Were you to be asked to name an open-world game that has you swept up with Mafia business, you'd probably not name Mafia, would you? There's a whole Mafia series, now, but it does tend to get overshadowed by Grand Theft Auto, doesn't it - despite GTA not really focusing on the Mafia. Not in the way Mafia does.
You are Tommy Angelo, in America in the 1930s, and the city of Lost Heaven is ruled from the shady underworld of organised crime - a world you don't really want to be a part of, do you?
Fun Times
Mafia begins with Tommy walking into a bar and spilling his story to a Detective Norman in flashback fashion. He has a wife and daughter now and wants out of the Salieri crime family that he fell into some years ago, and we're about to relive all the pivotal moments in his criminal career.
It starts with getting caught up in a chase between two rival mobs. The Salieri boys, Paulie and Sam, have pranged their motor and need a replacement, our taxi being the closest. Given little choice to help, we're tasked with driving them out of harm's way as bullets crack through the streets.
What the hell happened there?
Frustrations
I don't know where I picked up the Mafia disc, but while it installed nicely, it didn't want to run at any point. It has been released digitally but without some of the original old-timey music, so I got it digitally and followed some guides on replacing the audio and was finally able to play Mafia as intended - where I drive down a little bit of road, get blocked by a much faster car, and have Paulie die, seemingly at random.
Needless to say, I wasn't terribly pleased with the start I had. The controls would need changing if I were to get comfortable with them. It recognised WASD was popular, but not enough to default to it, and keys were all over the place, probably on letters that made sense when looking at them, but not while actually playing with them.
Further Fun Times
The second attempt was a lot better, though I have no idea how I was successful at it. I just drove and hoped for the best, and was soon able to just amble around the city on my way to dropping off these thugs.
Mafia takes its driving seriously. The cars handle like they come from the 1920s (funny that...), and the police act like the police, pulling over those who speed and jump red lights and the like. As such, there is a dedicate speed limit button which will cap your car to however fast the city will allow you to drive, allowing you to focus on the rest of the traffic laws.
Given that there were no police on the radar - which I'd love to change to be a bit more useful, but haven't found a way to do so - I drove through everything without overthinking. I even drove with the map in front of my face. It's partially see-through, and I would do a fair bit of driving in this view while I got a sense of the city.
Dropping off Paulie and Sam at Salieri's bar, I was given a wad of cash to cover the damages to my taxi as thanks, as well as the knowledge that if I need anything, the family will help me out. Do I want to be involved in the mafia?
To help make my choice, the next mission is my day job as a taxi driver, taking a bunch of folks across the city without driving too much like a maniac, avoiding the police where necessary - which is much easier than you might think. If they flag you for anything cheeky, you get a slap on the wrist. It's only when you get into killing people that they get more concerned about you, for obvious reasons.
Taking a coffee break allows fate to intervene in my decision making, as two rival mob members have tracked me down and sent me a message.
Looking for a safe place to hide from gun-toting goons, I duck into alleyways and find myself heading towards Salieri's bar. I guess I'm going to need some help...
So I'm all in with these guys, then. My attackers have been dealt with, and a message needs to be sent to their employers - torching their cars ought to do the job. Paulie accompanies me to a couple of other family members who will give us weapons and vehicles before we leave, and once we're set, it's back to the open-world we go.
It took a few failed attempts before I learned that you need to actually make sure the cars are all destroyed, and it took a baseball bat to finish them off, but the message had been sent. At this point in my time with Mafia, even with the annoying little quirks in controls and the fact that the objectives aren't too clear (i.e., wait for the cars to thoroughly blow up, you dummy), failure resulted in a swift checkpoint respawn, and the city was quickly growing on me as a place I wanted to be in.
The map doesn't look huge, and the streets aren't packed with people, but the world feels lived in. Cars of all kinds park up outside businesses, and the occupants step out (into traffic, typically). The trams run through the middle of the larger streets, and you can hop onto them yourself if it's a better option for you. It's giving me similar vibes to L.A. Noire in its attention to detail. It's less detailed in comparison, but it's an unfair comparison in the first place, so let's move on.
