Mafia

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Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
Have you played the neo-adventure game Norco? It's set in Cajun oil country.
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I read about it awhile back, I think when it first came out because the name caught my eye. I have not played it though. @Deadwaste I think I like point and click adventure games more in theory than in practice. I like to watch other people who know what they're doing play them and finish them. But usually I run out of patience with those games. I did like those mac adventure games tho. I figured those out without cheating as a youth.

Norco is a real area in St. Charles Parish, which was part of Côte des Allemands, aka the German coast, which is inside the outer border of Acadiana, aka the Cajun parishes. It was settled by French people (both the typical and later the Cajun variety) and also a lot of German immigrants from the Rhineland region, the German speaking part of Alsace-Lorraine, and Switzerland. The French named it Côte des Allemands, which translates to German Coast, or literally "Coast of the Germans".

The Germans, once they settled there, learned to speak French like the locals, the majority converted to Roman Catholicism (Germans of the time from the regions the immigrants came from were largely Lutheran and Calvinist) and intermarried with both the French families, and the later Acadian French families which are now known as the Cajuns. Becuase of this, there are a lot of Cajun surnames with Germanic origins. Which is pretty funny to me, since it's known to be a French culture but there's all these Cajun names that sound German and that is why.

Classic Cajun names like Trosclair, Schexnayder, Schmidt, and Folse. Very Germanic sounding, but classic Cajun Louisiana surnames. I went to school with numerous people having these surnames despite growing up in Orleans parish rather than the Acadiana region, but St. Charles Parish is not a very long drive away so it's not unusual.

Norco is a "town" (really just a census designated place) named after the New Orleans Refining COmpany. It's a tiny speck on a map that's only 3 square miles and the entire thing is covered by oil refineries, chemical plants, and a couple neighborhoods.

Sorry, that's a lotta backstory for a simple question. No, I didn't play it. The art style was neat, I remember thinking, but something about it was a turnoff. I don't remember what, but it wasn't that it was an adventure game. As you can tell, I like to read about this kind of stuff, hence, the 5th grade school report.
 
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@Caesare Modern adventure games are easy. They realized sometime in the past that the time wasting bullshit wouldn’t fly anymore, so they started making puzzles with much clearer solutions (often still absurd and cartoony, but intuitive), adding quality of life mechanics like teleporting between sites, and such. Stick it to the Man, Procession to Calvary, Norco, Flipping Death and probably some others I can’t remember all fall into a category of being accessible.
 
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Ughubughughughughughghlug said:
@Caesare Modern adventure games are easy. They realized sometime in the past that the time wasting bullshit wouldn’t fly anymore, so they started making puzzles with much clearer solutions (often still absurd and cartoony, but intuitive), adding quality of life mechanics like teleporting between sites, and such. Stick it to the Man, Procession to Calvary, Norco, Flipping Death and probably some others I can’t remember all fall into a category of being accessible.
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Someone recommended an adventure game to me called "stasis" which is one of those modern adventure titles. It's a lotta sci-fi and has some horror mixed in, and I really liked the fact that you could use several items on yourself to commit suicide. You'd even get an achievement for it. That felt very old school to me. Very Shadowgate/dejavu/uninvited. One of the most fun things to do in those games and old adventure games in general was to see all the ways your character could die.

So I'm not anti-adventure game. I'm more of a fan of the adventure games where you can see your player character on the screen and move him around than those that are purely 1st person view. That game STASIS I mentioned is a newer title in the style I like. Myst, for instance, is in the 1st person style I don't enjoy. I did like the MacVenture games and the old William Fisher shareware games that he based on those earlier macventure titles, and those were 1st person, but for whatever reason, they felt different than games like Myst. More interactive, if that makes sense.

Myst was too abstract and I probably played it when I was way too young to even understand wtf it was trying to say to me. It did permanently turn me off from that style of adventure game though. I'm vaguely aware about a company called Telltale who reinvigorated the adventure game genre with their more narrative and superficial (i've heard) choice driven games, but I have not played any of them. I hear they're good though, at least the first few iirc.
 
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The Last Stand said:
I recall @SiccDicc complaining that Sarah was written as a brash suffragist. Meanwhile, in the original, she only appeared blink twice and you'll miss her.
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There’s like one scene where she’s upset at Tommy for killing a pro 19th amendment politician and niggas acting like she’s gloria steinem
 
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Doubleposting to add my initial reaction to the OG Mafia:

The first Mafia game I played was actually the 2020 Remake. I thought it was pretty good. Since I hadn't played the original yet I was not able to compare them but on it's own it's a decent third person shooter with an engaging story and good (albeit sometimes frustrating) gameplay.

