechanics, this game could be a 4 for you. But to me, a game still has to work as a game. And in my opinion, this one does not.

Mafia is the little GTA clone that couldn’t. I respect the ambition in trying to make an open world game with a setting that’s not typically used in games, but the execution failed to deliver. In a sense, it was ahead of its time; trying to capture the feeling of a relatively unexplored era in video games in a genre that was just finding its footing. But the only problems I can attribute to being of its time are the clunky shooting and general atmosphere of the world. The poor mission and level design, the overreliance on driving as a gameplay loop, and the high-school tier storytelling are all genuine problems that I can’t believe were not criticized more at the time of release.

The best game ever!!!