Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven/YMMV

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Tropes for the 2002 game

  • Best Level Ever: Everyone who plays the game has one.
  • Porting Disaster: The PS2/Xbox ports. They were cut down severely due to memory limitations, though it could be also blamed on the game's underpinnings, as it was more of a level-based shooter with a quasi-open world compared to the streaming open worlds used by Grand Theft Auto.
  • 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.
    • Seriously YMMV on this, because you can set the difficulty to whatever you please, and none of the difficulty levels are ever locked.
  • Cool Car: The Thor brand cars. Easy to obtain, too.

Tropes for the Definitive Edition remake

  • Author's Saving Throw: While the initial gameplay preview demonstrating the reimagined "A Trip to the Country" chapter was mostly well-received, a number of Mafia series fans weren't exactly pleased with the addition of bullet trails and other gunplay mechanics carried over from Mafia III, making it seem as if Tommy was merely a Lincoln Clay reskin despite claims by Hangar 13 chief Hayden Blackman that Tommy plays differently due to him being a civilian with cursory firearms experience compared to Lincoln who is a trained soldier. Fortunately for the fans, Hayden and his crew took the negative feedback to heart and were able to roll out some changes despite complications brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic (which also accounted for the release date change).
  • Broken Base: Opinions are divided over the Definitive Edition remake, with some including series creator Daniel Vávra expressing his displeasure with the remake's gameplay direction; Vávra was however chastised, even by fellow Czech gamers, for his callous remarks especially when he ridiculed Paulie actor Jeremy Luke for looking too much like Shrek or Pepe The Frog.
  • 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.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • "Ketchup with you later."
    • Some, including series creator Daniel Vávra, likened Jeremy Luke's face as Paulie to Shrek or the notorious Pepe The Frog webcomic character (given Vavra's links to the Gamergate and alt-right movements, it isn't surprising.)
  • Only the Creator Does It Right: Former Mafia series head writer Daniel Vávra took to social media to express his, um, opinions about the remake, and they weren't exactly rosy; some fans and even a number of those so-called "Czech OG Mafia fanboys" did shoot back at him as a whiny, egoistic drama queen however.
  • That One Level: The remake carried over the Nintendo Hard difficulty of the racing mission, especially in Classic Mode. It didn't help that AI opponents resort to rubber-banding which some players found to be cheap and unfair.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Hoo boy... While most people did praise the improved presentation and story expansion amongst other things, some particularly those who grew up playing the 2002 original weren't so sure about the changes brought on by the remake, like for example 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.
  • 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, Vincenzo for gun-running and Ralph for grand theft auto, 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.
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