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Mafia Review - Xbox

You are Tommy Angelo, a young taxi driver just trying to earn his way through the harsh town known as Lost Heaven. It's not quite as peaceful as it sounds however, as war is about to break lose across the town, and certain paths will lead you to your ultimate mafia experience. In some missions you will participate in events that are actually based on mafia stories of the 1930's. An awesome array of 1930's weapons and cars will leave your jaw on the ground in the midst of encountering an awe-inspiring time of the human society when the Mafia run the town.

Gameplay

Mafia is essentially a 3rd person shooter, but it features the free-roam attitude that made GTA the success that it is today. You go around the big city (not as big as vice city though) and complete missions for your boss, Mr. Salieri. Can the name get any more Mafia like? The story line is actually a lot more interesting than the GTA stories and makes the game seem quite linear, but it's really all the same. You'll be stealing an engine from a car in one mission, and then racing in an F1 race against the car whose engine you stole in the next. You'll be killing a bloke that tried to get your girl, and then accidentally dropping in on his funeral. The storyline works perfectly and everything slowly fits into place as one of your close friend's unexpectedly doublecrosses you, and your life is twisted and turned in more ways than you can imagine.

The city consists of 3 main parts, including a central island and 2 mainland parts. There are also some country places such as an airport and a motel, and you can go on a good old country drive if you want. Everything is very well crafted and looked after for the 1930's, but let's not go into that. There's a couple of minor suburbs, one of them located on the top of a hill that most 1930's cars have trouble getting up. The CBD has many high-rise buildings that look great as you're driving past them, but can't be seen from very far away. As you're going over the bridges it has to load the next part of the town which takes about 10 seconds. Luckily once it's loaded, all the cars around you disappear. If you want no cars on the bridge, when you're going over just keep changing the camera angle to rear and front view - the cars magically disappear (yet another wonderful glitch)!

22 missions of different lengths will take you around 15 hours to beat, as long as you don't screw up too much. When you think the game is over, you're most likely only half way (this happened to this reviewer), so don't give up until the fight is through because it (continued next page)