The city is a reasonably large one, filled with mostly law-abiding citizens and a police force not afraid to pull a gangster over for speeding. It's a setting not immediately obvious for a game: the cars drive slower, the weapons are less powerful, and the car chases seem almost too sedate. But it's a time that has a certain charm, and this can certainly be seen in Mafia.

The story of Mafia opens with a quiet chat in a diner between a policeman and the main character of the story, Tommy Angelo. Tommy is there to tell what he knows about the Salieri crime family, and he knows quite a lot, having worked for the past few years as a member of the family.

The game is played as a series of flashbacks, starting with Tommy's previous profession as a cab driver and follows his exploits as he becomes a more and more important part of the family, ultimately leading to the reason for him talking to the police. The story itself is well done, and manages to hold the player's interest throughout. Important scenes are played out in animated cut-scenes and these are also of a very high quality, despite a few glitches in the animation. The voice acting is also of quite a high standard, and helps to make Mafia a more enjoyable game.

Tommy's flashbacks form the missions that the player re-enacts. These start out slowly with simple taxi missions and quickly escallate into shoot-outs and car chases as the mob looks to eliminate its rivals. The missions usually sound fairly simple to complete but generally degenerate into something a little more difficult. The game is played out as a story and has a very cinematic feel to it, with cut-scenes and gameplay intertwined. Missions follow each other, and there is generally no room for exploration outside of these boundaries. This works well, though, and the linear nature of the main part of the game helps to make the story more cohesive.

As well as the main story mode, the Race and Freeride modes help hold players' interest in the game. The Race mode allows players to race in either a single race or a championship on over a dozen tracks around the city streets. The number of different cars to race and the adjustable difficulty give this mode quite a bit of replayability, although adding in a two-player mode here would have been great. In the Freeride mode players are able to explore the city, stealing cars and causing mayhem. Apart from being able to unlock more cars by stealing them, there is little real point in this mode, but it does suit players who would like to explore the city more without the hindrance of a mission.

The difficulty in Mafia seems to be quite well balanced. After a slow start with Tommy completing a few simple missions, the difficulty starts to rise as Tommy makes himself a more important part of the mob. Unfortunately, some of the balance in the difficulty seems to arise from the simplistic AI and some technical issues surrounding the game. While opponents can often be quite deadly, especially in the on-foot sections, the AI controlling them is something of a letdown. In the driving sections, any cars giving chase follow the player's line almost to the foot. A car chase can often be ended simply by pulling in front of another car, with the chase car pulling into the same lane and crashing into that car. Enemies on foot will quite often just stand in the one spot and shoot, or blindly follow the player round a corner to be shot as he rounds it.

A lot of the difficulty in the game is actually as a result of the game mechanics. The on-foot sections of Mafia feel quite clunky, due in part to the controls and the camera. This makes this part of the game needlessly more challenging. It would be better to see more challenge as a result of good AI rather than the game mechanics. The camera follows the player quite closely from behind with any little change in view immediately reflected by a shift in the camera. While this is good for seeing exactly what Tommy can see, it can sometimes get a little dizzying when fighting enemies, since a shift in targeting also shifts the camera.

Another of the issues with the on-foot sections is the collision detection. Swinging a baseball bat looks quite unrealistic, and it seems rather random as to whether an enemy is damaged or not. Often players will take a swing and seem to miss hitting anything, yet the enemy will spray blood as if hit. Similarly, swings that hit their target will often not seem to register any damage. While appearing rather comical this can get quite annoying, especially when a fight is lost.

The player can have more success in these melee encounters wildly swinging a bat and not bothering to target. Gunplay is a little better, although here too collision detection can be quite dodgy. Aiming can sometimes be quite tricky, and the camera issues impinge on this also.

Luckily a lot of the game involves Tommy being behind the wheel of a car, and in this respect Mafia operates a lot better, partially due to having a choice of camera angles. There is a wide range of cars in the game to drive, ranging from zippy little race cars to large austere sedans, to some traditional-looking gangster vehicles. The Race mode even includes some prototype hot rod designs that perform a lot better than the period cars.

The cars all handle quite differently, although there is a strong tendency with all the cars to lose a lot of their handling ability at the higher speeds. Since this is the 1930s, the higher speeds referred to are above 60 mph. The cars do all seem quite sluggish, with the slowest car in the game having a top speed of 45 mph, but this contributes to the charm of the game.

The one area of Mafia where things can get a little more difficult for good reason is the race sections. Here the opponents are a bit more aggressive and the need to drive a little better and a little faster is more apparent. Players have access to faster cars as well, and are not necessarily tied down by speed limits or traffic lights. The faster cars also require quite a bit more precision control, since they have more of a tendency to spin or flip. The opponent AI also seems to be a little improved, with racers following different lines and reacting to how the player is driving. A little push and shove is also apparent from the other racers which makes the race that much more competitive.

Graphically, Mafia could do with a bit of improvement for the in-game sections. While looking great from afar, the environments lose a lot of their appeal once the player gets closer. The city has no great definition or texture to it, and it seems the lush look of the PC version has been scaled back quite a bit for the Playstation 2.

Buildings especially look dull, lifeless and too similar to everything else, and often players will feel like they are driving between two large walls rather than driving down a road surrounded by buildings. The environments are also quite non-interactive. Players will be unafraid of hiding behind glass doors in a shootout for instance, safe in the knowledge that bullets won't be able to break the glass. In contrast to the general environments, the vehicles in the game are quite well rendered. Dozens of different vehicles are in the game, and all look quite distinctive. They all seem to show damage well, with glass breaking and doors falling off and bodies denting - this makes car destruction quite satisfying.

The game also seems to be failing technically with the rendering of the city while driving. Draw distances are terrible in Mafia, and buildings and cars will pop up reasonably close to the player. Not close enough to affect gameplay, but certainly close enough to have a detrimental effect on the atmosphere the game is trying to build up. Long loading times also have an effect on this, with the game switching to a loading screen for half a minute at a time quite often during the game. The city is split into two, so crossing that divide will cause the loading screen to pop up. Many missions are also split up into sections, with cut-scenes dividing the sections; these too require extra loading time so virtually all missions are broken up several times with a cut to a loading screen. For a game that wants to provide something of a cinematic experience, this can be quite detrimental and is something that players will certainly notice.

One of the standout features of Mafia is its soundtrack. With a mix of orchestral and period music, the soundtrack carries the story well and evokes the spirit of the times. There is a nice mix of period music from artists such as Django Reinhardt, Lonnie Johnson and the Mills Brothers in a soundtrack that wouldn't be out of place in a Woody Allen movie. The only issue here is the inability ability to increase the volume of the music whilst driving.