Mafia

Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Game...
Review: This game is loosely based on 2001's miracle of a game, GTA III. But if you thought that Mafia was just another GTA clone, you would be pathetically mistaken.
Mafia takes place during the Prohibition Era in the 1930s. You are merely a citizen cab driver, until you are held at gunpoint by two mafia members and drug into the underworld of corruption and death. You begin working for the mafia as just an alternative to get some more cash, but before you know it, you evolve into one of the most notorious mafia members in history. The game provides a campaign that will take you at least a week to complete, but that's not the reason to buy Mafia. There are extra quests to unlock, cars to be bought, and the most beautiful virtual city ever created to explore. The city is based on Chicago, but with three expansive islands connected by bridges, and also a mind-boggingly large countryside to explore, these new free roam modes never wear out their welcome.
With a beautiful mafia story, beautiful music and graphics, and the most fun game since GTA III, this game is definitely one of the best game that you can own.

Rating:
Summary: DONT MESS WITH THE FAMILY
Review: What a GREAT Game! This is one of the most entertaining games I have played in a long time. Set in the 30's this game gives you the "feel" of living in a Chicago like setting. Instead you are in the city Lost Heaven. This game plays like Grand Theft Auto III but is much larger in scale and much more detailed. The automobiles drive just as they should through the game and there are alot of vehicles to drive. Through the extensive storyline (20+ missions) you will travel through the adventures of Tommy, a cab driver unknowingly thrust into the mafia, and once their finds he fits right in and quickly becomes one of the Dons right hand men. You will be in the middle of a mafia war and have to undertake shooting, driving, and even stealth missions to accomplish your goals. You will have access to all the weapons made popular in this era from a baseball bat to the tommy gun. The biggest plus though is the games replay value. You can experience the "Free Ride" aspects of the game where you just ride Lost Heaven causing trouble or the Extreme Free Ride where you undertake various tasks to unlock many different types for automobiles not seen in the game itself. A wonderful game you will enjoy for a long time. Just remember dont cross the family.

Rating:
Summary: ....An Offer You Can't Refuse? Well maybe, maybe not.
Review: The 1930's. The era of prohibition, bootlegged liquor, and the mob. Mafia from Illusion Softworks brings us back to that by gone era with some good graphics and decent albeit uneven gameplay.

Mafia, tells the story of Tommy Angelo. A mobster who really just wants to do "the right thing". As a story, Mafia works. The cutscenes are surprisingly photorealistic and are well acted and presented. Unfortunatley it's the gameplay between the story segments that partially drags the game down.

Mafia can almost be described as a 1930's Grand Theft Auto. Only it doesn't quite pull it off as well. Set in the fictional Chicago/New York hybrid city of "Lost Heaven", the game renders the period extremely well. The streets have that very old time look to them. Imagine New York before the "urban renewel" of the late 40's and early 50's. The city is also enormous in size. The game however didn't run very smoothely in places on my 800mhz, 256 SDRAM, 64 mb Nvidia graphics card machine even though it's recomended for machines as slow as 500 mhz. Even with the graphical problems. This is a very nice looking game. The sound is also pretty good. Pedestrians scream, bullet casings clang on the ground. Even the car radio plays period music. There are quite a bit of sounds that give it a more authentic period feel. The game is installed over three discs and requires 1.8 gigs of hard drive space to install.

The gameplay is however is a mixed bag. The driving portions of the game are tedious, due to the lack of an in game map. Making it easy to get lost. A compass in the left hand corner helps with navigations, so does the radar to some degree (the target appears as a red X on the radar only when you're within about half a mile from it). You can also travel the city in street cars and on elevated trains. And there's always the option of traveling on foot. There are also a varitey of period weapons to choose from Tommy Guns to a baseball bat reminiscent of the film the Untouchables. The controls are fairly easy to negotiate even for a PC game. The game is also pretty long and also has a "Free Ride" option so you can go on a rampage if you so desire.

All in all this is a pretty good game for the money. I'm not sure if I would pay the full Playstation 2 price for it. But at the current price PC of $9.99 this is a good value.

Rating:
Summary: One Amazing Game
Review: This is a definite purchase for anyone that liked the idea of the massive interactive environment in Grand Theft Auto III. It sucks you into the 1930s where you play a cab driver that, after a run in with several mob members, earns a position under one of the two major dons in the city of Lost Heaven. The major difference between this title and Grand Theft Auto III, aside from the obvious settings in time, is the realism. While GTA 3 was a sort of cartoonish looking game, Mafia has a very realistic environment, from the buildings to the people to the cars of the era.

There are two modes in the game, free ride and story mode. Story mode is amazing. This is where the bulk of this game can be found. I don't want to give too much away, but I would compare story mode to Grand Theft Auto III with a story and not just random tasks. Expect to find everything you would find in a mob movie: beatings, gunfights, hits, backstabbing, and even a small love story. As you complete missions, you will learn how to jimmy the locks on new cars, which can be used in missions or just for fun in free ride mode. Free Ride mode is just that. You pick a car, which you've earned in the story mode and tool around the city. You earn money for killing mobsters, blowing up cars, or earning fares as a taxi driver. With the money, you can purchase new weapons, fix your car or heal yourself. Pretty basic, but can lead to great fun.

