That's a masterpiece from the good early days. A lot of people see Mafia series as a contender to GTA. And I can definitely see why, but to be honest, apart from the genre (open world, on foot/in car mechanics etc) they are totally different games.
GTA is more about modern-world and funny with own quirks.
But Mafia looks like a serious movie-like experience.
Animations here to be honest are much more detailed than in Starfield :D
Also, there are a lot of details, in each mission there are some things game does not tell you. Sometimes there are several ways it can develop or end, sometimes it's smaller things that can help to draw less cops, make car chase easier and so on.
Races. Mafia at first had to be a racing game only, that's why we have an interesting car physics model, a VERY impressive car damage model, speed limits, red light tickets and so on. Of course they could not leave all their ideas aside, so we have got the legendary RACES mission, which at the time of my childhood was almost unbeatable for most of my friends, including me :D Also, at that time we could not skip it. In Steam's version you can choose an option "Skip Race" and move on, so don't be afraid. But I have got first place this time on Normal, so another childhood's demon has been destroyed :D
Story is mostly serious, only sometimes you can have some jokes or funny moments. It's a tough story about criminal world.
Music. It's awesome, songs are very well selected for time period and help with immersion greatly. But I HATE when in purchased product you get some things removed because some "licence" has expired. I don't care that it expired, I have purchased the product in specific state. Make restrictions for new purchases, for example. But good news: just grab a simple mod that restores original music.
Difficulty. There are no settings for that apart from races. I have found that Mafia is pretty easy now for me, except several missions. But the worst part is a final "fight" sequence at the very end, because your enemy is basically cheating. Using Thompson he is 100% accurate if you are out of your cover. Also, after a hit you can't do anything, so if you are being shot at - you are just standing and catching bullets with no way to move or shoot back. And after several seconds it's game over. To be honest, this fight is absolutely stupid in terms of difficulty. I know that it had to be hard, but not in this cheating way.
Mostly problem with difficulty is because of:
- a clunky controls
- a huge recoil from weapons
- shotguns can kill you almost instantly
I was surprised that Mafia works on Win11 without any problems, no need for any patches or mods, impressive.
Overall, I highly recommend to play it if you are OK with older visuals :)
izigame.me
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