A great game! Highly addictive!
In a nutshell, that’s just what it is. However, this game is easily distinguishable. For starters, you get to ‘customize’ the main character, and this I feel gave it a ‘personalized’ feel to it. Everything is customizable, right from your character’s face to body parts right down to his clothes. This gives it great replay value, so if you’re sick with the old black pants and white shirt look, you can change that in a split second. If want a ‘hair today, gone tomorrow’ look, well you can do that too!
The gameplay is pretty solid, and is probably what sets it apart from GTA and Mafia. You get to improve your skills as you proceed further, and there are an array of things to improvise: fighting, shooting, health recuperation, speed and interactive skills can all be upgraded. The combat skills are cool, and there are a whole bunch of things to do to an opponent or thug. When you start, your character gets thought how to throw simple punches. As you move up, you get to perform cool finishers, like snapping their neck, or even choking them to death! Alternatively, you could just get a bat and bash him to death!
Ok, enough violence. On to other stuff: more violence! There are a bunch of weapons to acquire in the game, from bats to sticks to pistols to guns to explosives. These can be obtained the easy way, or the hard way, depending on your style. One way to obtain weapons is to meet with blackmarket vendors in back alleys that sell you these items. Alternatively, you could beat up a thug and take it from him. Like GTA, you have a little radar at the edge of your screen that tells you where you are and where you’re going. Alternatively, you can upload a map of the entire gameplay area and mark it with a marker if you want to get some place.
You’ll do a fair share of driving in this game also. The cars and vehicles handle pretty decently, but I do wish the game gave you an option to have more camera angles when driving a car. Most of the time, the camera is behind a vehicle, and in a rush, you tend to misjudge your distance with an object in front and almost always end up crashing into it.
The missions are pretty straightforward, and the best part is there are checkpoints in each mission, meaning that if you mess up at a later stage of a particular mission, you don’t have to re do the whole thing all over again.
The sound effects are pretty good, with the Godfather theme playing in the background as you perform your daily rituals; it just sets you in the mode.
Graphics are good, with the characters and objects in the game looking pretty smooth and closely resembling their real life counterparts.
All in all, this game is a classic! If you loved Mafia, or any of the GTA games, think of it as GTA set in the 40s, only better! You don’t need to watch the movie to get this one!