This review contains spoilers
Played as part of CONQUERING MY CHILDHOOD
Prologue
The word of the day is "overambitious" and we're gonna use this game to illustrate exactly what it means. Mafia was one of the studio's earlier titles, and sought to be a grounded, realistic game exploring a gritty Mafia story. But how well does it manage to achieve any of this?
Intermezzo 1 (Driving)
We'll take all the activities you do in the game and go in order of how much time you spend doing them, starting with driving because you do a lot of that here! It's not just because of the GTA-esque mission structure that leads to a lot of "drive somewhere, shoot some guys, drive back". It's also because you have to obey road laws! The speed limit is around 40mph and you can't cross red lights, though you can drive on the wrong side of the road or take a ride on the pavement. You won't actually get done for breaking the law unless you're seen doing it, though, which turns map traversal into this strange pseudo-stealth experience where you're trying to speed as much as possible but slamming the brakes as soon as you see a cop car or a man in blue. Or, for the pedestrian policemen, just hit em before they can do anything. No one'll know!
Punishments are also somewhat complex, because if you're caught breaking road laws you'll only get a fine, which, doesn't do anything because money isn't a thing. If you try to escape a fine, show a weapon in public, or ram a police car, they instead try to arrest you, and if you get caught using a weapon they'll go for the kill. Police can't actually arrest you unless you walk right in front of them (even if they throw you out of your car!), so unless you shoot at them they'll be really annoying but they'll never actually stop you. So ultimately, in spite of the effort they put in to make a somewhat complex legal system(???), its execution means it doesn't really end up making all that much difference.
I don't think you have to play the game to understand that being expected to obey road laws is a really annoying idea in a game with a lot of driving, but honestly for most of the game I didn't really mind it that much? It lets you soak in the atmosphere of Lost Heaven, which is palpable in spite of the pretty rough graphics, because near everything you do and everywhere you go is backed by a particular piece of music from Around The Time (I've heard that it's like 50s or 60s music despite the game being set in the 30s, but if you're dumb like me and don't know then it doesn't change anything). It's a really strong mood, and sometimes it's just nice to take it all in.
Intermezzo 2 (Story)
The next thing we have to talk about is the story, and yeah this is where I kind of run out of nice things to say. I've been pretty forgiving to this game so far but it's time to chuck it all out because this story is. Bad! More specifically, it's a very bland story told absolutely horribly. For starters, at least half of the missions feel like filler and don't advance the plot in any meaningful way. But they were aware of that and tried to rectify it... interestingly. Not by thinning out the filler, but by trying to make filler events meaningful. So let's go on a journey to the 7th mission in the game, Better Get Used To It.
In the prior mission, you escort the daughter of one of your friends back to her apartment, and while you're out there you get attacked by a bunch of hoodlums in an alley and have to protect her from them. (Once you get back you end up having sex and there's this fucking batshit scene where Tommy is smoking a cigarette while she's lying naked next to him, while playing an internal monologue about how he couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life with anyone else. They've never talked before! This doesn't have any relevance but there's no WAY I could write this out without mentioning that.) In this next mission you're sent out to 'deal with' the group from that night. You end up firing at them after they pull guns on you first, and finish by chasing down a bunch in a car, crashing them off the road and shooting them both in the head. Cool!
Alright, so one of the people you shot in the head didn't actually die, and told a bunch of people what happened. And also, the one you killed was the son of the city councillor, and his death made both him and the police buddy up with the main opposing gang instead of yours, and that gang starts acting more aggressively as a result. In short, every single story beat from now until you kill Mr. Morello himself is a direct result of this random kid you shot not actually dying. This is the dumbest shit I've ever seen! Truly!
As a more general complaint, the story really wants to drill in the ruthlessness of Mafia life, but isn't really very good at doing it. One of the midgame missions involves you having to kill an old family member for crossing the family, and Tommy spends an awful lot of time monologuing about how he's so worried about one of his friends turning on him. The issue is, nobody gets any screen time before these things actually happen! And nobody shows any personality! So when stuff actually starts happening, there's no emotional load, there's nothing! I couldn't care less about any of these deaths because I couldn't care less about any of these characters!
One last thing, the mission where you do kill Morello involves four different attempts on his life. Each one fails for a differently bizarre reason (my favourite being Paulie's gun just happening to jam right as he's about to open fire), and it leans into Salieri not being able to trust them to finish the job. Not only is this a kind of ridiculous way to pad out the mission (to make this big thing feel climactic? But it fails so badly at that), but in the next mission, Salieri just starts trusting them again! He doesn't bring up their pretty dramatic failures, he just keeps going with them like nothing happened!
