Mafia

 

Mafia is an interesting game because it began development before even Grand theft auto 3. It started development in 1998, whereas GTA 3 started development around late 1999-2000. Mafia is infact one of, if not the first 'open world' crime sandbox formula of being a gangster and taking missions, driving cars, or on foot engaging in third person combat.
 
From the beginning of the game you'll already be exposed to its many quirks. The very beginning of the game throws you into a fast pased car chase, but you're in this really slow rickety dump of a car. The difficulty and challenge of Mafia in general is represented right from the intro. You get thrown into this car escape mission where you struggle to learn how the car behaves, and its extremely slow. After failing a few times and finally moving on, its a taste of some of the challenge to come.

For the first bit of the game, maybe first quater, you'll wonder what game you're playing. Because the first 5 or 6 missions you're just some generic taxi driver, doing incredibly mundane missions which involve picking up people and driving them around town, thats it. Here is when more of the games mechanics prop themselves up.
Much of Mafia is spent driving around in the car, infact, this game originally was intended to not even have on-foot segments, as the developers have stated it initially started as some sort of Driver clone, driving game. And it shows. Because there is A LOT of driving in this game.

 Maybe 75%. The afformentioned quirks and mechanics start showing up, such as having to use a Speed limiter at 40 miles per hour, or else the cops will constantly be coming after you, and its just not worth dealing with them. So not only does much of the game experience involve driving from point A to point B, with nothing exciting in between, ontop of that, you have to do it at an extremely slow pace of 40mph. This can both be a positive and negative. On the upside, it helps immerse you into this realistic feeling 1930s world where you just cruise around and enjoy the sights and sounds, but on the negative side it does get to be incredibly boring having to once again slowly drive from point A to point B. Ontop of this, the game forces you to make frequent use of a map by holding TAB button, and you have to constantly plan your route ahead because you frequently need to take bridges to cross onto the next segment to your objective.

 There is a compass which points where you need to go, but I find it harms more than it helps if you just stare at it. So much of the game is just spent staring at the map, driving slowly with a 40mph speed limit, and planning a route to cross onto bridges. I found myself really wishing for a 'fast travel' or "Skip to objective' feature, because it would really cut out a lot of the boring pacing issue with all the constant driving.

After the first round of missions as a Taxi driver, then you find yourself being recruited by the Mob. This is of course where the game picks up and shows its true colors. You go from driving a taxi around, to now being sent around by the Don as a mobster beating up peoples cars, and beating people up using melee. Well I'm glad the melee is only really used in the first quarter of the game, because the melee combat is horrendous. Theres a mission early in the game where you and your partner gets sent into an area with only a baseball bat, and you have to kill a dozen guys using melee, and the melee controls and combat is so clunky and awkward it just results down to you spinning around in a circle while spamming the attack button, desperately hoping your partner does not die.  

That's another frequent mechanic in Mafia. For many of the missions, you will have a parter, or multiple, and they get a healthbar on your hud. Not only do you have to check your health, you almost more importantly, have to keep checking your partners health and desperately try to avoid your partners taking damage. Which can feel clumsy and awkward since their AI doesn't have much self preservation and they will just stand in open or sprint head first into the enemy attacks.

Now is a good time to mention the save system. Mafia does not operate like a typical early 2000s action game. You cannot save anytime you want, there is no quick save. It  operates more like a modern game. Every few segments during a mission you will see 'Game saved' on the bottom left of your screen, usually after a loading screen. This is fine, and almost a welcome challenge, but things can be extremely tense and tedious because Mafia is not exactly an easy game. It is very easy to lose health, and you cannot regain health back unless finding a stationary healthkit. Problem is, these things are extremely rare. You might only find one of them per 20 minute bouts. So you can get yourself in a very stressful and annoying position of the game saving right after you find yourself with 10 health and no nearby healthkits. This can happen, but thankfully I didn't find myself having too much of a problm with it.

The mission structure and pacing makes it so you can easily hop into the game and play 1-2 missions and then quit for awhile the autosave system tells you which mission youre on in the main menu so I found it enjoyable and easy to just play in short 1-2 mission sessions.


From this point onward, after the taxi mission early game, and a few clunky and lackluster introduction mobster missions such as: Drive here, pick this up, drive back. Drive here, attack these vehicles with a bat, drive back. Drive here, attack these guys with a bat, drive back. Drive here, escort this girl, now attack these guys with a bat, drive back.
There are 23 missions in total, maybe a dozen of them are mundane or not even noteworthy, just driving back and forth, or doing trivial things. But the other half are quite enjoyable.
 
 After the first handful lackluster missions you start to get some pretty fun and awesome
 missions. Some noteworthy ones are things like:

-The whore
 Hotel hit where you carefully track down someone eating dinner and pop him right in front of everyone, then track down a woman to kill, but let her live, then fight your way out. Though, there is a clumsy rooftop section where its hard to tell exactly where you must go, and theres a very clunky jump/clumb mechanic (the default keybinds are insane like Numpad 0 to jump, what?)

