MAFIA review from G.O.D
One of the first things that comes to mind with Mafia, is Grand Theft Auto 3. Except with GTA3, you had a lot more open choices. Mafia is more of a straight forward game. Get a mission, it continues the storyline. And while there are a couple sub missions, you only get maybe a faster car out of the deal, which by the end of the 10th mission, you have so many cars it doesn't even matter anyway. Every mission is pretty straight forward. You get a goal, drive to the destination, complete the goal, drive back. The driving gets a little out of hand. In fact, by about the 12th mission in Mafia, I was just wishing they would have put in an auto drive feature. About the only thing that is a benefit to driving, is the detail and realism it adds that you are in a virtual society. The game ships with a nice tutorial and lays out the foundation of what you can expect. And of course, music from the 1930's will bliss through your old model T's.
Say hello... To my little friend...
One of the downfalls with Mafia, there is always something these days, is the scripting is a little bugged. There are times in your missions where a key person will just NOT get into your car. Or, one that sticks out, when you are told to help move a bunch of crates in a warehouse posing as a worker. You pick up the crate, move to the drop area, unload the crate, and the 2 other non player characters stack them. Only glitch here is, if you do not let the two computer controlled helpers pick up those last two crates or one crate out of the 15 you have to move, the script will not complete, and you are stuck having to reload. There are also some holes in the world. At one point, I fell through the entire city, and ended up warping to my start point. it was frustrating since I just took 10 minutes driving around all over. Aside from the minor annoyances however, Mafia and the story and the gameplay, will keep you glued to your computer for hours and days. And just when you think it's over, and you have one, you unlock a whole new series of missions. I will not give away anything, but they are hilarious.
The graphics of the game are on par with today's trend of first and third person shooters. They tend to look a bit more real than anything GTA3 had to offer, but again for that extra memory used in realistic graphics and sound, open ended gameplay suffers a tad. But by all means, you still have a blast. From doing hits, racing cars, drive by's, deliveries and pickups, property damage lessons (Grin) and overall lookout for the family, you start to get more and more involved with the story. And unlike some of these games, you are not mind numbingly trying to complete each mission just to unravel the story. You actually have fun playing as well. Which leaves us with one distinct feature that makes this game a challenge. You cannot save games at every corner. FINALLY. And in my opinion, video game designers need to do more of this to bring us back to the golden days.