I recently started playing the OG and after a few missions I can see that it has NOT aged well. I'm lucky that I grew up with the PSOne/PS2 generation because your average zoomer would not have the temperament to deal with early 2000s clunk. I already started noticing differences in story as well. In the remake, Tommy seemed a little too eager to join the mob but in the original it's a more "working class schmuck gets roped into a life of crime" type story. I'm looking forward to seeing more differences as the game progresses.

Also I had no interest in playing Mafia 3. As it's not a "Mafia" game (the mob are the villains). You're playing as some black guy who's building up his own gang to fight the mob. The setting did not seem that appealing to me and I thought the story was gonna be "black revolutionary takes on eeeevil white oppressors" type story but reading the posts here kinda convinced me to give it a chance. Once I'm done with 1 and 2 of course.

Lastly: I heard Mafia 2 is the best in the series, does anyone else agree ?
 
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EpicGamerMoment said:
Lastly: I heard Mafia 2 is the best in the series, does anyone else agree ?
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I don’t think I’ve met a person who disliked mafia 2. The problem too is it’s more of a cult classic game (if you notice we only have 6 pages) to have really contested opinions about each game. for the longest time though mafia 2 was the only really accessible one for people to play this title. Mafia 2 also has on its side that it’s story is more based off Scorsese movies so it’s a lot more action than mafia 1 where that’s feels it’s more like once upon a time in America. Mafia 2 gets the more memorable rock music soundtrack that people will appreciate and goofier and more appealing characters.

My biggest issue when it comes to the remake of 1 is it lost it’s soundtrack, I personally miss Django Reinhardt. But otherwise it was a pretty great remake.
 
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eatler said:
for the longest time though mafia 2 was the only really accessible one for people to play this title. Mafia 2 also has on its side that it’s story is more based off Scorsese movies so it’s a lot more action than mafia 1 where that’s feels it’s more like once upon a time in America. Mafia 2 gets the more memorable rock music soundtrack that people will appreciate and goofier and more appealing characters.
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IMO, Mafia II is considered the best in the franchise because of its standard, modernized cover based TPS formula. The story was independent enough to stand on its own two feet without having played the original. I remember Mafia II receiving mediocre reviews because it didn't evolve the open world genre compared to GTA or Red Dead Redemption at the time.

OG Mafia's gameplay did not age well, even at its heyday with GTA III/VC being relevant then. Mafia III suffered from its repetitive gameplay loop and glitches galore at launch. Mafia: DE arguably deviated too far from what the original memorable to begin with. I guess Mafia is a niche franchise that subverts expectations of WHAT to expect from the medium.
 
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My only real gripe with 2 is that it seems like they wanted to make it more of an open world game like GTA with all the side shit you can do but then they pulled it back and made it work like Mafia 1 with its checkpoints and shit like that, you can't just save manually like you can in other open world games, which made sense in Mafia 1 where you just follow a story but in a game where you can earn money and then spend it on cars and clothes it makes zero sense, if you want to do side content you HAVE TO progress the story if you also want your progress in the side content saved. So you end up getting this weird half-assed version of both that doesn't work well.
 
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Big Brown Schlub said:
My only real gripe with 2 is that it seems like they wanted to make it more of an open world game like GTA with all the side shit you can do but then they pulled it back and made it work like Mafia 1 with its checkpoints and shit like that, you can't just save manually like you can in other open world games, which made sense in Mafia 1 where you just follow a story but in a game where you can earn money and then spend it on cars and clothes it makes zero sense, if you want to do side content you HAVE TO progress the story if you also want your progress in the side content saved. So you end up getting this weird half-assed version of both that doesn't work well.
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I’m a little sad that the “remaster” was just adding a small coat of paint on to the game. I think they should of found a way to insert better manual saves or something. But I guess that would make my attempt to rob every gun store, clothing shop, and restaurant too easy.
Foltest said:
OG mafia and the remake have the worst fucking racing level in history.
I have never meet anyone who likes that level.
It is so godawful that even in the remake, I still failed it!
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I found it funny when one of the big updates to the remake was making a racing section so you can replay the levels with different cars. It was a funny meme but I always asked “who wanted this”

If they had the servers for it I would of loved a mafia multiplayer.
 
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Speaking of which, I should find time to mop up the missing collectibles in Mafia: DE so that I can make space on my hard drive.
 
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