I played on: Steam (PC)
I paid: £12.62 (This included the entire Trilogy’s Definitive Editions)
Available on: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Notes: N/A
Similar to the previously mentioned Grand Theft Auto 3, Mafia and its Definitive Edition, are open world sandbox games. Unlike the Grand Theft Auto series, however, Mafia puts the emphasis on its story and really does deliver on this front. This is one of the best story’s I’ve experienced within the genre. Not the best, to be clear, but when compared to the plots from even modern Grand Theft Auto games, it’s a masterpiece. We begin the story in 1938 with Tommy Angelo meeting up with a police detective, seeking protection for his family from his former employers, the Salieri mafia. Then we flash back in time to 1930 and the beginning of Tommy’s story.
This is where we begin the bulk of Mafia’s story and its gameplay. We start with Tommy working the streets of Lost Heaven as a cabbie. During a break one night, two mobsters end up forcing him to act as their getaway driver after they total their car. This is where you meet Sam and Paulie, the two people who go on to become your closest friends. Eventually you meet Don Salieri and become a trusted member of the family. The Great Depression and Prohibition have created the perfect combination of elements to allow organised crime to flourish. As it stands the Salieri and Morello families are both fighting over control of the city. The story follows Tommy from 1930 to 1938, over his entire criminal career. We witness the push and pull between the two major families, but I don’t really want to say too much, in fear of spoiling such a well written plot.
The first thing that struck me about the gameplay is how immersive it can be. The driving in particular is impressive, with cars feeling weighty and realistic. The gunplay is nothing special, but it’s plenty enjoyable. You play from a third person perspective and have to use cover to avoid catching an unhealthy amount of hot lead. What really stood out to me wasn’t the action scenes, but instead the moments in between them. You will have to drive you and your associates around the city and it’s here that the world really pulls you in. Cops will react to your speeding, driving in the wrong lane, or really any driving irregularities. After coming from GTA’s police that will let you drive a hundred and twenty miles-per-hour on the wrong side of the road while ramming every civilian vehicle you see, this felt so immersive. In most games, waiting for NPCs to finish boarding the tram so you can legally overtake it would feel mind-numbingly boring. In Mafia, I was so interested in the conversation between Tommy, Paulie, and Sam, or even the news on the radio, that these quiet moments felt like the highlight of the game to me. During my time with the campaign, Lost Heaven never failed to feel like a living, breathing, city.
Sadly, this immersion really starts to fall apart when you enter the game’s Freeride mode, which allows you to explore Lost Heaven without any objectives or missions to worry about. You begin to see how shallow the open world really is. NPC’s will wonder about aimlessly, all the train stations will be locked up tight, the trams won’t allow you access, and every building besides Salieri’s Bar can’t be entered. Most alleyways are blocked off and every interesting area that you get to interact with during the campaign is now locked away. This world is all an optical illusion, and even attempting to explore it, breaks it immediately. You can’t do anything in Freeride besides random taxi missions and considering these have no dialogue what-so-ever, they get real old, real fast. There is no other side content like in GTA such as Rampage, Vigilante, Paramedic, or any other jobs. I really don’t understand why this mode is included. As it is, once you’re done with the roughly ten-hour campaign, there is nothing else on offer.
The other issue with this game is how the excellent story connects to the mediocre gameplay. Ludo-narrative dissonance is the term that best describes the problem here. What you do during the gameplay feels completely disconnected from what your character does during the cutscenes. For example, there’s this moment where Tommy must execute a gangster while he’s pleading for his life. Tommy struggles to pull the trigger, with Sam having to step in and do it for him. This made no sense considering I’d gunned down dozens of men before this. There’s this moment later in the game where Tommy let’s an important member of the Morello family live because he’s got a waitress as a human shield, and Tommy doesn’t want to kill an innocent woman. This works well for him as a character during the cutscene, but it made no sense when I know I’d been playing him as a ruthless gangster, executing any civilian that witnessed me committing crimes throughout the game. The Tommy I played as didn’t feel like the character in the cutscenes.
I think the biggest problem with this game, is just that, it’s a game and it shouldn’t have been. The world, story, characters, and writing are amazing, but they’re not suited to the medium they’re trapped within. This would have worked so much better as a trilogy of films, or a TV series. While the open world is an impressively immersive experience while playing through the story, it falls apart outside of it. The rest of the gameplay is mediocre, and not worth the dissonance it creates with the story. I’m glad I played this game, the story is worth a playthrough, but ultimately, it’s trapped within the wrong medium.
Recommendation Rating: 6 out of 10.
