To truly feel the pain of Mafia 2 you need to play the original Mafia on the PC

Firstly Mafia on the Xbox or PS2  is not Mafia .Throw away your console version


And Mafia 2 is not Mafia : hold on to your greenbacks


The real version of Mafia , is the original PC version , on the PC,  Mafia bested all the sandbox games of its generation. That's all of them ! 


How did it manage this ?  Not with its  great story told through a hundred odd missions in an open and evolving game world . Not with the free play mode after you complete the main single player game.But with ease and class with which it sucks you into the era of 30s mobsters , all the references it draws from are of the highest calibre . You will recognise  the great Jimmy Cagney , Edward G Robinson , Elliot Ness/Untouchables riffs that are used to create an atmosphere  that easily made it stand out from the then console only GTA III ,   And it never needs to resort to the bawdiness of  the GTA series or that seen in Mafia 2 . 


The idea that a game must  have strip joints and loose women running around has become a marker of modern day  lazy games design , it only worked in GTA because its a joke , not to be taken seriously and there was always a substantial game to play  . Yet several lesser sandbox games focus on the bawdiness aspect of GTA  - The Saboteur and now Mafia 2  , they are even using a glamour model handing out tshirts ! to promote  Mafia 2  in the UK . So you will probably spend longer looking for playboy covers than actually playing the game , and you may be doing that out of boredom . As the only free roaming component of the games beautiful city seems to be looking for playboy covers whilst playing through the strictly linear missions [for 10 hours]


The original Mafia did not need to sink to this level , and you will see for yourself how low Mafia 2  sinks in a certain cut scene , wow see sex does sell !


On the other hand the original  Mafia on the PC is pure class : 


Mafia on the PC has attention to detail to point where you can shoot out the glass , the bulb , and the chrome from a head lamp on an accurately rendered period car , if the bad guys are hiding behind [or the good guys ] you just shoot out the tires , which lowers the car /jalopy/truck just enough for you to then shoot the period Mob hats off their heads before you finish the job !  


All of this is possible because Mafia on the PC has the most refined gunplay of all sandbox games , Lost Heaven is not a place where you  point the cursor with your joypad and spray the screen , or demolish every thing  with a rocket launcher  .  This is fast ,fluid , strategic pinpoint mouse controlled pixel perfect gunplay , shoot through a window to take the hat off the guy hiding behind , ducking behind a church pew counting the number of bad guys , noting their elevated positions  and sussing out how many bullets you have left in your weapons , reloading is thus  a major part of any gun battle in PC Mafia  , and like all the best shootemups you can play with skill and added danger , challenging your self to take out the bad guys with less and less bullets and in ever more elaborate ways that the game engine on the PC allows.


All only possible with the precision allowed by a mouse and keyboard , no auto locking bulky joypads  here!


You know that hardcore Half Life /Doom feeling where you have near zero health 1 bullet and 2 bad guys standing between you and more health and 1 ammo pack ? You find these moments in Mafia , but dressed in a beautiful Chicago mob period rendered environment that only the PC could handle,one that you can happily drive around spouting You durrty rhaatt   , and feel proud about it .


As a result of the the high res [for the time] and mouse control on the PC each of the Mafia  gunfights , small or large has much more finesse than many full blown 3rd person actioners.The gameplay on consoles does not come close , 


None of its contemporaries had this finesse  , each set piece gun battle outdoes many a full blown 3rd person generic modern day shooter . And you will want to play through many of them again with skill. 


They also fully use the environments in the game, and I don't mean you stand on top of a building and shoot someone standing on another building . In Mafia you actually walk through , and work through a building or location . So whether your clearing an out of town airport or engaged in a gun battle in a Cathedral , you work through the location and use every part of it strategically.  Many a sandbox game loses its magic as  you realise you are  driving around facsimiles of buildings or walking around on top of them , in Mafia the designers took the the gameplay into them. 


Then we come to the city , the period model of the sandbox  in which you evolve your character from a taxi driver to  mob hero /villain also evolves with you , when you start many bulidings will be under construction , by the end of the game there will be full blown skyscrapers , factories ,housing projects  , suburbs etc.


After finishing the epic 100 odd missions you enter the free roaming part of the game , with the most banal of side missions adding to the value of your game purchase and allowing you to appreciate the great care and detail gone into creating the games city scape.


The linear soon to be DLC plagued game that is Mafia 2 is not in the same league as Mafia   and  NOT the game many fans were holding out for , wait  a month or 2 and it will be selling for half the price. £14.99 on Steam this Christmas I wager 


 Mafia 2 should have led on PC and had a MMORPG component in addition to the single player , with its rich world ,atmosphere , and combat model it  could have succeeded where Realtime World`s (RIP) APB failed. Instead someone took the decision of  insulting fans with the usual developer holding back game content to be sold as DLC later model , and filling the beautiful world with find the old playboy cover quests!


So if you really want to play an excellent open sandbox game go get the PC version of the original Mafia . Just think it costs less than 1/10th of the cost of the upcoming DLC for Mafia 2!


I hope Illusion Softworks now focus on a modern day conflict version of Hidden and Dangerous...and give us the whole game and nothing but the game ! You can furgeddabout your  free hair cuts, and Tshirts! And developers take note  we prefer our Dames real not virtual don`t we?