Mafia City was developed by Yotta Game and will be published by YOTTAGAMEPosted by karoniee on June 12th, 2018 Acting: Rare is the video game whose characters can communicate clearly by facial expression. Those in Mafia City do, through a combination of superb film editing and extraordinarily detailed facial animations. Mob movies depend on subtle and unspoken moments and the ability of this game's rendered characters to meet the emotion of their human actors' lines is a true breakthrough. Vito, the protagonist, gets an award-winning effort from Rick Pasqualone. MAFIA typically get you to care about the main character through the actions you share; I cared about Vito the old-fashioned way, through the acting. Sonny Marinelli's portrayal of Henry Tomasino, who veers from authority to outcast, nearly steals the show and makes you wish the game featured much more of him. Robert Costanza's Joe Barbaro rounds out the trifecta as a versatile character, swinging from violence to comedy relief. The story may get threadbare in spots, but the acting and dialogue are among the best you will ever find in this young art form. Hated Action, Packed Loosely: There is a colossal amount of interstitial time spent either on boring tasks or watching cutscenes. There is a ton of mundane, non-chase driving as a lot of the mission points are scattered throughout the map, whose navigation never seems to guide you to the freeway. The worst example of Mafia City's imbalanced design came in a chapter in which you're tasked to warn someone of an impending hit. I timed it: 7:40 combined cutscene time, 8:49 combined driving time (three minutes of that was rushing to the scene, but there was no pursuit), and just 44 seconds of action trying to help the guy escape. The amount of interactive time spent on setup is simply too high for a game this short - especially when the guts of your rise in the mob, as a skullcracking soldier and a dope dealing renegade, are literally condensed to cutscene montages. You sell cigarettes off the back of a truck in this game; couldn't one more hit, one more drug distribution job gone wrong, be included in a mission set that's largely templatized in the first place? Like it? Share it!More by this author |