Mafia for Windows

The movie industry's got times in the year where critics expect bad movies to come out. There are certain weeks and months that studios choose to offload their bloated, languishing projects so that they can just get them out of their hair.

Maybe the game industry's got something similar, because this seems to be the point in time where all the 3rd person PC games are coming out. In the last, 45 days I'm going to say there have been 4 3rd person games released. (Tsunami 2265, The Thing, Mafia, and Syberia.)

Right now, this is probably the most talked about game for the PC. With all the acclaim that Grand Theft Auto 3 had last year when it came out for the Playstation 2, PC gamers were waiting for their day.

A port wouldn't suffice, those never seem to work out good becuase you're trying to convert game mechanics that anticipate the use of a controller to a mouse and keyboard. Doesn't work. Same reason the first person shooters on a console generally blow chunks to anyone who's used to playing these games with a keyboard and mouse.

So, in comes Mafia to fill that void. Spawned from the Pavel-heavy (seriously, the intro has more Pavels in it than I've met or heard of in my entire life. Try and find a name without an accent mark on it somewhere.) development team at Illusion Softworks and published by the former media darlings over at the Gathering of Developers, Mafia is a game that isn't necessarily a new experience, but given the fact that there's a whole vast landscape of no PC gaming right now, it's a fun enough ride to occupy your time and take your cash.

Sell Out! With Me Today!

The story starts off with you getting ready to sing to the cops. The missions take place as a flashback, as part of your dialogue with the copper, as you try and secure a safe life for you, your wife, and kid.

So, you start telling your story, starting back on the night where your cab was "hired" abruptly by two mobsters trying to outrun the hot lead whizzing by their heads. You get them to safety, and are rewarded for your efforts.

Initially balking at the idea of joining the mob, that decision gets made for you when two guys start beating on your taxi with baseball bats. you run to the only place nearby where you can get and sort of refuge from, and that happens to be a bar run by Mr. Salieri, who's two guys you saved not so long ago.

You decide that joining the mob beats getting killed, and sign up with Salieri's operation, a generally laid back bunch of guys. Unfortunately, rival gangster Morello wants in on Salieri's turf and hence, the violent interjections in your life. Welcome to the land of nice suits and gunfire.

Not-so-Graphic Violence

The graphic quality in this game's a bit lacking. Everything looks OK, there's just something that isn't quite right with ther people...they aren't quite modeled right. Nothing that's really going to grate against you or anything, but there are a few quirks with models here and there that detract from the game's visual appeal.

Audio quality is pretty good. The guns all sound different, and the music fits the era more consistently than the characters do. Some of the acting falls a little flat, but they haven't quite worked that out here in the US yet, and since they keep recycling the same voice actors, it's unlikely it ever will get resolved.

I've seen this somewhere before...

Mafia borrows heavily from game mechanics of games that have come before it. If you ever played Hitman for the PC a couple years back, this game's going to seem REAL familiar, all the way down to the fairly clunky combat system.

Also, if you played Grand Theft Auto 3, this game is going to come with a heavy dose of deja vu. The stealing cars, the "wanted" system, the 3rd person gunfire battles.

If someone's trying to convince you that this game is not going to remind you of GTA3, they're seriously mistaken. It's set in a different era and all, and you can't go around helping people in ambulances, but the influence of GTA3 is so heavy that if any review doesn't mention it, it's honestly not doing its job.

Riding along in my Automobile.

Driving in your car is a big part of the game. Learning how to lift new vehicles and the layout of the city are integral to being successful in this game.

There are also Free Ride and Free Ride EXTREME modes to the game so obviously, you know what the developer spent the majority of their time working on.

Unfortunately, while it is probably accurate to the time period, the clunky steering of the car makes it feel very reminiscent of riding around in the vehicles from Counter-Strike.

Driving is probably my least favorite part of the game. Especially since coupled with the clunky steering is the absolute worst radar system I've ever seen in a PC game. Heck, even the overhead display for the original Police Quest made it easier to figure out where the heck I was going.

I end up having to drive with one hand steering and the other hand holding down the Tab key so the map overlay shows up on screen. Cars in your radar are displayed as 2 x 3 pixel lines. No streets or anything, just a bunch of lines. You'd figure since there's buildings and everything in the way (which don't show up in the radar display), that they'd reduce the scope of the radar to show something juuust a bit larger to represent the cars.

I would have just thrown the damn thing out altogether if that's what they were working with.

You Can Beat 'Im If You Him 'Im With A Bat.

Aside from driving around all day, the other thing you'll do in Mafia is make people dead. Unfortunately, in 3rd person, the combat system isn't as elegant as it should be.

Any time the combat has to drop to melee the engine can't really handle it. I've ended up clipping into other people and not being able to move out of them while I get pummeled by 3 different people. You also can't chase people down and swing at the same time...well, you can, you just can't hit them.

Also a bit of a puzzle was that if you smack someone from behind with a baseball bat at full power, they go down. But, hit them in the face from the front, and they proceed to hit you back.

I don't know about you, but I figure at full "swing for the fences" mode, it doesn't matter where I hit someone with a baseball bat, face, leg, whatever, they aren't getting up. In any case, a full on swing to the head ought to put down anyone who isn't on PCP.

Instead, I end up in these battles, where I'm constantly backing up and swinging as the idiot AI doesn't figure out that it can't run and swing.

Mercifully, gun combat is much, much better than melee. Watching people fly about being nailed with the sawed-off shotgun is something to behold. I haven't had that much fun shooting people for a long time. Most satisfying computer death since the great TOW Missile body explosions from Shogo: Mobile Armor Division.

There's enough gun combat in the game to make up for the frustrating melee combat. Missions usually consist of 2 or 3 driving parts and 2 combat parts, so the game manages to balance itself pretty well.

Overall, I'd say that this game's worth a purchase. The story's engaging enough to get you into the game, but they really needed to try and keep the game in the 30s instead of having the tone jump back and forth between present time and then.