YMMV / Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven

General tropes

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: A number of players found the inclusion of car radios jarring, considering the time period. Car-mounted radios did exist in 1930, but given the current state of electronics (with humongous and power-hungry vacuum tubes the only way to listen to AM radio), they were bulky peripheral gadgets that had to be custom-installed within the chassis, and had very high price tags; at the time, they were considered either a rich man's toy or only practical for police officers to coordinate on patrol. The inclusion of radios in all cars, though, can be chalked up as Artistic License, for the player to enjoy the soundtrack and listen to the in-game news broadcasts for exposition's sake.

Tropes for the 2002 game

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The priest in the level of the same name. Is he an honest man of God who is just a little naive and sad to see Tommy go down his dark path, or a Sinister Minister who is voluntarily whitewashing the crimes of the City Councilor's son and greedily takes Tommy's money?
• Americans Hate Tingle: The game is consistently ranked as the best video game ever developed in the Czech Republic and is absolutely beloved in the neighboring countries, most notably Poland. Yet, despite the great reviews and high scores it got, it never sold extraordinarily well and remains relatively obscure in the United States.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Though they are usually pretty intelligent, the main character's partners (especially Sam, for some reason) will occasionally get a bit too enthusiastic and run straight into trouble.
• Best Level Ever: Everyone who plays the game has one.
  • The parking lot battle. Plenty of enemy mooks to mow down, plenty of Thompson ammo dropped by them and plenty of cars to blow up to add to the carnage.
  • "The Death of Art" is a pretty epic finale.
• Cult Classic: While Mafia was far from selling as much as the Grand Theft Auto series, it's still considered as one of the best story-driven games of the early 2000s by many.
• First Installment Wins: The first game is pretty unanimously considered the best in the series. Mafia II has its fans, but picked up some criticisms for its comparatively short length and more generic gameplay, while the reception of Mafia III was heavily mixed, if not bordering on flat-out negative.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The idea of mobsters laying waste to an art gallery might remind some of the terrorist attack carried out by members of the Sicilian Mafia at the Uffizi Gallery in 1993.
• It Was His Sled: It's hard to talk about the ending without giving away the identities of Tommy Angelo's killers from the second game.
• Memetic Mutation: "Mr. Angelo? Mr. Salieri sends his regards." in Eastern Europe.
• Misaimed "Realism":
  • The city's traffic changes throughout the game's story to reflect the passage of time, with new vehicles being introduced and phased out as chapters go. However, some of those vehicles are phased out rather too quickly even though realistically they would still be a common sight in the late 1930s, leaving late game chapters with only a small handful of vehicles available in the traffic. Made especially jarring since some special vehicles (such as taxis or trucks) only have one model anyway and do not change throughout the game.
  • Speeding is way too easy to get cited for, as even a fraction of a unit above the speed limit will make all AI cops immediately start trying to cite you. The speed limiter makes this a non-issue but one may still wish for some leeway like a higher percentage chance of being caught depending on your speed.
  • This one is a matter of gameplay preferences, but the game averts One Bullet Clips. Any reload will mean abandoning whatever was left in that magazine, so you'll have to empty that magazine if you'd prefer to not waste bullets. This means Tommy can't holster a partial magazine for later and pull it back out for less intense shootouts, similar to how some tactical shooters let you manage your ammo. This is especially notable with the magazine lying right there on the ground but it's no longer a valid pick-up.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The intensity of the shotgun blasts can easily bring a sense of satisfaction, with the pump-action having a satisfying follow-up. That is, unless Tommy is the one on the business end in a gun battle.
• Porting Disaster: While the original PC release received rave reviews for its storytelling and graphics, the console conversions paled in comparison as it was severely cut down due to memory limitations. Long load times are one thing, but reduced geometry and texture detail resulted in the game, especially the PlayStation 2 release, ending up looking like an N64 game in comparison to its contemporaries. It could be due to the fact that the porting house aimed at a direct conversion, ultimately having to compromise when it became apparent that the level-based game engine was ill-suited for consoles.
• The Scrappy: Vincenzo, the Salieri gang's armorer. He never gives Tommy any Thompson gun or pump-action shotgun, only a M1911 Colt, a baseball bat and occasionally a very impractical Lupara. It's always up to Tommy to find heavy weapons by himself on dead enemies.
• Signature Scene: Tommy Angelo's death, which was later revisited in Mafia II by revealing that protagonists Vito and Joe were responsible for this deed.
  • To less extent, infamous racing level due That One Level.
• Superlative Dubbing:
  • The French dubbing has been praised, with the likes of José Luccioni (appropriately, he was the regular French voice of Al Pacino from Heat to House of Gucci and the second dub voice of Marlon Brando's Don Vito Corleone) for Tommy, Patrice Melennec (the French voice of James Gandolfini) for Don Salieri, Philippe Dumond (French voice of Agent 47) for Frank and Philippe Peythieu (the French voice of Homer Simpson) for Luigi most notably.
  • Same goes for the German dubbing, which has the German voices of Andy García for Tommy, Joe Pesci for Paulie and Marlon Brando for Don Salieri.
• That One Level: The racing level, which thankfully has a helpful cheat to cut down the time you spend on it. An update to the game removed this cheat (by placing an invisible wall in front of the side road you needed to be on to use it) but made this level easier by slowing the opponents cars down a good bit, and another patch added freely changeable difficulty levels if the player feels the need to use it.
• That One Sidequest: Freeride Extreme mission three involves driving the Bolt, one of the most sluggish and unwieldy vehicles in the game, down a bridge and around a bend. Sounds easy enough - except there's a zeppelin overhead that inexplicably and violently bombs the bridge to try to wreck it specifically. It's possible with a little luck to drive on through unless you're playing above 30 frames per second, in which case the bombs drop so frequently that you cannot win. Of course, you can always Take a Third Option, push the Bolt across the bridge with another vehicle, go back to accept the mission, and then drive that across the bridge at a faster speed to have a higher chance of survival, then grab the Bolt and finish the mission without any issues.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: Angelo, Lost Heaven, etc. The mob boss is named Salieri. In Amadeus, composer Antonio Salieri declared himself an enemy of God.

