GIVEMEREPLAY

Correction- you CANNOT reset your stats over the long term. You can reset them, but it will revert to its former state after about a day.

Mafia is one of my very favorite games of all time. It has a tremendous story, great and exhilarating gameplay and atmosphere like nothing else I can think of. Yet, despite these great qualities I find Mafia to be one of the scariest games ever made. Mafia was never meant to be a scary game, it contains no monsters, no enemies which jump out from dark corners, and no terribly macabre elements. Yet, due to errors and easter eggs this game can be scary in a way that few other fear based games can imagine.

The main reason for this fear is how incredibly alienating the "free ride" portion of the game can be. It is essentially an objectiveless mode in which the player can access the entire city and earn money doing tasks such as killing mobsters or driving a cab. The only thing money can buy you in this mode is weapons and health, putting the player in an endless circle of violence with no payoff but increased violence. In this mode, the player experiences no human contact. The only human voices one encounters are angered people telling you to get out of their way if you try to speak to them on the street. It feels like being an outcast, or worse, a ghost. Nary a person cares about you until you begin shooting, at which point they will either run away with their hands over their heads in a crab-like fashion, or shoot back.

One experiences no normal human contact during the course of one of these games.  There are dog headed men which appear very infrequently in the game, which are just enough to push the player over the edge of fear when placed in such a strange world as that of the free ride. Death can come swiftly and seemingly without reason in this mode. Hitting a gangster's car will result in a never ending chase until either the player, or the gangsters are dead. Water in this game may as well be lava, because touching it results in instant death. Once one has played this mode to exhaustion, mods can be added in to keep things lively, and strange. Mike Mouse's mod introduces a drink which allows the player to run at a tremendous speed, but at the cost of a drunken camera which weaves and bobs. It also introduces the very scariest element of the game- roving gang cars which will attack the player on sight. These cars hide in unseen spots and strike at the player from incredibly powerful and bullet proof cars. The gang members carry thompsons which will kill in just one or two shots. All gang members are invulnerable, unless struck by an overwhelming force. The gang will never stop following the player, unless he can manage to draw them out of their vehicle, and strike them from up close with a shotgun. Thus one is stuck in a city full of people without personality and without concern for you. One is hunted like a rabbit, and death can come quickly and without good cause. Mafia succeeds where so many fear games fail, it isolates the player, it terrifies the player, and it shocks the player with strange occurrences.

I would have to agree with the spy. Every kill is deliberate (you won't be getting any offscreen kills like with the demo man, and you can't just pepper everything and run away like the scout), and every move must count. As a scout, you can get yourself into a mess and skitter away. As the spy, if you time your cloaking even a second too late or too early, you are going to get run down and killed. The spy is also called upon to be a bit of a psychic, as you must know where enemies are going to be, even if you aren't in the room yet. Unfortunately, as is the spy is kind of unifaceted. You can backstab guys who aren't paying attention, you can try to pursue someone running away from you, or you can die. It used to be that the spy was the #1 sentry killer, but the sapper nerf stopped that in its tracks. Perhaps with one of the next updates the spy will be recast as an uber killer, or a capture disrupter via some new weaponry.

I drank TONS of milk as a kid, and like Jeff, I'M HUGE (height wise)! Milk is great for the body, provided you don't get it from a company that goes for quantity over quality and loads it down with hormones. I have milk delivered by a local dairy farm every week, the stuff comes in glass bottles, is delicious, and I know its good for me.


Arguing that all milk is bad because some producers of it suck is kind of like arguing that veggies are bad for you because some companies spray on chemicals, and some let the produce sit around fecal matter, so it can make you sick. Just buy good products.

I actually wasn't aware that I had the option to either punch or kick on the first run through. The punches did almost nothing against the ants, making a somewhat frustrating experience far worse. I will definitely give it another try. Thank you!

I recently got Fallout 2 with high hopes that it was one of the best PC games ever. I was discouraged when I found that the first 10 minutes of the game consist of moving through a dank, uninteresting tunnel filled with ants, which each take 5 seconds to use their move points, and come in swarms of up to 6. This game, or at least the part I have had the stomach to play, should be called "Turn based ant kicker 2". Do things improve from the intro of TBAK2, or can I expect the rest of the game to follow this model?

I have a stomach for most broken or frustrating games, but this one seems to be the exception.