While the whole thing with the road laws feels like a lack of resources to be able to really realise their idea into something more, I dunno, remotely interesting, here it's just a complete lack of competence. Horribly structured story that misses every emotional beat and manages to make climactic events feel small in comparison to getting your truck shot up in the countryside or something.
Intermezzo 3 (Combat)
At last, we get to the final act: the combat. We have two things to go over here, the combat itself and the 'level design', as far as enemy placement goes at least. So the combat itself is, rather bad. Melee combat is an utter joke and feels like it barely works (Better Get Used To It is great here, too! The first half is melee fights against groups, and if they land a hit on you they can stunlock half your health away), while the gunplay is... less bad, but still rough. Your crosshair sucks, crouching doesn't (seem to) boost accuracy, and the good guns have a freakish amount of recoil. To be honest, though, I don't mind the gunplay sucking? It's not like Tommy Angelo, Taxi Driver Dragged Suddenly Into The Mafia, would be a particularly great shooter, and it kinda leans into that, you know? It's not horrible gunplay either, once you get used to it.
The real foe here is the enemy placement. You know how Dark Souls levels place hollows? Pretty haphazardly and often around corners, because they're basically cannon fodder unless they can stack the odds way up against you. Well, Mafia's enemy placement is pretty much that, but the hollows all have Tommy guns and shotguns. That hollow hiding round the corner blows your fucking ears out with the shotgun so loud you'd think someone actually fired it in real life as you watch your full health self drop to the floor instantly. One mission I cut through the horde of enemies standing outside, but the mission wasn't progressing. Why not? I went and had a look around for a bit, and discovered one last enemy. Corners Steve, the one remaining hollow creeping in an alleyway with a Tommy gun, who turned me into a pincushion before I even saw where he was. I'll make an admission here, I had to download a savegame just to be able to skip the really shitty parts if I wanted to. And despite still trying to clear the game as clean as possible, I've done that a few times!
Epilogue
Overambitious at best, and painful at worst. Mafia is a game that peaks at "this is cool to think about, but not really fun to play", and troughs at "HOLY SHIT I JUST FAILED THIS SHITASS STEALTH MISSION AGAIN BECAUSE I COULDN'T INTERACT WITH THE FUCKING DOOR TO CLOSE IT". I'm sure the remaster isn't that bad guys you can just play that one instead.
Prologue
The word of the day is "overambitious" and we're gonna use this game to illustrate exactly what it means. Mafia was one of the studio's earlier titles, and sought to be a grounded, realistic game exploring a gritty Mafia story. But how well does it manage to achieve any of this?
Intermezzo 1 (Driving)
We'll take all the activities you do in the game and go in order of how much time you spend doing them, starting with driving because you do a lot of that here! It's not just because of the GTA-esque mission structure that leads to a lot of "drive somewhere, shoot some guys, drive back". It's also because you have to obey road laws! The speed limit is around 40mph and you can't cross red lights, though you can drive on the wrong side of the road or take a ride on the pavement. You won't actually get done for breaking the law unless you're seen doing it, though, which turns map traversal into this strange pseudo-stealth experience where you're trying to speed as much as possible but slamming the brakes as soon as you see a cop car or a man in blue. Or, for the pedestrian policemen, just hit em before they can do anything. No one'll know!
Punishments are also somewhat complex, because if you're caught breaking road laws you'll only get a fine, which, doesn't do anything because money isn't a thing. If you try to escape a fine, show a weapon in public, or ram a police car, they instead try to arrest you, and if you get caught using a weapon they'll go for the kill. Police can't actually arrest you unless you walk right in front of them (even if they throw you out of your car!), so unless you shoot at them they'll be really annoying but they'll never actually stop you. So ultimately, in spite of the effort they put in to make a somewhat complex legal system(???), its execution means it doesn't really end up making all that much difference.
I don't think you have to play the game to understand that being expected to obey road laws is a really annoying idea in a game with a lot of driving, but honestly for most of the game I didn't really mind it that much? It lets you soak in the atmosphere of Lost Heaven, which is palpable in spite of the pretty rough graphics, because near everything you do and everywhere you go is backed by a particular piece of music from Around The Time (I've heard that it's like 50s or 60s music despite the game being set in the 30s, but if you're dumb like me and don't know then it doesn't change anything). It's a really strong mood, and sometimes it's just nice to take it all in.