- Right after, is 'The Priest'
where you invade an enemy mobsters funeral and kill everyone attending inside of a church. This mission is a great example of action packed third person shooting, and its quite challenging, but not to the point of frustration. When arriving at objectives, you must not have any police after you, and the police mechanics in this game are slightly frustrating and obtuse. To lose the police, the easiest way is to just kill them and reinforcements wont really arrive. Other than that, you just have to take as many turns as possible and then hide in some alleyway as the wanted meter goes down.

-Fairplay
Theres an infamous race car mission in the early part of the game which is apparently notorious for being extremely hard and annoying. Well in the Steam version I have, it presents options for how hard you want the race to be. After failing a few times I just put it on the easiest settings and passed it without much trouble, so its not so bad. Worth mentioning for how notorious it is.

-A trip to the country, where you go to some remote farm location in the night and rain, great atmosphere, and save your friend while shooting a bunch of bad guys. One of the coolest and most fun missions, total classic mobster stuff.

-Omerta.
You invade an airport and just bust into the main office shooting all the enemy mobsters, but this mission can be a bit annoying. Because theres this gigantic airport, and the objective just says 'Find this guy' and you just walk around this huge airport checking every corner for dozens of minutes until you find him, things like this can happen often and it does kind of ruin the pacing, not knowing where to go. Other than that its a pretty cool mission.

-'Visiting Rich People'
Now, this mission isnt good, but its worth mentioning. Its a super frustrating STEALTH mission where you have to use melee kills and crawl around some mansion backyard trying to figure out how to get past all the guards. Its really stupid actually because the AI is rediculous they spot you from the most obnoxious places. I ended up just saying fuck it on the stealth and awkwardly sat in a corner trying to kill every guard, this naturally took atleast 20+ attempts because for some reason they were massive bullet sponges. definitely one of the frustrating clunker ones

-Great Deal
This mission involves you going to a parking garage to collect a truck full of liquor, then you get ambushed and the entire parking garage turns into a massive shootout. Definitely a highlight of the action packed shooting part of the game. Theres a stupid part is where the AI has a scripted event to toss a grenade at a stairwell, and without knowing the first time you or your AI team mates will likely die. Trial and error stuff. And for some reason, the 'escape home' part was extremely fucking hard. I had a dozen enemy mafia cars chase me the whole time, and they go way faster than you and ram you off the road. You can shoot out your car window, but the controls are so bad and awkward its not even worth trying. I'd get to the ending objective multiple times just to have an enemy show up and kill me. This one was way harder than it should of, I later found out you can just kill the enemies BEFORE you try to escape and barely anyone will ever come after you. A lot of failed attempts on this.

- Bon Appetit
You take the Don to dinner, but surprise surprise its an ambush and the resturant turns into a massive gunfight .This one is pretty fun and straight forward.

- Happy Birthday
This mission has you infiltrating a cruise ship with the objective to assassinate a politician. It involves some meandering petty tasks like roaming around the ship looking for the bathroom, then its locked, then you have to roam around trying to figure out how to unlock it, talk to some sailor, then just walk up to the politican as hes giving his speech and shoot him in the face, then escape from a boat on the side. Not a great mission, barely anything to it, atleast the concept is cool, but this one is more annoying to figure out than anything

-You Lucky Bastard
This mission is probably the longest in the game and involves a ton of driving. Youre trying to assassinate this guy and you drive from point A to B atleast 3 times and he always manages to survive. Its just a lot of boring driving. Then you eventually get to a spot where its a car chase and the objective simply says "KILL HIM"  Well, thats fucking bullshit cause the game lies to you. This horrible issue pops up multiple times during the game. Where the games objective will LIE to you. It says "KILL HIM" during the car chase, but you really just have to follow him until he reaches a destination and it triggers a cutscene/next event. If you actually manage to catch up and kill him, the game either glitches out or just says you failed. REALLY stupid and I wasted multiple attempts on this because I just thought I was too slow or something, but nope, the game was just lying to me. This same issue of the objectives lying happens multiple times and its one of the worst flaws of this game.
After this, youre in this gigantic shipyard and it says "KILL HIM" still. So you just go around killing dozens of enemies, including some snipers in towers which seem to take next to zero damage from far away. Their body reacts, but they just wont die, until I got closer. This was pretty annoying and made me fail multiple times. After you finally kill everyone, I still cant figure out WTF im suppose to do. "Kill him"  ok, everyones dead. So this is again where the games lack of direction and 'lying' objectives come up again. What you have to do is somehow know to interact with this explosive train cart and move it pushed against a warehouse door, Not only that, but you also have to know to walk in a specific spot where only then it will trigger the cutscene to progress.
 I was able to figure out moving the train cart thing alone, but then I tried throwing grenades at it, blowing it up, nothing worked. Then I looked it up and found out I just had to stand closer to it for it to trigger a cutscene. Really stupid.  Definitely not one of the better missions in the game, just a more exercise in frustration and patience.

