This game is very story driven and beats GTA franchise easily with its story and athmosphere but the game suffers from few tehcnical flaws. The game is very much like a movie which seems to be the way games are developed these days. Matrix Reloaded was more like a videogame and videogames, like Mafia, are more like movies. This certainly is interesting, indeed interesting.
The game starts like a movie with an opening scene where we fly over the city of Lost Heaven. Just picture Liberty City in its early 30's. After that we meet Tommy Angelo, a cab driver who is forced to give a ride for a local Mafia members. Salieri's family appreciate Tommys courage and "ease" his pains with cold cash. They even suggest that Tommy should join them but he doesn't want to be criminal - so little does he know about what's going to happen!
Soon the chasers, Morello's gang, wreck his cab as a "paypack" and Tommy decides to give Salieri's a chance. The game makes a moral questions about should people join less evil people in more evil world. The city is totally corrupted so to survive Tommy has to join Salieri's. This game doesn't really moralize or romantice violence. That indeed is a good thing.
The story is a classic one and is something that drove me to play through this less perfect game. The characters are all convincing and interesting and we even see a romance between Tommy and a woman - and a scene where they make love!
After all the violence this is a drama dealing with relationships. Tommy has to make certain choises so that people around him wouldn't die. He doesn't like violence so it is not easy to protect his loved ones without killing the enemy.
Most of the missions require killing bad guys or driving a car. However, driving is the less nicer thing. Because the game is set in 1930's the cars are slow and not so easy to control. Because the distances are sometimes very long it takes lot of time move around. Police officers either give Tommy a nice note of bad driving or try to catch and kill him. The enemy A.I is good and lot better than in GTA3.
The level design is good and the missions are well structured. But a flaw appears here. Because there is no in-game saving the game gets really frustrating. Sometimes it just takes one too many times to complete the mission which kills any possibility to like the actual gameplay. Sure, the story is great but it is not enough to keep this game on track. Also, the missions are just sometimes too hard.
The graphics are average but the characters are very well animated. However, despite the good general level design, sometimes levels just look boring and not so well detailed. Textures also fall apart and the game was bit buggy.
Now the gameplay. Driving is hard because the physics are pretty close to the real world and too many times I was frustrated with endless chases that never really succeeded because of the controls. The camera was intolerable and in terms of gameplay - this game is peace of something you don't want to know!
The music and voice acting is great but in the end the music was more annoying than great. The action sequences were quite awful because Tommy was always loading his weapon and then he died because there was no place to hude. So it is not your fault if he died. The A.I of Sam and other friendly charcaters is BAD. Those idiots just ran to their deaths without any sense. And that followed a GAME OVER text on my screen. I couldn't agree more!
The game is average that can really annoy you to death or hook up with its story and excellent feeling of being there. The city is way too big to remeber and the map system is just plain bad so you propably get lost all the time. This is half-finished game that needs lots of improvements in gameplay area. It really is a shame that this game wasn't good because there was lot of potential but it has too many flaws to live up to its hype.
Create an Account
Member Login