Welcomed into the family, it looks like we're no longer a taxi driver. Our next task is to... drive Paulie and Sam to businesses to pick up protection money. So we're still a taxi driver, but we're armed with a gun. That's good.
The gunplay reminds me of early Hitman games. Picking things up from tables or bodies reveals a contextual menu allowing us to choose precisely what it is we want to do. In further attention to detail, the recoil and other characteristics of the weapons you'll come across mean you'll need to take your time lining up shots before pulling the trigger, and you ought to be careful when doing that, as clumsy button presses may result in you dodge rolling out of cover instead of nudging yourself around a corner for a better shot.
Also important to note is that if you spam the reload key, you're going to lose all those remaining rounds, so approach Mafia cautiously until you get a feel for it.
Our collection round took us so far out of the city that the map no longer served its purpose, and before long, a cutscene triggered to confirm that we were on the right track. Paulie and Sam went inside to get the money while I ignored a no smoking sign and leant up against the car to smoke, like a real gangster.
Until things turned south.
I think we might have picked the wrong business. Luckily, this chap wants us alive so we can tell Don Salieri that this joint is no longer his. Unfortunately, Sam is still inside, and we're going to need to get him out.
Further Frustrations
It took a few attempts at even getting into this place before I was able to clamber up some boxes to enter from the first floor. Inside was a Tommy Gun that would definitely come in handy, and a good few mobsters to use it on.
The confined spaces didn't help the camera a great deal, but it worked well enough. I was able to see threats from a distance and deal with them at my own pace, but hiding in cover was a case of hoping that where I found myself was hidden, rather than knowing it was.
Still, one by one, slowly and steadily, I whittled down my opposition and headed to pick up Sam.
I said, one by one, I whittled down the opposition...
Oh, come on. That's just taking the piss.
This chap has our money, and now he has a getaway vehicle. Popping off a couple of shots did nothing, so I ran around the front of the car and hopped in, ready to give chase.
Uhh... you what, mate? Why? For getting into my car? For not being quick enough to get in my vehicle? Yeah, I'd like to retry...
Well, who the hell decided that would be the checkpoint?
Final Word
I left Mafia feeling annoyed - I had gone through that shootout two or three times before getting to that cutscene - but I left it knowing that I was finally able to put it down. I really enjoyed playing Mafia, despite its faults, and while not knocked out by the story so far, I was interested in seeing where it would go.
The controls needed overhauling to suit my tastes, rather than changing, but that was all possible, as was playing it in ultrawide resolutions. The cutscenes switch back over to their original aspect ratio, sadly, but they look pretty good regardless. The character models are detailed but a little deformed. Nobody is quite human in Mafia, but close enough.
For the longest time, I wasn't even aware of there being period-specific music, perhaps because my cars didn't have any radio up until the moment where I did hear some tunes? Not sure what was going on there, but I did eventually hear something - but the mix wasn't right and I couldn't hear Paulie talking to me about something or other.
That's another thing, actually. Characters are deathly quiet. There's no aimless chatter en route to your destination unless you end up stacking your car to the point that ought to warrant a comment. There's no backstory dump to fill you in on the details, no worldbuilding to flesh out why you're doing whatever it is you're doing. It's just the sound of the car and maybe some music, and it's not enough. The world is detailed to your eyes, but not to your ears.
I am aware of a notoriously tricky race somewhere in Mafia but am not aware of any difficulty settings to help me out with it, or the rest of the game, but I would like to push through the game a little further at least. I don't know what I was expecting to see, having only seen Mafia in passing, but was impressed by what I eventually got.
It's flawed, but it stands out as something of note. I don't know where it ranks as a story or whether it's open-world is used to the fullest, but we never really stop to think about these things when we're in the middle of enjoying them, and that's where I find myself with Mafia - in the middle of enjoying it.
Fun Facts
Obvious cinema influences for Mafia include The Godfather and Goodfellas, with the game taking players through a journey all the way up the ranks of the criminal underworld before crashing all the way back down them. Spoilers?
Mafia, developed by Illusion Softworks, first released in 2002.
Version played: PC, 2002.