Of course there is always something that could be improved and while they are few in this game, I think they should be mentioned. One thing that bothered me was the fact that all missions start and end at the don's restaurant, which translates to a lot of driving when a mission takes place on the other side of the city. On the other hand, with such a beautiful environment, this gives you a chance to get a better look at some areas that you may not have to visit during a mission. The only other annoyance that I can think of is the frustrating difficulty of some of the missions. Again, I don't want to give to much away, but sometimes the AI is just too good. Otherwise the AI is very fun to deal with. Guys hide and duck behind objects, they run when they know they're in trouble, they whistle for help when they need it. The AI is overall fantastic.

Overall this is an amazing game. It is very addictive and engrossing and will keep you entertained for hours.

PROS:
Very realistic and massive environment
Great Artificial Intelligence
Engrossing story
Tons of cars and weapons

CONS:
Frustrating at times

Rating:
Summary: For Your GTA fix...
Review: Mafia is a fabulous game in the GTA vein. What sets the two apart, IMO, is the maturity level. No, not the blood, guts, and prostitutes of GTA kind of "maturity", but the storyline. Mafia's characters are fabulously well-developed and the story will make you want to keep going mission after mission. And the missions are truly grand--some you will recognize as being lifted out of your favorite gangster movies (along with some of the characters--your sidekick is a Pesci clone) but all in all they're the best I've ever encountered. One highlight that you'll probably play over and over involves your character and his NPC friends getting ambushed in the top of a parking garage and you have to shoot your way out.

Other strengths include solid graphics and a great period-accurate soundtrack.

Where the game fails not only as a game but also when compared to GTA is in the driving. Simply, driving is also period-accurate, which means the cars are slow and handle poorly. It's rarely any fun, and the game does seem artificially stretched by making you drive all over the city to get to the various missions. Plus, one extremely frustrating level forces you to win a race. After about 50 tries I won, but many just download a savegame from the net to get past that portion of the game. Finally, there's little to do outside the game's storyline, unlike GTA where there's all sorts of ways to get in trouble.

Ultimately, both GTA and Mafia are experiences. GTA immerses you in a world, while Mafia boils down that immersion into a single story. Both are outstanding and must-haves for computer gamers.

Rating:
Summary: A Fatal Murderer In Lost Heaven.
Review: Tom Angelo this is your name in the game a taxi driver looking for a chance to be a rich man, Don Salieri will give you that chance if you do what he says.He will make you a fatal murderer without heart and he also will expolit your good driving in doing missions, So pick up the tommy gun,colt1911,pump action shotgun and magnum and spread the blood everywhere in Lost Heaven the city of Mafia and drive over 60 different vehicles with the most realistic car physics ever made in a game.Now you have respect after long struggle to make money and power.You will married Sara the girl who will change your life you have a wife and a daughter now what will happen ?you will care about them and.... Play the game to know the rest of the fantastic story .I am really waiting for MAFIA 2.

Rating:
Summary: A work of art.
Review: Mafia is a 3rd person mission-based driving/action game set in a fictitious 1930's-era city. You control the main character, Tommy, though various missions as you ascend through the ranks of the local mafioso. The game also includes a "free-ride" mode, seperate from the main storyline, that allows you to explore the vast city and countryside of Lost Heaven at your leisure. Aside from the main storyline, Tommy also has the opportunity to complete minor missions during the game, whose main goal is to add more drivable cars to your collection. Upon completion of the main game, a free-ride extreme mode is opened up that offers 19 more missions which center around (surprise) driving.
So is this just a cheesy 1930's copy of Grand Theft Auto 3? No.
The free-roaming style of the game may have been borrowed from GTA3, but I found the feel of the game to be quite different.

The main difference I'd say is that Mafia goes for REALISM. The creators really tried to make the feel and handling of the cars and weapons match the era. Some reviewers have complained that the cars go too slow and don't corner well, but that's exactly how those old cars with tiny tires handled. Actually, as the game progresses to the late 30's, your choice of vehicles does improve with more powerful and better handling cars available. The weapons, too, are designed to be realistic. No, you don't get any rocket launchers because L.A.W. rockets hadn't been invented yet. I was VERY impressed with the accurate choice of weapons and the realism of their effects - recoil, sounds, and muzzle flashes are all right on the money. Come on, folks, some of the weapons in GTA3 are downright silly.

As far as the main storyline goes, the acting and characters are very well done and very believable. With great plot twists and an ending that actually surprised me, I felt that I had just lived through a great mob movie. The missions have a good deal of variety, too, with intense car chases, parking lot shoot-outs, a bank robbery, a rooftop escape, a heart-pounding auto race in an authentic period race car, and a nerve-racking game of cat and mouse at a deserted farm on a stormy night. Mafia is not just another linear shooter. There is a good deal of driving to and fro in this game, though. I enjoyed and felt it added to the realism, but some might find it a bit tedious.

