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Retrospective: Mafia Article
Retro PC Article by John Walker
Page 1 of 3.
Page 2 
This article is a tribute to the phone box repairmen and women of Lost Heaven. The work they put in behind the scenes, without credit, is only outshone by my dedication toward driving into them.
Mafia is still a radical game. In 2002, just a year after Grand Theft Auto III had shaken up everyone's expectations of sandbox gaming, Illusion Softworks' open city went deeply against the grain. Rather than embracing the freedom of choice a living city offers, it chose to make a tightly scripted, extremely linear story with little else to do. And thank goodness, because seven years on, Mafia is still compelling despite its aging technology.
Taxi Driver
Tommy Angelo is a taxi driver. That's all. It's only luck that he saves the lives of a couple of members of the mafia, when he aids their getaway. When rival mobsters exact their revenge on Angelo's car, Tommy is invited to meet Mr Don Salieri to be offered compensation. Along with it comes an invite to join the family, should he wish.
See how good that face is? SEE?
It's not like he has to. Lost Heaven is quite a remarkable place. For the first half of the game, unless you take it upon yourself to go exploring, you're not often taken out of the three main sections of the city. Part New York, part San Francisco, the city thrives with traffic, pedestrians, trams and trains. But explore the edges and you'll find airports, docks, and best of all, a super-rich area with far more phone boxes to smash than anywhere else. Despite looking like it's made of crudely painted cardboard, it's a vivid and interesting town that rewards journeys down side alleys, or ambling journeys on the elevated railway.
Of course, Tommy does join the Salieri family. What surprised me going back to a game I remember extremely fondly is just how long it takes to get going. After a tortuously dull series of taxi driver missions, joining the mafia doesn't improve things much. You're still more chauffer than mobster, and while there's a couple of shoot-outs, it was hard to remember why so much of my affection had been merited. But then it gets going.
Mafia is a much purer interpretation of GTA's method of weaving a narrative through an open world. Rather than smothering things in side quests (although there are a few opportunities to complete tasks for a friendly mechanic to score more cars), here it's about a barrage of set-pieces. The first notable example, rather sadly, is the race.
You can tell The Matrix came out when Illusion started developing this.
Oh boy, if there's a level of any game that's become infamous, it's Mafia's race. Having completed a rather fun mission stealing a rival's car from the racetrack garages the night before, in order to get it tinkered with by your mechanic, you're then required by the Don to take part in the race yourself. Only first place is good enough, for a five-lap race in cars that are part rocket, part aircraft carrier. The original version of the game had this set so idiotically difficult that many found their game ended here. Fortunately it was later patched, and if you're planning on playing the game, you must make sure you upgrade it to at least v1.2. However, it's still no simple matter.
Turn damage off and set it to the emasculating "Very Easy" and you'll eventually get through it, so long as you don't clip the wrong edge and get flipped into oblivion. (Cue a thousand comments telling us how easy it was on Hard). But once you get past it, Mafia comes to life.
The Age Of Innocence
I've mentioned how the tech has dated, and as you watch apparent clear skies peel back to reveal whacking great buildings, or see pedestrians fade in and out of existence, you can see it straining at its limitations. But the most dramatic contrast between absolutely brilliant graphics and quite stunningly awful happens with the people. The faces still look amazing. In 2002 they were jaw-dropping, and they're far better than most today. However, these realistic heads are propped on bodies that look like stick men in comparison. Their giant, clumsy sausage fingers, and bizarrely poorly textured clothing, seem like some sort of Faustian penalty. "You may have face technology years ahead of its time," said the Devil. "But their bodies shall look like they belong on a PSX! Bwahaha!"
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Comments: 1-45 of 45 in total
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LlamaFarmer
19/04/09 @ 11:04
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It was an amazing game at the time, I loved the fact that the cars felt more realistic than GTA and the city seemed more alive. The cutscenes and story were fantastic, and I think shows that games CAN be made to feel like you're in a film. I remember doing that race over and over at a friend's, taking it in turns. We finally managed then I realised I'd have to do it again when I got home, what a satisfying feeling though! Really looking forward to the sequel, glad to see that they aren't making it too sandboxy, but still using the city as a stage for the story. Still hope they don't have quicksaves or too frequent checkpointing, something I don't normally say, but the shootouts were so tense and exciting!