-Crème De La Crème
This mission comes right after You Lucky Bastard and are probably the most challenging ones in the game, back to back. But its almost only challenging becuase once again, the objectives lie. The objective says 'CHASE AND KILL MORELLO' Which I tried feverently multiple times, I even blew his car up once and killed him like it told me, but nope! 'Mission failed'  ...Once again its a bullshit example of the objective lying to you, you have to just follow him until he triggers the next loading point/mission progression. Then it reuses the airport segment where you have to shoot down his plane,  first few attempts I didnt know where to shoot and failed, then figured out you have to shoot the engines.


-Election Campaign
Another mission where you assassinate a politician almost JFK style. You go to some big abandoned warhouse and shoot your way to the top floor and then use a sniper to kill politician giving speech then make your escape. The only annoying part of this mission is not knowing where to go. The first time you enter, you go through a manhole, but while youre escaping, you can no longer use the manhole and have to find some other exit. This was stupid and confusing and caused 15 mins of walking in circles after everyone was dead until I found the way to leave. Decent mission despie this flaw.

-Just For Relaxation
This mission is another example of reusing of levels. This simply re-uses the shipyard level from a few back. This is probably one of the dumbest and most obtuse stupid missions in the game. It tells you to go to the shipyard, then wait for the truck to exit so you can steal it. Well sometimes the scripting just glitches out and the truck doesnt even move. If youre lucky and the truck moves, then it tells you to follow it until you can steal it at a good location. So I follow the truck and it drives into a warehouse and stops, then I kill the few guards. Then another glitch? The truck is just driving in place and I cant steal it. Tried loading multiple times, same thing happens everytime. So this mission is just really bugged and stupid. Ended up stealing the truck on the main road then it worked. Either its glitched, or just really dumb.
 Then you drive the truck back into the afformeentioned ship yard from previous levels where the objectively simply says "Load the truck full of these crates"
Well the problem is its a gigantic shipyard and I could be driving around for an hour trying to figure out WTF it means. I searched for a good 20 mins but couldnt figure it out. Looked it up and you have to known to park your truck in a very specific place with very specific crates. Then you just load the truck up until some guy comes and gets the guards after you. At this point everyone is shooting at you and its hard as fuck because you have no guns. So I failed and just found it easier to kill everyone from the start, clear out the level, then load the truck up and make an easy escape. That worked. But its another example of trial and error, almost impossible to complete on the first attempt mission design.

-Moonlighting
This is a standard classic bank heist. Nothing too challenging or crazy here. The only really fucking stupid part is, theres this huge buildup where you go around collecting guns, then it gives you this optional objective to get a fast car. The optional objective involves you going around 30 minutes out of your way meeting up with this guy and protecting him, then another ambiguous objective of stealing a car, but the character in the game tells you to slowly follow him so you dont even know what youre suppose to do. After failing a few times I just pulled him over and stole the car. Well after ALL that buildup, it turns out it doesnt even matter, because at the end of the bank heist when you need to 'escape'  you only need to drive for about 40 seconds! all that effort for nothing. The damn escape location is just a few blocks away from the bank. And to lose the cops all you have to do is kill a few of them then hide in an alley. Besides this stupid crap, the rest of the mission was pretty cool and felt like a classic mobster movie, albeit it had a few trial and error attempts before I could do it properly.

- The Death of Art
This is the last mission in the game and also one of the best kind of. It involves you going to an art gallery and doing this epic huge shootout with tons of enemies, and the art gallery looks amazing. This is another mission where it tells you to do an optional objective of going and collecting some guns. The problem is, it just hints "Alternatively, you can go to this guy and get guns"  but it doesnt even mark it on the map. So you just have NO idea where the hell to go to get the guns. So I ignored the optional objective the first time and continued on.Well then you get to the shootout and find yourself with only 6 bullets and have to kill waves of really hard enemies. I failed a few times, then just decided to reload an earlier checkpoint and actually go do the optional objective to collect the guns. But I had to look up online where the actual guy is, because it wasnt marked on the map. Stupid.  After I got the guns, and went back to the art gallery for the final shootout, it was really intense and awesome and a highlight of the game. This is where the graphics shine and the design of the art gallery with all the paintings on the walls and statues, coupled with this intense Mafia shootout is just iconic video game stuff. Theres a stupid scripted part once again where they throw a grenade AT THE HEALTH STATION so the first time you'll almost certainly die to it. After that, you get to a last boss which is just insane. Atleast it gives a checkpoint. But his accuracy is nuts, he will mow you down in half a second flat. You need to peek out and just stunluck him over and over with your tommy gun. Then he runs away and you chase him then he peeks out of a corner and mows you down again. So this whole boss is just trial and error, theres no way youre doing it on your first attempt. After you learn exactly what he does, its no problem, then the game is over.