Tropes for the 2020 Definitive Edition remake

• Good Bad Bugs: While the Orwellian police patrols have become a source of frustration among players, a bug in the game's facial effects system causes Tommy to somehow lipsync to police reports made by civilians which leads to some rather unintentionally hilarious moments.
• Iron Woobie: Meta example: it takes serious dedication to collaborate on a game project when Jeremy Luke, the actor who lent his voice and likeness to Paulie, found out that his father passed away during production.
  • Paulie himself counts as one, as detailed in The Woobie below.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Tommy isn't a trained soldier."^note In the July gameplay reveal, Hangar 13 president Haden Blackman made this claim to differentiate civilian protagonist Tommy Angelo from Mafia III's deadly Vietnam veteran protagonist Lincoln Clay, hoping to also reflect it in gameplay. The problem is that most of Tommy's animations in the demonstration were lifted directly from Lincoln, most egregiously the precise blindfire molotov. It made for some nasty Gameplay and Story Segregation and a fair share of teasing and mockery alike from the community. To Hangar 13's credit however, the studio took said criticisms to heart and pledged to address at least some of them like the removal of bullet trails and animation tweaks to better suit Tommy's backstory along with the addition of a "Classic Mode" with gameplay rules resembling that of the original, all while they're still dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • "Ketchup with you later."^note  From a scene in "A Trip to the Country" where some players mishear "Catch up" as "ketchup"
  • Some, including series creator Daniel Vávra, likened Jeremy Luke's face as Paulie to Shrek or the notorious Pepe The Frog webcomic character.
  • Fans like to joke that Tommy's more dignified death in the remake is less about him expecting and accepting that his former life will fatally catch up with him, and more the fact that this is officially the third time we've all seen him get shot by Joe on his front lawn that even Tommy isn't surprised anymore.
    Youtube comment: Every time Tommy dies, he wakes up in a cab in 1930.
• Narm: Paulie's thick accent. While it has its times of being fairly natural, sometimes he sounds more like a cartoony depiction of a mobster than he did in the original.
  • The ways Tommy can die are hilarious considering when you do die, the game slows down time as Tommy's body ragdolls to the ground while you hear sad music cues.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: Former Mafia series head writer Daniel Vávra took to social media to express his opinions about the remake, which were less than positive. Some fans did shoot back at him, disagreeing with his opinions. Some going as far as calling him things like "whiny", "egoistic" or being a "drama queen".
• Remade and Improved: While the original was better received by critics and has a diehard following by its fans for its groundbreaking gameplay, graphics, and storytelling for its time, the Definitive Edition is seen by many newcomers and longtime fans as the superior version, with a far more polished story, better-written characters, and overall improved and polished gameplay that removes the awkward jank, excess menu system, and annoying bugs of the original.
• Self-Imposed Challenge:
  • See the racing mission under That One Level? You can make it even harder by choosing to race with Simulation driving mechanics and manual shifting. Go slightly too fast into a corner or lock up your brakes and you'll go careening into the wall, and if you shift too soon you'll either spin out in the corners or get left in the dust by the other racers in the straightaways. There's no achievement for doing this, so there's really no reason to make this already-frustrating mission even harder than it is except to say you did.
  • Ever since the first update came out, some players played through the game not only on Classic mode but without the minimap or any other form of player assistance perhaps to better emulate the gameplay of the 2002 original.
• Sequel Difficulty Drop: The remake is noticeably easier than the original game, which came from a time period in which games were Nintendo Hard in general. The shooting and cover system is much more friendly, and more generous health and ammo pickups means that mistakes during a mission are much less punishing. That being said...