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DutchDemons
19/04/09 @ 11:08
+1
very odd re-review if you ask me. Mind you, my primary reason to dismiss any EG review as 'i'll wait and see for my self' stems from their first Mafia review (4/10, lol), so i was kinda hoping for an 'apologetic' review of some sort.
This review only briefly touches upon the genius that is Mafia. the first 2 pages are all about nitpicking on small things (sure, the cops were annoying, we know), while the last page mainly describes how awesome it is to smash through a phone box. I mean...wtf? Only in the last paragraph and in the last picture do you refer to the main reason why some of us consider mafia to be one of the best games ever (the story, the atmosphere, the relationships). This kind of reviewing makes me happy that i am perfectly able to make up my own mind; i am able to enjoy a game and really immerse myself into a gaming world, ignoring all of the small (admittedly annoying if you pay enough attention) issues. I still consider Mafia to be one hell of a game and it firmly stands in my top 10 games of my lifetime!
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most recently on 19/04/09 @ 12:09
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Mafia was one of my first games on my first PC (before then I always played PC at work or at friends), even had a steering wheel I used for the driving. It was more alive and real than GTA and I loved the old setting. Cannot wait for 2!
/ digs out Mafia Awesome game, 4/10 hehehe, EGLOL....
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most recently on 19/04/09 @ 12:17
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LeeroyJenkins
19/04/09 @ 11:40
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Mafia was, and still is, absolutely fantastic.
Yeah, easily one of the best game endings ever. The music was superb too. Great theme tune. |
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greekgoddj
19/04/09 @ 11:47
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One of my favourite games! Loved it...played it again a few months ago. Brilliant
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Klausileria
19/04/09 @ 11:48
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A really wonderful and charming article (i love that point in the text about the phone boxes) about a fantastic video game. I love Retro Sundays! keep it up, please. :-)
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DutchDemons
19/04/09 @ 12:43
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@botherer
well, i already said it was a 're-review'..you know..the whole point of your 'retrospective look'. On page 1 i can hardly find any reference to the brilliance. on the second page you only mention briefly the morality of tommy's 'profession'. Nowhere to be found however, is any real mention of the awesome atmosphere and only on occasion do you refer to the great story (-telling). So it remains a very odd read. If you consider this to be a top 10 game of all time, you sure are able to disguise that in your writing.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 19/04/09 @ 13:44
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I adored this game. For a number of years I worked for a major game retailer & we generally had a couple of conferences per year. At these conferences we generally had a day (or two) of publishers showing us their upcoming wares, and letting us see & sometimes play the offerings that they were going to show at E3 / ECTS depending on what time of year it was.
There were a couple of games that I remember blowing me away, and make me eagerly ring my friends when I got back to my hotel room... I remember the first time I saw Claude, shooting up cars, playing with remote control car-bombs & sniping civilians in Liberty City (this was before it had been shown anywhere) and I was just left flabbergasted. I remember the first time I saw Sam Fisher hiding in the shadows, performing split jumps in corridors and using hi-tech gadgets to peak under doors. I remember seeing the Prince Of Persia rewind time on a PS2 and thinking "how the hell did they do that?", but most of all I remember a developer from Pterodon (could have been a play tester) showing us Tommy meeting with some bootleggers on a stormy night in Mafia. I remember them showing us the escape from the car-park, and me being stunned by the way the cars damaged, and exploded, and the way a smoldering tire rolled past Tommy, and wobbled its way down a car-park ramp. Of all the games I saw behind closed doors over the years, I remember that being the one that I wanted the most, and I wasn't disappointed. I remember the day it was shipped to my store, taking it home before its release date and just playing it for hours & hours. So many high points, the bootleg heist that goes wrong, the scene which has you torching a building, the rooftop escape which descends into a gunfight at a funeral. The stealing of the sports cars, hell I even enjoyed the race (pre patch). But most of all I remember the ending, I remember finishing the game on a Saturday morning, sitting at my computer desk & watching the credits roll, and then ringing a friend of mine to tell him that he had to stop whatever he was playing & play Mafia because it had the best plot & ending I'd ever seen in a video game. For me it's been the pinnacle of storytelling in a game ever since it's release, and for my money, it still remains the undisputed champion. There are games which have had great plots for sure, but none of them have maintained it through to the climax, and then delivered an ending that was as fitting, or as satisfying, as Mafia's. I just hope that the sequel lives up to high standards set by the original. |
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The best part about Mafia was the sandbox car-collector mode after the endgame. Don't get me wrong, the game itself was brilliant but obtaining all those fine cars through sometimes ridiculous missions was a lot of fun, I particularly liked chasing that Speedy Gonzalez character in his underpants, white, with actual hearts on it!
