Mafia The City of Lost Heaven Preview

Welcome to the city of Lost Heaven.

Like other aspects of American culture, the organized crime of the 1930s has been largely romanticized through books, movies, and other forms of media, including games. While there have been some valiant attempts at re-creating the 1930s Mob scene on your PC screen, none of them quite match the scale or the cinematic feel of GodGames and Illusion Softworks' upcoming game, Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven. In fact, the development team at Illusion has deliberately designed the game to mimic movies about organized crime, and it definitely shows, as a few of the game's 20 single-player missions seem like they could make the transition to the silver screen flawlessly.

Cars play an important role in Mafia.

In Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven, you take on the role of a cab driver in the city of Lost Heaven, a 12-square-mile fictional city that closely resembles Chicago and New York of the 1930s. From the people who walk the streets and sit on fire escapes to the working traffic lights and trolleys, the amount of detail in this massive city is impressive. There are even different sections--such as a Manhattan-like area, a slum area, a Chinatown, and a Little Italy--to give the city more personality and less of a repetitive feel. If the switch from the Hidden & Dangerous engine to a more flexible engine in 1999 is what made the city of Lost Heaven possible, then it was well worth the delay it incurred. To give an even better idea of how detailed the city is, it's possible to navigate through the streets based on the location of various landmarks.

Since driving plays such an important role in Mafia, you'll become familiar with streets and landmarks of Lost Heaven quickly. Most of the missions require you to drive to a specific area, and some are actually timed, so you'll always be on the lookout for alternate routes that shave a few seconds off your time. Of course, an alternative method to finding shortcuts is to run red lights or drive on the wrong side of the road, and while you may think this is perfectly acceptable, the citizens and the police of Lost Heaven don't seem to think so. Whenever you drive toward oncoming traffic or run a red light and cross through a busy intersection, cars will flash their lights and honk at you. If you happen to catch the attention of a police officer by performing similarly reckless acts--like running over pedestrians--in your vehicle, then the police will attempt to pull you over. Getting lost in the city should never be a problem, as the development team plans to incorporate a pointing device that indicates whether you're heading in the correct or incorrect direction.

Mafia's driving engine is more realistic than you might think. Each of the 60 different vehicles in the game behaves like its real-life counterpart, and they can all receive varying types of damage that can prevent them from running--like flat tires caused by bullet holes.There are specific missions where your driving skills are really put to the test. In one mission, you'll essentially be the driver for the getaway car, but other gangsters will shoot at you from their vehicle as you try to drive your compatriots to safety. Some missions even involve racing on an actual track--that happens to be owned by one of the crime bosses--in a vintage F1-style car.