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: The remake can be somewhat more difficult than Mafia III, since Tommy isn't as skilled a combatant as Lincoln was, and also doesn't have access to some of the more game-breaking tools Lincoln did such as silenced weapons. That said, the odds faced by Tommy are generally not as overwhelming as those faced by Lincoln to balance this out. Put the game on "Classic Difficulty", and it becomes a whole different beast.
• That One Level: The race level, even more so than in the original, due to it being only 3 laps instead of 5 and the annoying commentary. As if the original race wasn't frustratingly difficult enough, the race in the remake has Rubber-Band A.I., crashing cars that careen into your path with laser precision, and on the higher difficulties a single mistake will make it impossible for you to catch up, forcing you to restart the whole thing. You almost have to cause the other racers to crash to win.
  • While you can make the race slightly easier on most difficulties if you option for arcade vehicle handling, on Classic Mode, the simulationist driving mechanics mentioned above in Self-Imposed Challenge are enforced. Have fun!
  • Sarah, the pure melee combat level. Because of how the melee animation loop is timed, it’s very easy to lock Tommy and his opponent into a game of endless dodging, especially in the second part Tommy and the man with the baseball bat can spend more than 10 minutes swinging at and missing each other.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: While most people praised the improved presentation and story expansion amongst other things, others, particularly those who grew up playing the 2002 original, weren't so sure about the changes brought on by the remake. For instance, the added emphasis on cinematic set pieces particularly that of the short cutscenes playing whenever the player uses the roadworks strewn throughout Lost Heaven to disable enemy cars in the first mission, especially as it interrupted the game's flow in favour of a more Hollywood-esque feel. Reception to the new cast was also mixed, with some who were more accustomed to Mike Sorvino over Andrew Bongiorno; the Czech dub tries to avert this however, as most of the surviving cast from the original reprise their roles.
  • The Racing mission now has rubberbanding, which the original lacked (at least on Easy, there's no rubber banding in the original).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: While the epilogue did show the fates of the surviving Salieri Family members e.g. Salieri getting a life sentence and Vincenzo and Ralph being charged for gun-running and grand theft auto respectively, the court battle—which was arguably unprecedented given its expose on an American Mafia family—was only mentioned in passing and could've been dramatised as well, similar to the court scene in Mafia II.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Some players felt that Tommy in the remake is far less relatable than he was in the original, as the Definitive Edition rendition is shown to be more of a snide and callous wannabe tough-guy than the meek and reluctant Fish out of Water who only took the life of crime because he had nothing to lose and he had no other choice given the circumstances of the time.
• The Woobie:
  • Paulie is portrayed more sympathetically in the remake. Despite his chipper attitude, it's clear that the only person in Salieri's Mafia who truly does like him was Tommy, while Sam and the Don himself disparage him at times. Just when things are looking up for him, Sam unexpectedly betrays him and callously murders him on Salieri's orders. The worst part is the only thing Tommy can do is avenge his death and that won't bring him back.
  • Ditto with Ralphie especially with his condition (implied to be autism). Besides being the butt of Paulie's bullying, conversations between Ralph and Tommy reveal even more depressing things about the mechanic's personal life and his motivation for working with Salieri: Ralph mentions in "Better Get Used To It" that he took the job partly to shield himself from the neighbourhood hoodlums, and he was envious of Tommy for being a good father to his children in "You Lucky Bastard", while all Ralph got from his dad was a beating. In "Just For Relaxation" Ralph berated Tommy for his callousness towards the mechanic, reminding Tommy that he's "one of the good ones". And then he gets arrested at the end of the game while looking absolutely miserable.

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