Before I dig in to review Mafia II, I thought it’d be prudent to play through the first game again and write a little post-mortem review of it nearly a decade after release.
If Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven had a single glaring, terminal flaw, it would be its untimely release date. Whether you choose to attribute this to bad luck or simply lack of foresight on the part of the publisher, Gathering of Developers, the fact of the matter is that Mafia, a game that by all intents and purposes should have been a larger success than it was, had the unfortunate fate of being released two short months before Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Vice City was a product of the relatively unexpected success of Grand Theft Auto III, and the zeitgeist surrounding the quick-turnaround sequel simply overshadowed most games released in its vicinity.
Though at a cursory glance Mafia would appear to be a post-GTA III wannabe, its style was quite contrary to the open world fervor everyone seemed to be caught up in. There was an open city, albeit slightly boxy and far less flashy than Vice City, but it served a different purpose. Lost Heaven was, for its time, a fairly impressive approximation of a mid-1930s city; hints of Chicago, San Francisco and New York are apparent, elevated trains, trolley cars, vintage stores and advertisements are around every corner, and one of the best collections of period music in a game to date graces the airwaves at all times. In contrast to Vice City’s gaudy 1980s nostalgia and bombast, Lost Heaven was a bit like a good character actor in a film; it didn’t hog the spotlight but nevertheless added a necessary dimension to the events occurring in and around it.
One aspect of Mafia that might have turned off potential buyers, especially in the face of Vice City’s tempting and unabashed chaos, was its strict linearity. Though deviation was optional at certain junctions, the story is structured around a handful of unique chapters and missions. As a result its overarching story-within-a-story narrative detailing Tommy Angelo’s journey through mob life is far more cohesive and evenly-paced than Tommy Vercetti’s manic rise to power. Mafia occasionally dips its story dangerously close to several familiar mobster tropes, but the variety of the missions and a cinematic flair lacking in the GTA games of the day keep it from being overly derivative of certain genre powerhouses.
In its initial form as a PC release, Mafia’s mouse-and-keyboard control scheme facilitated a tighter and cleaner experience than the later PS2 and Xbox ports. A quick, precise method of control is really necessary to offset some of the potentially infuriating quirks the game has. At any given time, Tommy is allotted a realistic set of inventory compartments, all centered around his person. This limit introduces a risk-reward system to any situation; sacrificing a valuable weapon slot can very well mean the difference between victory of defeat. Also compounding these tense sort of moments is an ammunition cache system few game designers have ever chosen to implement; as in real life, choosing to reload means losing any bullets remaining in the clip in question, as opposed to the seamless ammo pool games have almost universally adopted.
Though from afar this design choice seems quite burdensome, it works well in tandem with the inventory mechanic to create tension and consequence; very rarely will you ever run clean out of ammunition or be faced with a scarcity of dropped enemy weapons to use. That said, the myriad gunfights of Mafia are still brutally hard at times; med-packs are few and deplorably far between in each and every mission, and an untimely encounter with a Tommy gun or sawed-off shotgun can mean instant death. A decent checkpoint system, a feature GTA games have just recently implemented, alleviates a bit of the frustration of failing but is disappointingly sporadic in its effectiveness.
Finishing the twenty missions of the story proper is certainly satisfying in itself. Along the way, new content is unlocked, including Free Ride Extreme, an extra mode with an allotted number of tasks to complete. A lot of work was clearly put into the unique car models found throughout the game, a fact reinforced by the extensive in-game Carcyclopedia; a showroom where each unlocked auto is viewable in all its rendered glory.
If you missed Mafia the first time around, there’s no better time to pick it up now that it’s made its way onto Steam. If you’re planning to play Mafia II, I recommend also giving its predecessor a try beforehand.
