Mafia
Insert generic Sopranos joke here.
by Susie Vee

PLATFORM: XBX, PS2

PUBLISHER: GoD

DEVELOPER: Illusion Softworks

GENRE: Action

ESRB: Mature

When Mafia was first released for the PC last year, the The Sopranos were in full swing and GTA III was one of the most popular games around, so a classic mob-themed game seemed like a natural.

At first glance this game from Czech developers Illusion Softworks looked to be a cheap cash-in. Very little pre-release buzz, no big ad campaign, weird Eastern-European pedigree -- we were worried. But believe it or not, Mafia was one of our favorite games of the year.

Now, the long-delayed console versions are finally here, and in many ways, the game is a natural fit for consoles.

Instead of setting its mob tale in modern-day New Jersey or a similar GTA3-style urban center, Mafia is set in the fictional 1930’s town of Lost Heaven. The city looks and feels like something out of the Godfather Part II (the DeNiro flashback scenes, ‘natch). Cars, buildings, signs and people all have a highly authentic ‘30s air.

The character design is great – at least for the main characters, with some of the best facial textures we’ve ever seen. The voice acting is also reasonably professional -- nothing you couldn’t hear on a direct-to-cable action movie. The soundtrack is a nice bonus. It leaves the thumping sound of most game soundtracks behind, opting instead for Django Reinhardt jazz cuts.

The gameplay is a lot like GTA3, where you can hop into almost any car, and drive freely around a large city environment and its outskirts. This time, however, there’s much more emphasis on what you do while outside of your vehicle. One of the few knocks against the console version is that on foot, your character moves like a sluggish tank, making those segments a lot less fun than the PC version.

The game is so ambitious in scope, it sometimes strains against the limited RAM of the console, leading to some pop-in graphics and annoying loading times between sections of the city.

If you've played the PC version of Mafia, it's a few ticks better in many respects, so there's little reason to replay it here. But if this is your first swing at the game, Mafia is an great fighting/driving action game that should keep you happily engaged in a life of crime until the next Grand Theft Auto chapter comes out.