Has a strong narrative but the gameplay is horribly outdated with many flaws.
+ There are so many things wrong with the gameplay that I don't even know where to begin.
First of all, most of the time you are playing this game you are just driving a very slow, poorly controlled car. It's not fun and it's really boring. You get a mission, you have to drive 5 minutes to get to your destination, you do some stuff, you drive 5 minutes back. That's the gist of it. Just driving around a lot in a very slow car. And if you try to go fast the cops will pull you over and write you a ticket or arrest you, so you're pretty much forced to put on the speed limiter and go slow the entire time.
The combat is horrific. When you have a gun in your hands you have to click once to bring the gun up and click again to fire the weapon. If you don't fire for a few seconds then your arm will go down and you will have to left click again to bring your arm up. What happens then is that many times you try to click to shoot a weapon but you'll forget that your arm isn't raised, so instead of shooting the enemy you'll just raise your arm and then get blasted with bullets and die.
Another problem is that every time you get hit with a bullet you basically get stunned for a few seconds where you can move, dodge, or do anything with your weapon. While this is aggravating in and of itself, it is downright impossible to escape a tommy gun that is unloading 50 bullets into you. You just are forced to stand there and take it all until you die.
The enemy AI is a pain as well. They fire before they can see you, they have amazing aim, and their bullets do an insane amount of damage both close up and from far away. There is also a huge lack of checkpoints so you will constantly be replaying the same scenario over and over and wasting a lot of time just because some magic bullets turned a corner and killed you.
The controls are really bad too. It's awkward to move the main character and most times I tried to creep close to a corner slowly but I ended up pressing a direction key twice in rapid succession. The problem is, if you double tap a movement key you will do a stupid roll. So instead of creeping up to a corner I would constantly do a useless roll right into enemy fire. Also, the camera is way too high up behind the main character when you're moving around. And in the car you can't even more the camera around. Good luck trying to shoot from inside a car, too.
The HUD is a mess too. You have a giant circle in the top left that displays cars as little lines. You don't get to see a map of the street there, just cars. Which is really pointless because the map is way more important than seeing other cars, but still this takes up a huge amount of the screen.
The missions are all over the place and rarely give good directions. Often times I would run around and not know specifically what I was supposed to do because the missions would only give you one sentence that was vague at best. And apparently when you are getting chased in a car "Lose the tail" does not mean drive away and escape so the car isn't following you anymore. It means kill everyone in the car.
Overall this game is very frustrating and a struggle to play. 9 years ago it may not have been as noticeable, but by today's standards it is a trashy mess.
Story/Presentation: 4.5/5
+ This is the one thing redeeming about the game, but unfortunately it can't carry the entire weight of my score. The narrative is strong and believable. Plus, the authentic feel of the world is impressive. You play as a taxi driver turned mafioso who soon runs into all sorts of problems and plots working for a mafia head. There's plenty to enjoy here if you are able to bear with the dreadful gameplay, and it was really the only reason I stuck with it and finished the game.
Graphics: 4/5
+ I'm sure at the time these graphics would have been impressive. And 9 years later they still are relatively good, but clearly they aren't what they used to be. It's still enough for you to enjoy and get the overall feeling but you have to be considerate of how old the game is.
Value: 3/5
+ While I did manage to get 16 hours out of the game, I find that number to be largely misleading. Not only did I have to repeat a number of missions over and over because I would make it to the end and then get killed right before a checkpoint, but because most of the time playing this game is either watching a cutscene or driving around in a car. There is really little content in those 16 hours. And the content that exists is really flimsy and disappointing. So yeah you will get a good amount of time from this game but it still feels empty.
I honestly have no idea how this game can still maintain a rating above a 9. Perhaps when it was first released people were impressed with what it had to offer, but there is absolutely no reason why this deserves such a high score. I was severely disappointed with this game and could not wait to finish it and be done with it. If you really like old, rusty games then feel free to try this. But I think you'd be better off just skipping it.