MAFIA - a must have game

After about 6 months of deliberating I finally purchased this game for $9.99 (from Gamestop.com). Right from the beginning I was completely intrigued by the storyline, cars, characters, and graphics of this game. Opening credits, music, are an A+. You actually do feel like you are in the 1930's era. The game is scripted and follows the life of Tommy, the taxi driver, who accidentally gets involved with Sam and Paulie from Salieri family. Unlike games like GTA III and GTA Vice City, which I played and finished in the last several months, MAFIA actually makes you believe and care about the character of Tommy and some other people in the family. GTA series did have faster cars, boats, planes but something was missing from those games. There was no storyline, the gameplay was too open and you would get from point A to point B in under a minute. In MAFIA, however, great detail is given the map and the Traffic System. The police will stop you if you go over 40mph, they will take you to jail if you run over the pedestrian or steal a car in front of them. This makes the game so much more realistic. But like every game there are some things that I would like to see improved. A big plus would be if the map actually stayed on the screen while driving rather than hitting TAB button all the time. I did end up crashing into things while trying to learn where to go. In-game saves would be helpful. Some missions become frustrating after a while. Case in point - car race, some shootouts. Sometimes, the game would halt or completely exit during the gameplay for no apparent reason. I have a pretty descent system (AMD 1800+, 256MB Ram, NVIDIA 4 graphics card, 40GB drive). Those that do not like driving games will be frustrated with MAFIA. Driving is a must in this game. Try DEMO first, see if you like it. Despite some minor shortcomings, the game offers a great take on MAFIA life and deserves to be recognized as one of the best games on the market today.