Intermezzo 2 (Story)
The next thing we have to talk about is the story, and yeah this is where I kind of run out of nice things to say. I've been pretty forgiving to this game so far but it's time to chuck it all out because this story is. Bad! More specifically, it's a very bland story told absolutely horribly. For starters, at least half of the missions feel like filler and don't advance the plot in any meaningful way. But they were aware of that and tried to rectify it... interestingly. Not by thinning out the filler, but by trying to make filler events meaningful. So let's go on a journey to the 7th mission in the game, Better Get Used To It.
In the prior mission, you escort the daughter of one of your friends back to her apartment, and while you're out there you get attacked by a bunch of hoodlums in an alley and have to protect her from them. (Once you get back you end up having sex and there's this fucking batshit scene where Tommy is smoking a cigarette while she's lying naked next to him, while playing an internal monologue about how he couldn't imagine spending the rest of his life with anyone else. They've never talked before! This doesn't have any relevance but there's no WAY I could write this out without mentioning that.) In this next mission you're sent out to 'deal with' the group from that night. You end up firing at them after they pull guns on you first, and finish by chasing down a bunch in a car, crashing them off the road and shooting them both in the head. Cool!
Alright, so one of the people you shot in the head didn't actually die, and told a bunch of people what happened. And also, the one you killed was the son of the city councillor, and his death made both him and the police buddy up with the main opposing gang instead of yours, and that gang starts acting more aggressively as a result. In short, every single story beat from now until you kill Mr. Morello himself is a direct result of this random kid you shot not actually dying. This is the dumbest shit I've ever seen! Truly!
As a more general complaint, the story really wants to drill in the ruthlessness of Mafia life, but isn't really very good at doing it. One of the midgame missions involves you having to kill an old family member for crossing the family, and Tommy spends an awful lot of time monologuing about how he's so worried about one of his friends turning on him. The issue is, nobody gets any screen time before these things actually happen! And nobody shows any personality! So when stuff actually starts happening, there's no emotional load, there's nothing! I couldn't care less about any of these deaths because I couldn't care less about any of these characters!
One last thing, the mission where you do kill Morello involves four different attempts on his life. Each one fails for a differently bizarre reason (my favourite being Paulie's gun just happening to jam right as he's about to open fire), and it leans into Salieri not being able to trust them to finish the job. Not only is this a kind of ridiculous way to pad out the mission (to make this big thing feel climactic? But it fails so badly at that), but in the next mission, Salieri just starts trusting them again! He doesn't bring up their pretty dramatic failures, he just keeps going with them like nothing happened!
While the whole thing with the road laws feels like a lack of resources to be able to really realise their idea into something more, I dunno, remotely interesting, here it's just a complete lack of competence. Horribly structured story that misses every emotional beat and manages to make climactic events feel small in comparison to getting your truck shot up in the countryside or something.
Intermezzo 3 (Combat)
At last, we get to the final act: the combat. We have two things to go over here, the combat itself and the 'level design', as far as enemy placement goes at least. So the combat itself is, rather bad. Melee combat is an utter joke and feels like it barely works (Better Get Used To It is great here, too! The first half is melee fights against groups, and if they land a hit on you they can stunlock half your health away), while the gunplay is... less bad, but still rough. Your crosshair sucks, crouching doesn't (seem to) boost accuracy, and the good guns have a freakish amount of recoil. To be honest, though, I don't mind the gunplay sucking? It's not like Tommy Angelo, Taxi Driver Dragged Suddenly Into The Mafia, would be a particularly great shooter, and it kinda leans into that, you know? It's not horrible gunplay either, once you get used to it.
The real foe here is the enemy placement. You know how Dark Souls levels place hollows? Pretty haphazardly and often around corners, because they're basically cannon fodder unless they can stack the odds way up against you. Well, Mafia's enemy placement is pretty much that, but the hollows all have Tommy guns and shotguns. That hollow hiding round the corner blows your fucking ears out with the shotgun so loud you'd think someone actually fired it in real life as you watch your full health self drop to the floor instantly. One mission I cut through the horde of enemies standing outside, but the mission wasn't progressing. Why not? I went and had a look around for a bit, and discovered one last enemy. Corners Steve, the one remaining hollow creeping in an alleyway with a Tommy gun, who turned me into a pincushion before I even saw where he was. I'll make an admission here, I had to download a savegame just to be able to skip the really shitty parts if I wanted to. And despite still trying to clear the game as clean as possible, I've done that a few times!
Epilogue
Overambitious at best, and painful at worst. Mafia is a game that peaks at "this is cool to think about, but not really fun to play", and troughs at "HOLY SHIT I JUST FAILED THIS SHITASS STEALTH MISSION AGAIN BECAUSE I COULDN'T INTERACT WITH THE FUCKING DOOR TO CLOSE IT". I'm sure the remaster isn't that bad guys you can just play that one instead.