- Could have been much, much better.Even though Mafia is an all right game and even though I find myself playing it every night, I find that it could have been better in many ways.
For example, let's start with free ride, all you do is run around, do taxi runs or kill people to get money to fix your car or get health at the hospital, but that's about it! I mean wouldn't it have been better if you could at least go inside some buildings to do stuff, i.e.: the Sallieri Bar to get a random mission from the Don or Yellow Pete's to buy some weapons or ammo instead of taking them from dead gangsters who don't do anything but walk around until you shoot them! Even being able to go inside the hospital to see some realistic ways of getting medicine or getting healed instead of a box out front of the hospital for a thousand (literally, but it doesn't take much to get a thousand dollars) dollars to get healed. Still on free ride, there could have been police as well as gangsters but you can easily see what all the programmers did was replace the police on the main game with gangsters in free ride except the gangsters don't run you down for speeding, etc. etc. Alright off free ride, lets go to the main game, missions.
Loading!!! Way too much loading!!! The game loads forever after every mission (alright that's fine) but not after crossing the bridge from Central Island to Newark/Downtown, and even then the loading takes sometime with an occasinal please wait screen after that! There is even more loading if you have to go inside a building during a mission and more when you leave such as the one with the Corleone Hotel. I sometimes find myself looking at the loading/please wait screen more then playing the actual game. Alright, point taken, way too much loading.
Police in the main game only run you down when you fire a weapon or speed but not if your allies or enemy's speed or fire a weapon, I wonder why? Very hard if someone is chasing you such as one of Morello's gangsters while the police are near.
Civilian A.I-horrible. They drive extremely slow always getting on my nerves which is one of the major down points of the game, I always see myself driving in the wrong lane, cutting corners to get around them, otherwise I wouldn't even be done with the game which I bought about two years ago! Also, they always seem as though they have nothing to do, you never see a civilian running or walking quickly, going inside a building, every single one of them walk extremely slow similar to their driving as I said before, as they have nothing better to do, no where to go or to be on time! Lastly, they are extremely stupid, aside from the part about their slow driving and walking, if you hijack a car, you pull them out of the car and all they do is sit their and cry, saying, "Please spare me I have a wife and kids, don't do it!" Rarely do you see them fight/shoot back at you.
The plot of the game is kind of poor. The main character, you, does too much for one man, one Mafioso. You almost never have help on your missions, and simply put, you do too much. For example, when Sallieri wants all of Morello's Generals knocked off, you take out all three, mostly all by your self, its unreal! The level 'Happy B-day' you find a way to get onto the steamboat, you find the General, you kill him, you cover your self, and Paulie drives you away to safety. The level 'Election Day', you have to go through an entire abandoned prison killing everybody all by yourself and on top of that, sniping the Counselor from a distance. And last but not least, the level where you kill Morello's last General and right hand man mostly by yourself. Paulie helps you kinda for the first and third time you fail but when the job is given to other people because you failed to kill him so many times, they fail themselves and you chase him all the way to the port alone, take out the entire port security alone, take out Morello's personal guards alone and Morello himself alone, very unrealistic.
Minor details-your piece, your gun. Every mission should start with a gun in your pocket, a revolver in the early missions and an upgraded Colt19-11 later on in the missions. I mean your allies have a piece on them in the beginning of the missions, but not you untill you get one from Vincenzo (on most missions). Choosing weapons- you should be able to choose weapons similar to your allies. I was so looking forward to get a Thompson on 'Creme da' la' Creme' like Paulie and Sam, but no, I'm special, I get a crappy sawed-off. Also, maybe some realistic ranking in Don Salieri's mob. The Don mentions something about how he wants Morello's generals knocked off and I believe there are three of them, so why dosen't Salieri have generals and if he does, who are they, how can we tell? Possibly Paulie and Sam are generals but I am unsure if I become a general myself and if they (we)are generals then maybe there could have been a slight detail to show such as a different hat or something on the hat or something, anything. Even though they are minor details, they, along with the large ones would have given the game 5+ stars.
Alright, I think that covers everything. But despite of all these downplays of the game, I don't see why I play it each night. Overall, I liked it, it is a good, fun game to play at night when I am trying to get tired but like I said, it could have been much, much better.
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