Mafia

"The mob boss wouldn't be happy with this port."

The fascination around the mob and organised crime groups in America has spawned through movies and television shows. For one reason or another passion from the public around the mafia has seen The Godfather trilogy and The Soprano’s TV series emerge as cult classics engaging audiences from around the world. It seems people don’t mind watching the mob in action as long as they aren’t the ones in the firing line. With the forging of interactive media’s like videogames gangster titles were inevitable.

Mafia for the Playstation 2 is the latest gangster themed game to hit the gaming world. Whilst it is a direct port of the PC game Mafia there are some significant changes although most of these make the game worse than it originally was. The poor old Playstation 2 just can’t compete with the world of powerhouse PC’s. However the enjoyable aspects of the gameplay are there, you just have to fight through and plethora of technical shortcomings.

Players assume the role of Tommy Angelo. At the start of the game he comes to the police to come clean on his activities with the Salieri crime syndicate in exchange for protection of himself and his young family. Initially the game starts out as a flashback of Tommy’s time with the mob and the cut-scenes help to portray an interesting story packed full of references to the era as Tommy battles to keep his nose clean and his head in one piece.

The game develops quite slowly at the start with players doing taxi missions and other minor errands. It takes a good three to four hours of solid gameplay before the guns come out to play and gamers can really start to enjoy the game. It goes without saying that it’s very fun to blast into a restaurant with your tommy gun taking down a bunch of rival gang members.

Mafia combines the shooting and driving components of the game well and whilst the guns don’t have the devastation of Vice City and the cars don’t have the power, speed or handling of Gran Turismo 3 the 1930’s theme is well done. These aspects of the game are actually quite important and encourage a tactical approach from the player. For example the cars are slow so gamers have to rely on solid driving skill rather than the ‘crash-and-accelerate-away-really-fast’ tactics some would have used in Vice City. If you crash in Mafia it will take the best part of twenty seconds to get up and going again.

This game is a real mixed bag when it comes to visuals. On the PC Mafia was pretty but it seems the PS2 isn’t able to create the feeling of immersion and reality like a half-decent PC. To be fair the sprawling city looks great from a reasonable distance with tall buildings, long bridges and traditional tramlines looking quite nice. However when you get up and close to objects things get really ugly and some of the texture work is shocking.

Worse still is the limited draw distance that sees objects popping up left, right a centre and this is especially noticeable on some of the driving missions. The litmus test for the visuals is of course whether or not the they faults affect the gameplay – well yes and no. You aren’t going to crash, get killed or die a tragic death because of the poor aesthetics but it certainly takes away from the 1930’s atmosphere the developers worked hard to create on the PC.

Thankfully audio technologies are not so hard to port from the PC and Mafia benefits with a strong audio ensemble fit for the Salieri family. It’s no more dramatic than with the scripted cut-scenes where the action is built up around high pitched violin squeals and beating drums. Other audio in the game whilst not up to the same standard is still enjoyable. It’s nothing to write home about but it gets the job done.

A cross between Grand Theft Auto III (GTA) and The Getaway with a 1930’s setting Mafia’s gameplay is reasonably enjoyable. The story mode is linear and players won’t be able to explore the city unless they jump into the freeride mode. This helps to keep the story moving at the reasonable clip unlike GTA where players can get caught up doing absolutely… nothing. There are some nagging problems in the game though; excessive loading times, poor collision detection, average AI and unresponsive controls take away from the games enjoyment. Visually the game is also dull and is far away from the heights of the PC version.

Whilst Mafia won’t go down as a cult classic it’s still a satisfying title if one can look past the development blunders that rear their ugly heads throughout the experience. The story is great the cut scenes glue the action together in a wonderful cinematic experience that is as memorable as it is long. Plenty of guns, cars and women keep the action interesting and whilst the PC version is overall a better game this Playstation 2 incarnation still gets a thumbs up, albeit an unconvincing one.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/20/04