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TheComedian
19/04/09 @ 14:50
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One of the best games ever made. I can see that only having ever played through three quarters of it. It's a game permanently lodged in the back of my skull, and even though it had massive shortcomings, the experience was unparalled (except for Deus Ex).
I stopped playing because I couldn't face the utterly wank checkpoint system. I've played up to the Mansion level where you have to sneak around numerous times, but I've always just lost the will to carry on. I'd give it a 9/10 though, it affected me like no other game, save for Deus Ex, ever has. |
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Obiwanshinobi
19/04/09 @ 15:27
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The race used to be a pain... until I get a digital joypad. Then I hooked it up and beat the race at one go. Back then I wasn't into driving games at all.
Instead of mocking textures of the 7 years old game, reviewer should have mentioned that Mafia looks MUCH better with forced anisotropic filtering, which makes one hell of a difference (rails, anyone?). By the way, I remember some faces in Soldier of Fortune II being quite impressive at the time (not all of them, though). |
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Mafia is my favourite game ever....full stop.
Such a great story lies behind it all, it really gets you involved from the very moment it starts. The final shootout in the game in the museum, even though you are fully aware of what you are doing and why you are doing it really gets to you when you make that final kill. The cutscene really has you sat there in awe, then not forgetting the bit at the end of the credits just to finish it off. This bit alone really hits hard. Yeah some of the missions are really tough due to bad AI or so many bad guys but it demands that you keep trying till you crack it and you really feel like you have achieved something. One mission is an instant classic, going for a meal with the Don. It feels like watching The Untouchables for some bizarre reason the way the rival Mafia arrive and open up on the resteraunt. All in all, classic gaming at its very best. Can't wait for Mafia 2 and reading what EG have to say for it tommorow. |
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The Race wasn't that hard. I finished it unpatched and using keyboard. All it takes is a little patience. The Race is not even near the hardest missions in the game.
Currently playing through this masterpiece for the nth time with the unlimited draw distance mod. On PC, of course. After seeing the two gameplay videos of Mafia 2 I'm having fears that the game will be suffering from consolitis...
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 19/04/09 @ 19:51
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I remember playing this and using the infamous cheat on the race quest, which was this...
Drive up to the first checkpoint and slow down. Behind the boulders is a short patch of sand where you can drive onto the closed road. This of course is the "wrong way" and if you plan to go through it, you will be faster but not complete the lap. You will not win unless you do the following. Drive up to the end of the road, just past the "Dunniel" (or something similar) sign, where you get your checkpoint information and select "Replace Car" (default is [Keypad 0]). The goal is now just a few inches away. You must to do this five times. By doing so, you can finish the race in a little less than six minutes. Note: Make sure you do not crash on the closed road as the "Replace Car" might not work there, or will place you back to the first checkpoint. /not my words but cut and pasted from http://www.askcheats.com/cheats/PC/Mafia... but as its been years since I played it, I could not remember exactly what the cheat was and had to goggle,but I did use the above. It has to be said that in the 26 years I have been a gamer,Mafia has one of the best end sequences of any game I have known and many many companies could learn how to finish something by seeing it. A very highly respected game by me is Mafia. |
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Despite being too hard in places and not very well paced at first, it really is a brilliantly engrossing tale. The characters are superbly well written and acted, and it really does have one of the best endings of any game. Ever. I remember replaying the final level over and over again just because I enjoyed it so much. Oh, and the main theme is amazing :)
Roll on Mafia 2. |
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One of my favourite games of all time, with a superb ending and genuinely heart-rending moments. The grind that was the parking lot level had me stumped for a while, but, like John says, Mafia was one of those games where you invented workarounds and didn't feel particularly aggrieved at having to do so.