Once you understand the shooting mechanics, and the enemy AI, the game isn't that difficult. It just becomes a method of always crouching, carefully positioning yourself on a corner, peeking around corners and spotting the enemies, then either baiting them into a bad position, or sort of exploiting their AI and pick them off. All the classic lineup of 1930s mobster guns, tommy gun, revolvers, colt handgun, shotguns. I found the Tommy gun to be the best in the game, while it has a ton of recoil, its incredibly good if you just shoot slowly and stunlock the enemies. The shooting mechanics are nothing amazing, pretty standard, but I will say the sound effects are quite amazing, such as the sound of your shells hitting the floor depending on surface, your magazines clunking to the ground, all of the visuals of seeing all the blood splatters on the ground and all the shells and magazines etc. It all looks and feels quite visceral and 'hardcore' and realistic, even despite the 2002 graphics. A pet peeve for the gun combat is the camera position. Its positioned exactly behind your character model, so you can barely ever actually see the gun you're wielding. All you see is the back of your characters body most of the time, the gun hes holding completely blocked. I would have much preferred the camera be positioned in a way where you can actually see the gun you're shooting, it would help the combat look better.  Graphically, I would say it still has a certain charm to it. Obviously the textures and polygon count and shaders are not amazing by todays standard, but something about these old games just has a certain visual appeal. Many times I appreciated how the city looked, and a lot of the interiors are impressive still.
The game isn't strictly 'open world' in the common sense. The main campaign is done in a linear way, ever mission instantly goes into the next one, and you always have some objective of where to go. There is an optional 'free roam' mode though. I liked how it has a psuedo-linear campaign one mission into the next.

I will point out that I found it quite strange how the game makes such a big deal with unlocking cars and these optional objectives purely to unlock new cars, but the thing is you basically always have to drive at 40mph or else you have to constantly deal with cops coming after you for speeding. So whats even the point? Everytime you finish a mission it gives you this notification for unlocking cars, despite the whole game I was forced to drive them slowly because its not worth the hassle of dealing with police. Dont really get it.

Now I'm gonna mention the story. I think this is one of the earliest games to really have this modern style of story telling, cutscenes, and checkpoint save system. This seems like the introduction of the modern way of game design. Everything has this cinematic movie like atmosphere and quality to it. Almost every mission starts off inside the resturaunt where your mob resides, and some meeting with the Don and higher ups. Its a classic stereotypical mob story like Goodfellas or The Godfather, told in a video game format. The cast of characters are memorable but also stereotypes. The main character, Tommy is some stern and classic old gentleman, but also witty and has a lot of funny dialogue. Everything is told in this serious and gritty mobster style with full voice acting and cinematics. It really sets the mood and atmosphere and immerses you as one of them. The way every mission starts you at your gangs headquarters, then you go out back and talk to the mechanic to choose a car, then you guys go to your gangs Weapon provider which always talks to you and provides you weapons, it all comes together to immerse you into this experience as a mobster. I think it works quite well. The graphics in the cutscenes are obviously old, its a 2002 game, their faces look pretty funny, but it never really took away from the experience, the old rough graphics almost add to it in a way. I don't usually review stories so Im not gonna say too much, but theres a lot of mature themes and dark scenes, people constantly being assassinated or betrayed, friends turning on eachother, drugs, cars, all that sort of stuff. You have sidekicks for almost all of the game and you start to get to know them and their personality so it never feels too lonely you always feel a part of this gang.

Biggest flaws with the game are being forced to drive 40mph the ENTIRE game, 75% of the game is spent just driving point A to B gets really dull, the control scheme by default is insane like Arrow keys to drive, Numpad 0 to jump, F5 for speed limiter, L to reload etc. Not a big deal but its clear to see how its a product of its time and developed PC first. Other flaws are the objectives literally lying to you sometimes  confusing you and wasting your time, the first quarter of the game is really boring pedestrian busy work...but all the positives in the game are plenty too like decent third person action, intensely challenging but not so bad, some really awesome memorable missions, good story and fun to watch cutscenes, great atmosphere.
The Steam version of the game has the original music removed for whatever music, so I just downloaded it back with a fix online, wasnt a big deal. Steam version also has some weird techincal issues like flickering graphics so had to download a few fixes as well.

The takeaway with Mafia is that its a piece of video game history, developed before GTA 3 and came out only a few months after, its one of the very first games of its kind in the gangster sandbox GTA style , it has its quirks and flaws, but it also has a lot of good things too. It will be pretty interesting to see how the Remake plays out!

7/10