My first-impresesion of the game is neat and calm. Just experiencing this 1930 enviroment, driving around customers in my taxi. Suddenly its action time, some mafia ppl jumping in my taxi, chased by a rival mafia, having me drive them to safety.
The graphics and acting and 3D textures and modelling are all amazing. The whole town is amazing, and also the countryside... and and... etc. etc. You can just drive around and watch all the great work that is put in this game.
Your starting to work for the mafiaboss Salieri, and you get more and more respected by the mafia. The missions is various, and also includes a own racegame, as one mission is to participate in a race. And the quality on the race is not a joke either, with timing and serious competitors. In the town there is in the missions, as expected, alot of driving. This tends to get abit boring, since the 1930 cars is rather slow. Often you have to drive and drive and drive to get to a mission (and after that its all the way back).
Besides driving, the game contents a first-person shooter part, where you start with you fists and bat, and get guns later in game.
The missions balance between driving and first-person shooter, and are built up very good. There is only one bad thing, and that is that the games AI is really bad. Your mafia-mates and enemies are getting stuck everywhere, and sometimes you can shoot them if theyr elbow or back or anything show just a litle bit around a corner, without them reacting at all, just standing there until they die. The police and enemies following you by car are crashing like they were drugged and drunk.
In "campaign" mode, you are not specially free in the city, some places are locked, and you are bound to getting where you are supposed in the missions. You are "always" in a mission. But the game have an alternative for this, called "Freeride". This is more like a GTA mode, where you get to choose a car (that you have earned in campaign mode, you get better and better cars as longer you get in the game), or you can steal a car, and you are loaded with weapon. Here you can go mad and shoot ppl, and drive everywhere. It contains a weapon dealer and car-repair. The countryside is locked at the beginning, but not long after you have started campaing, is every places in Freeride unlocked.
Back to the game history: Its a very cinematic game, and a good history to follow. But the game is to easy, and progresses to fast because of the bad AI. If the AI had worked as intended, the difficulty had been more proper i guess. Another thing is that the difficulty of the missions doesnt progress slowly, but goes up and down between easy and not so easy missions. Ofcourse the game gets more difficult at the end, but there is also some really easy missions also.
When you have finished the history-based part in Mafia, you unlock a new mode, "Freeride Extreme". Here it is 19 new special missions, wich differs from driving a truck with a bomb, that you cant drive under 34 mph, or it will explode, and to surrealistic racing with a car that streches the 3D, making it hard to see where you are driving. In all those 19 missions you get a car in reward when you complete them. You even get a rocket car ;) In this mode you also have your own house with carpark to place you cars.
If there is anything after these 19 extra crazy missions, i dont know, since some of them is extremely hard to accomplish, and i havent managed that yet :P
The police in the game are more realistic than the GTA3 police. Here they dont recognize you if you change car, and are coming after you if your: speeding, crashing, driving on red light, etc. If you stop right away, you get away with a ticket, as long the crime isnt to brutal.
All-in-all: The game is superb, besides two things, the boring driving at times, and the bad AI, that is screwing up missions. There could also had been more missions, but they manage to keep Mafia last with those 19 exra missions afterward, compensating for abit few missions. Graphically Mafia is another step towards totally real 3D.
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