It’s 12.30am on a Friday night and unlike Vito or Joe, I’m at home playing video games. Such is my life.
Mafia: City of Lost Heaven. There’s a game that can call up such praise and such indifference in the same forum topic. Released originally on PC in 2002 (and then ported poorly to the PS2 and original Xbox), the game was brushed aside as a Grand Theft Auto knockoff. But the similarities end with that it’s a 3rd person open world City game, and I’d argue that Grand Theft Auto IV was heavily influenced by the cinematic storyweaving that the Illusion Softworks (now 2k Czech) team did here.
But this article isn’t about Mafia, it’s about its sequel. Mafia II, released this year, was, for the precursor’s fans, more of the same, but ‘Next Generation’. It tells the story of a young man pulled into the mob in post-war America, a story that pulls threads from Goodfellas, Sleepers, American Gangster and the bible of mafias, The Godfather. And this is where the game shines: Mafia II tells a tale that builds 3 dimensional characters, that creates an intriguing story that has you sympathizing with Vito, with Joe. You cringe at some parts and smile at others. It is an interactive film about one man’s life in the mafia.
What about for those not familiar with the original City of Lost Heaven?….is this a game for them? Actually I’m not sure. And this is the problem that Mafia and it’s franchise will always have: where is its audience? Its gunplay, while fun, doesn’t live up to it’s competitors; it doesn’t really have a gameplay hook; it’s the only one of it’s kind that tells the type of early 20th century mafia tales us boys like to read about, but is that enough to pull in the ranks? Probably not.
On the surface Mafia II is nothing special. It doesn’t play with the big boys for combat; it lacks an interesting hook or twist on content; between the linear story and unbalanced boss fights it doesn’t, at times, seem to understand what it’s audience wants (I get now why reviewers didn’t feel that it was open ended: I think I started every mission being told to get somewhere really fast!). But the sad thing is that Mafia II really is special. Like Red Dead, it brings to life a world that none of us lived in. A world that had just raged war; a world optimistic for it’s future; a world at peace. The game opens with you coming home from the war in the dead of winter. I was in awe when I was given control. This was like being in my home town, Toronto, on King Street at Christmastime. It is busy. People are bustling forward, eyes down, bursting with packages and bags. Someone’s car has broken down and nobody is helping her. A vender is selling hotdogs and the steam and smoke from his cart blocks the view behind him. There’s construction somewhere…the next street down maybe? Sounds like they’re ready to be done with their shift and want to go home to a warm meal. The snow gently sways and floats in front of me and somewhere Bing Crosby is crooning to a room full of hushed girls.
That’s pretty phenomenal that a game can get that kind of environmental emotion from just one scene.
So you don’t play Mafia II for anything new in gameplay or combat. You play, like its father, for a great cinematic story and great characters. You play for the best character in the cast, the city of Empire Bay.
