Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven
Mafia is a hybrid of driving in the city games like Grand Theft Auto and third-person shooting games like Hitman. While it comes out of one of the smaller game development houses, you wouldn't know to play it. The quality of the graphics, sound, and game play are rivalled by any big house title. You can enjoy this game for a long time, too - you won't finish this one in one day! In fact, I'd venture to say this is one of the best games to come out in 2002.The graphics within the game easily compare to Grand Theft Auto's quality, and yet in Mafia everything seems more real. While there is only one city to explore, Lost Heaven is larger than any city in GTA and, I believe, better crafted. There are tons of pedestrians and cars to keep you on your toes, a working lift bridge, a train system, tons of neighbourhoods, and even outlying rural areas. The lighting within the game is very well done, as are the graphics for the cars. One thing that it lacks, though, is day and night and weather changes. This doesn't impact the game greatly, though, and I barely even missed it.
To me a game has to include all the little details or else I get bored with it. Mafia has lots, including being able to shoot tires out on cars, sounds which are specific to the environment (for example, rain falling on a metal roof vs. rain falling on a wood building), and the lips synch up. Even the cut-scenes really feel like you're watching a movie, which adds to the drama of the game. The weapons are authentic to the time period. It's all the little things that make this game so complete.
It has been nearly three years since "Grand Theft Auto 3" and "Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven" burst on to the computer scene with living, breathing computer environments to explore, and things haven't moved on a great deal since. Boiling Point produces the largest such environment yet. However, where previous games have seen tightly scripted gameplay, where players are told what to do at every turn, Boiling Point leaves the decisions to the player.
Sound in this game is awesome! The music goes from swing to orchestra without missing a beat. It's tense when it needs to be, relaxed when you are, and really brings the game experience up with it. As I said above, the actual sound effects are really well done as well. The voices are incredibly good, matching the character to a T and really adding to their personalities (I also have to give kudos to the writing team for that). The realism added to the game through sound effects is incredible, and when you add that to the graphics it becomes gaming heaven.
After playing Mafia, I lost interest in many of the other third-person shooters and driving games I once considered top of the line. I couldn't find one complaint about this title, and enjoyed playing it greatly. While I turn in most of my games for store credit once done, I found myself playing this one over and over. Heck, I won't even let my friends borrow it! So it goes without saying that Mafia gets two thumbs up from me.