For the Love of Mafia: City of Lost Heaven

When I reviewed the Godfather II game I cited, negatively, some of the similarities it held with the superior GTA series. For as much as that game failed however, Mafia: City of Lost Heaven, proved that not only could the GTA format be well adapted, it proved that it could do it in its own style and produce a classic in its own right.

Released in 2002, when GTA as we know it was still young and even more silly, Mafia offered a far more serious and realistic take on the format. Set in 1930s Lost Heaven, a city similar to New York, you play as Tommy Angelo, a former cab driver who falls in with the Salieri crime family. The story is told in flashback, beginning in 1938 with Tommy selling out the family to a policeman. As such the narrative was rigid and linear, despite the sandbox world. This would have been a flaw had it not been for the fantastic story, inspired by such classics as The Godfather and Goodfellas, but without becoming overly referential.

Without giving much away, the plot traced Tommy's slow corruption and assimilation into the crime family all the way from his first kill to the events that would encourage his betrayal, with a number of bombings, car chases and fist fights throughout. Standout scenes involved a rooftop chase across the city, a chase in an airport, and a desperate shootout in an art gallery. Mafia told an adult story (indeed it was the first game I ever remember to contain a sex scene) and never patronised its audience. Frequent cut scenes were well animated and acted while also being thankfully brief.

Moreover it was the atmosphere of Lost Heaven which really sold the game. The graphics were beautiful for the time and still hold up today, evoking a fully realised 1930s city from run down slums to swanky uptown mansions. The game felt like an authentic period piece, helped massively by its top soundtrack of jazz hits from The Mills Brothers, Django Reinhardt, and Louis Armstrong.  The music even has a cool grainy edge to it, as if it was being played from a crackling gramophone. As time progressed during the game more cars became introduced from rusty bangers to smooth vintage classics, which, while not licensed, clearly look like some of the period's most famous models, moreover they sounded very sweet indeed.

The handling itself was far more realistic than GTA without going overboard. The option to use manual gears was present, and trying to force older, smaller cars up steep slopes was often a hilarious/frustrating/terrifying up hill struggle. You could also choose to automatically cap your speed at the legal limit, why? Because if you were ballsy enough to push it to the limit, the cops, unlike in GTA, would come chasing after you. Piss them off a little and they'd give you a ticket, start some fisticuffs and they'd arrest you, pull out the guns and they'd come packing shotguns - it was all aimed at being as realistic as the engine and fun would allow. The cars themselves also took much more detailed damage with tires, windows, headlights and pretty much every part of the chassis being a viable target for your baseballs bat.

Combat was also a little ahead of its time. Once again period weapons aimed for a tad more realism and you could never hold ridiculous amounts of ammo, pull out a magnum or a Tommy gun though and people would still know who's boss (the gun). Enemies, while not always the smartest, always attempted to find cover and reacted well to bullets and punches; shoot someone in the leg and they'd drag themselves away, leaving a streak of blood across the floor. Most of all it was fun.

What Mafia truly was though was a complete package. It was focused, well paced and wonderfully told. If you wanted to mess around in the city you were more than welcome to, but the linear story kept things sharp and never had the long dull beginning segments or frustrating tangents that all of the GTA games suffer from. Today what it really shows is that, in an age where many games have bargain basement storylines for the sheer sake of creating quick-time-event opportunities, Mafia: City of Lost Heaven, showed that a game could tell a story, and tell it well. It was gripping, funny and genuinely emotional. Sadly the console port was terrible and I'm anxious about the upcoming sequel, but neither detracts from the pure enjoyment that the PC original had. It was GTA or adults, and a movie for gamers, it was heaven.