There are similar features, but when you play the game, you realise that these are only on the surface. 'There are many parallels between GTA3 and us, but we haven’t been influenced by GTA and Mafia has been even longer in development than GTA3. 'That’s fair enough,' says the game’s lead designer Daniel Vavra. We managed to play through three near-complete missions when code I was dropped by the ZONE office recently, and to call the game a 1930s reworking of Grand Theft Auto wouldn’t be too far off the mark. Perhaps the first big PC game of 2002 and one destined to have Godfather fans dusting off their violin cases and collecting their pinstripes from the cleaners, Mafia comes courtesy of Hidden & Dangerous creator Illusion Softworks.
