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	Game Review - Mafia   Contact Mr. Shade and make fun of him     Publisher: Take 2 Interactive Developer: Illusion Softworks Rated: M for Mature for violence and sexual content Length: 16-20 hours Genre: Action Website: Mafia OVERVIEW Mafia is a GTA (Grand Theft Auto)/True Crime/The Getaway style game set in the golden age of gangsters. You play as Tommy, a cab driver turned getaway driver/hitman. The game chronicles your life and the missions you have completed. The game plays similar to a movie with the intro showing the credits and fly-through of the city. There are also numerous cutscenes. Great cutscenes, slow driving, and craptacular controls ensue. MR. SHADE'S TAKE Mafia is really a mixed bag. On the one hand you get a pretty good story with great cutscenes and good voice acting. On the other hand you get slow cars and poor gameplay. I really wanted to enjoy this game but there are many problems. The game story is told through flashbacks and many, many cutscenes. You play through these flashbacks. The game is much more structured and linear than GTA - you only have one mission at a time to complete and there is not much to do other than your missions. It is actually closer to the Getaway on the PS2 than GTA but with better controls and a better map. There is a free ride mode that allows you to drive around the city in cars you have unlocked, but there is little to nothing to do in this mode. One of the most frustrating parts of the game is that nearly all of the locations you have to drive to are on the other side of the map and there is a load point in the middle of the map. Most of the cars are slow and most of the city looks the same. There's no radio like in GTA and no music tracks to select like in True Crime. Instead, you get music that sounds authentic but does nothing to build interest or tension. You also have to watch your speed and avoid accidents because the police will come after you. If you are just speeding you can stop and pay a ticket, which is meaningless because the game doesn't track your money. If you don't stop or if you have an accident or pull out a weapon in public then handcuffs will appear on screen and the police will try to arrest you (which ends the game and you have to reload). Luckily, you can stop at this point, shoot the cops, and then drive off to clear your record. If you go for too long though you become wanted and all the cops will come after you. At this point you have to try to hide or switch cars to get rid of your wanted level. It's a slightly different take on GTA's method of police enforcement. Most of the missions in the game have you getting out on foot and "trowing beatin's" on people. Or shooting them. Or blowing up buildings. The first few levels are somewhat annoying - you basically play Crazy Taxi and just shuffle people around. You start off as a cab driver and you eventually help a couple of hitmen escape from other hitmen. This brings you into the Mafia. This is where the gameplay really goes downhill. The fighting system in the game was apparently taken from the 1985 Data East arcade game Ring King. All you can do is move and attack - no blocking. The problem is that while your character will throw one punch and hit, your enemies will then instantly recover and throw a nine-hit combination on you. This leads to the strategy of moving towards your opponent, throwing a punch, and immediately backing up. If you time it right you'll hit them and then back out of their range. Weapons help with this because you only have to hit them a few times to knock them out. Fighting multiple enemies is a truly daunting task. The shooting portion of the game doesn't fair much better. While I prefer the manual aim to GTA and True Crime's auto aim, the controls are very shaky. Aiming takes quite a bit of time for you and no time for your enemies. In fact, your enemies can even be facing the opposite direction and still shoot you! The shotgun is your worst enemy because it is pretty much an automatic hit even at long range and does a tremendous amount of damage. Another problem is that after you reload you have to hit the fire button to point your gun and then again to fire it. There are also some bugs where you can't shoot people if you are too close to them, and you can't shoot if you are too close to a wall. On top of all this the game has a save point system instead of a "save anywhere" system. This leads to a very frustrating experience. The missions themselves are pretty interesting - assassinate a rival mafia leader, kill a meddling politician, rob a bank, protect the Don from assassins, etc. Most of these missions are taken from mob movies, but they are done well enough so that they don't come off as cliché. The story flows well from mission to mission and you can't help but like the characters. The game ending is very well done if a little non-traditional. The game also has a few side quests. During the game you can unlock cars by going to Lucas Bertone's garage. He gives you the location of nice cars that you can steal in exchange for completing missions for him. None of the missions are that great and while the new cars look cool, almost all of the cars drive the same. This makes these side quests useless and boring. After a while I gave up and skipped all of these. People looking for a straight GTA clone will probably be disappointed. There are very few side quests, and you cannot purchase homes and businesses like in GTA. If you can overlook poor gameplay in exchange for a good story you should enjoy Mafia. I can't recommend paying full price, and the length of the game will prohibit most people from finishing the game during a rental, so wait for this one to hit the bargain bins. Category Description Score Presentation Incredible cutscenes are what make this game great. From beginning to end this game feels like a movie. 9.0 Graphics Textures are very muddy in this game and overall the graphics appear very PS2-ish. Character models are decent. 6.0 Sound Voice acting is good. The music, while appropriate for the 1930s, doesn't help build tension. The rain sounds great on the "A Trip to the Country" level though. 6.5 AI Not great, but not terrible. Enemies will take cover or try to hunt you down. 5.0 Gameplay Driving is very slow paced. Manual aim can sometimes be a chore, but I actually preferred it to the GTA auto aim. Numerous bugs really kill the gameplay. 4.5 Replayability Most of the missions play exactly the same each time through so there's little replay value except for the cutscenes. 5.0 Overall 7.0	RETURN TO HOME PAGE The Dark Knight Journey to the Center of the Earth Hancock Get Smart The Incredible Hulk The Strangers Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Young at Heart Iron Man Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed Weekend Results: 1. The Dark Knight($158,411,483) 2. Mamma Mia!($27,751,240) 3. Hancock($14,040,178) 4. Journey to the Center of the Earth($12,340,435) 5. Hellboy 2($10,117,815)

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