I'm really looking forward to Mafia 2. Godspeed! |
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PlugMonkey
20/04/09 @ 09:57
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"Oddly though, this becomes part of the peculiar strategy of multiple attempts. Perhaps the most egregiously awful part of the (wonderful) game is the parking lot escape, where Paulie and Sam are hell-bent on getting killed. I remember once completing this by stealing every car in the carpark before the gunfight started and blocking off the stairs and ramps, so the AI companions were stranded on the top floor."
lmao I did exactly the same thing! It was the only way I could stop Paulie killing himself by running off and standing in a fire! Great game though. Personally, I loved the race. I plugged in a joystick and enjoyed the frankly excellent vehicle handling and physics. GTA would do well to take note of that. Four iterations down the line and their car handling is still utter bobbins.
Edited 1 times,
most recently on 20/04/09 @ 10:58
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YourMessageHere
20/04/09 @ 11:35
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By what standards are you judging the look of Mafia? I never actually played it, at the time my PC couldn't manage it, but I spent many many hours watching and chatting with a friend who got it at release. The faces still look great, but at the time, the bodies were equal to if not better than any GTAIII engine equivalent, and the city was very good looking, not cardboard-ish at all. Still looks decent to me to be honest - citywise, it looked much better than the first Godfather game.
"I always think of Deus Ex: Invisible War as my first introduction to the excitement of realistically tumbling cardboard boxes (shut up, it is exciting)." I came to IW late, after HL2, and found the physics hilarious. I killed 90% of the enemies in the game with thrown everyday objects - that's what I call universal ammo. |
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I was really surprised to hear so many people had trouble with the race it was crazy. I failed the first time as I was second on the last lap and hit an opponent car and my car went off on one as it did with the sensitivity. The second time though I did it and didn't hit anyone. I think I won by about 20 seconds infact. This was pre-patched and I can't believe they even patched it.
Very much looking forward to the second. |
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notmyrealname
20/04/09 @ 12:08
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''Never played this. Remember friends hyping it at the time thou. ''
Same. |
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Wow, I remember finishing this game a long long time ago.
Mafia 1 was okay, but it was the kind of game which had a big scope but also had many (imho too many) rough edges, just like the Total War games, play enough of them and you will encounter something frustrating and annoying. The scope of the game may or may not carry the player through this, I almost stopped playing, but I persevered and overall it was a decent experience. My memories of the storyline are a bit hazy, maybe because I was a bit too young to fully appreciate the intricacies of the storyline (had the same problem with Deus Ex 1) and I wasnt a big fan of the Godfather-esque mafia genre although I knew it was well scripted. In fact I felt that the excellent movie-feel, voice acting and animation during cutscenes was out of place with the occasionally frustrating gameplay. Maybe I was expecting GTA, which its not. I actually thought the graphics were pretty middling, I didnt remember anything exceptional about the faces but the car models, especial when viewed in the car gallery, were pretty cool. Especially those all-silver aluminium chassis cars, the reflections on those looked amazing back in the day. And I still remember car races, they were really cack. If I remember correctly didnt you spin out of control every time you oversteer or something?
Edited 2 times,
most recently on 21/04/09 @ 12:05
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metalangel
22/04/09 @ 09:36
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Mafia was great, it lasted forever (so many, and so varied, missions) looked and sounded excellent, and there was so much to do!
The cops were easily lost, just drive around a corner and jump out, so long as they've not seen your face (on foot) they'll arrive to find the car abandoned, mill around a bit, and then give up and leave. Escaping trouble was always funny if you managed to do so by jumping on a streetcar and watching your pursuers be left behind as it pulled away. Anyone trying the game now should check out Mafiascene.com for some amazing mods, including the ridiculously huge City of Lost Dreams. |
Comments: 1-45 of 45 in total
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