The overall environment in Mafia is breathtaking. The city is huge and encompasses 3 islands with industrial areas, skyscrapers, slums, suburbs, and heuty-teuty neighborhoods. Unlike GTA3, Mafia also has added some absolutely gorgeous countryside to explore. The graphics and sounds are simply stunning and, unfortunately, do push a system's limits. I have a P4 1.9ghz with 512mb rambus and a TI4600 geforce 4 card and two of the missions tax my system. Of course, I play with all sliders maxed and 4x antialiasing enabled. Slower systems beware.

Mafia is violent and deserves its "M" rating, though blood effects can be toned down. Even so, I would not say that Mafia is an immoral game. Follow the story to its conclusion and you'll see what I mean.

The only major flaws I found with Mafia concern the A.I. and the manner in which you learn to steal cars. In GTA3, if you shot up someone's car while they were in it, they would speed off in a panic. Here, you can empty a 50-round Tommy gun magazine into someone's car and they won't budge. (Until their car blows up of course.) Also, Tommy has to learn how to unlock particular cars from the local grease monkey before he can steal one on the street. This premise is fine by me except when I've just killed two thugs while they were getting out of their car, the doors are open and the engine is running, and Tommy is telling me he doesn't know how to get into this model. What a dope.

All in all, Mafia is a superb production with incredible graphics, fantastic realism and detail, and movie-like gameplay that deserves to be tried. Will it replace your GTA3? No, and I don't think the creators were trying to. I own and love both games and I find they compliment each other nicely.

Rating:
Summary: The way the Mob Games should be.
Review: Okay...I'm 13....Male...and just one big mafia fanatic. I
don't mean the game...I mean the real thing. I don't want to
be one obviously but after seeing The Godfather..(WOW,its every
guy's favorite movie), I just wanted to see every mob movie ever
made. Godfather's one, two and three, Once Upon a Time in America, Goodfellas, Casino, Road to Perdition, and some biographys about Gotti and a few others. And I've just gotta say that this game is the most realistic mafia game I've ever played.

Sure, Grand Theft Auto III had some cool stuff, like roaming around and multiple missions..but hey...this game takes the whole bakery. Graphics are excellent, story is awesome (I even thought Mario Puzo wrote it), gameplay is very very good, and the
realisim was just incredible. I've read about the mob guns (no brainer) and these were extremely accurate...not to mention the cars...where Cadillacs used to be good. Jesus..V16 engines? All in all...this game is simply my favorite. Hopefully they'll make more of Mafia games...like in 1940's and 1950's and so on...that would be so awesome now wouldn't it? Its an offer you can't refuse.

Rating:
Summary: mafia heaven...
Review: this game is simply amazing! if you thought gta3 was a good, you should definitely think about purchasing this game. mafia takes place in the 1930's. you play the role of a cab driver who was used by two mobsters to get away from the police. now you work for the mob and have to do missions and all that other stuff for them. the grapgics are incredible! each character has his or her own personality, facial features, ect. you can also hijack over 60 cars. the city is so real, too. you can go into just about any building you want to, like bars, car shops, or gas stations. there are a series of weapons, you have to choose from, like a baseball bat, tommy gun, pump action shotgun, magnums, colts, and saw-off shotguns. the sound is great, too. the shotgun blast sound so real. but watch out, you can't just get away with shooting anyone you want to, the cops will do ANYTHING to stop you. they are quite hard. they'll stop you for speeding and give you a ticket, running red lights, or of course, drive-bys. so i defenitely encourage you to BUY THIS GAME!!! IT IS THE GREATEST GAME EVER!!! so buy it.

Rating:
Summary: Bloody Good
Review: Mafia is an enthralling and amazingly well crafted 3rd person pc game (Mafia will also sell on the X-BOX and i'm not sure but i think it may sell on ps2 as well).

In Mafia you play Tommy Angelo, who at the start of the game is a cab driver. He ends up being one of Salieri's (Salieri is the don of 1 of 2 mafia gangs) best hitman. The story is compelling to say the least, it weaves around killing off main characters and civilians at a very intense rate.

When i first begun playing Mafia i was almost in tears at how frustratingly annoying and tedious the first few missions were and what really rubbed it in was the fact that you can not auto-save in Mafia. In hindsight i agree with the developers choice to leave out auto-saving as you do get used to it. As you get further into Mafia the missions get a little harder, the cars get faster and you get more guns. Which brings me to one area which i was very impressed by, the weapons. They range from base baseball bats and about 4 differnet hand guns to shot guns and tommy guns. They all re-load well and look great when firing. Which brings me to yet another impressive spot (will they ever end) the enemy. They are quite intelligent and work together or give each other cover fire. One area that is a little unrealistic is how many bullets you need to kill them. But it works so hey.

The cars are crisp with detail and the damage effects are excellent.

The missions although slow to start become very long and interesting in the latter parts of the game.

All in all i no i havent covered every thing about Mafia But hopefully what i have written will incourage people to buy Mafia for 2 reasons 1) To enjoy the wonders of Mafia and explore the 3 islands of goodness that Mafia offers 2) The more buyers the more chance of an expansion and maybe just maybe i know this is to much to hope for but perhaps a sequel.

GET MAFIA