Mafia Demo

In a time when a bottle of whiskey could land you in jail and designer suits were not yet associated with Wall Street brokers, a couple of wise guys took America by surprise with their boldness and total disregard with every law in the book. For a few decades, their power and numbers raised exponentially, while their stories live on to this day, in the form of books, movies and video games.

Mafia is a video game that puts you in the fine shoes of a foot soldier for the powerful Salieri family and gives you the opportunity to gain the respect and appreciation of its leaders, by undertaking a wide variety of shady tasks for them. Hence, from a simple getaway driver, your character Tommy Angelo slowly makes his intentions known and works his way up to the top of the ranks, in order to ultimately become a made man and have control over the entire family.

Before that happens, though, you must deal with a bit more low-level jobs, most of which involve driving other mobsters to certain locations, taking part in heists and even murder, in case other families overstep their territory. By doing so, you get to experience the game's massive city, which can be freely explored even when you are on a mission, if do not have a time limit hanging over your head. Thus, you can admire the very nicely modeled New York City as it was in the 1930s, along with its iconic buildings and legendary streets.

Since a great part of the game is spent driving from one place to the other, extra attention has been awarded to the cars that are part of the Big Apple's traffic. Hence, a wide range of classic vehicles are available for you to take for a ride in, including a few variations of the famous Model T, designed by Ford. In the beginning, Tommy is not able to drive all of the cars, but as you progress through the game, more and more of them can be accessed and unlocked in the Free Ride mode.

Technical-wise, Mafia does not suffer from any major flaws, especially not when it comes to the graphic engine, which is capable of rendering an impressive amount of details on the screen. Every dialog is voice acted by professional actors and you can enjoy the classic Italian gangster accent for hours at end, over the course of the campaign.

In the end, Mafia brought more than its fair share of improvements and new additions to the genre, which are completed by the expertly-written story line you get to enjoy as you go through the game. Moreover, the Free Ride mode allows you to roam the city and do whatever you desire on its streets, basically making the game last forever.