Check this out! It's called Mafia: City of Lost Heaven. It sounds to me like it has the potential to either wipe the floor with Grand Theft Auto 3 or else flop like a slab of uncooked liver. The screenshots look nice so far. I'm eager to see what this turns out to be. Looks like it's for the PC only.

schweet! This is the first I've heard about this game. I just d/led and viewed the E3 trailer and it looks like it's gonna be a really great game

What is the projected release date (or should I say quarter, or maybe even year )

No game is great unless I can play it from my couch on my big screen, but I'll be danged if that doesn't look fantastic!

Ooooh. Looks like the story is solid... if the gameplay doesn't totally suck, this might be a big one. Especially if it (dare I say it?) improves on GTA3. Yes, obviously GTA3 can be improved... but right now, it's king of its type of game.

Edit: Amazon says release date is Feb. 27... can anyone confirm or deny?

but is it coming out on console?

It's undoubtable that a lot of game companies have seen the success of GTA3, and will remember the popularity of that formula. We'll be seeing a lot of GTA3 variations. Some will be innovative, and will add new layers of gameplay, and some will be clones or worse, and will cut corners and not be fun to play.

Here's a link to a site with more screenshots... wow. This isn't in english, but it's worth a look for the screenshots alone. Warning: Nudity.
http://www.jucaushii.ro/pre/mafia/mafia.htm

Lots of screenshots here: http://gamesurf.tiscali.it/dynamic/s...PAGINA/preview

The release date is rumored to be late March, but this is an international title, so we may not see it till a few months after that. Who knows. Anyway - for news and stuff in english - check out this unofficial Mafia website... http://www.3dactionplanet.com/mafia/

That site has links to 3 videos of the game (on Fileplanet) and lots of screenshots. Enjoy.

This game looks like it'll rock - the only thing that could make it flop is poor marketing. I think this will end up being another hidden gem buried in all the FPS sequels and Console madness. We'll see.

edit: Found a great article on Mafia that has an interview with one of the designers. The site is busy and sometimes you get a message saying the page you are looking for is missing, just reload until you get it. Keep in mind that the article is way old... The game sounds great in the designer's mind - I wonder how many cool ideas they had to scrap due to technology or time. http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Games/Previews/mafia/

Kudos for that shot!

Well this one has been in development for quite awhile... long before GTA 3 was released. The gameplay looks a bit more like Hitman than GTA 3, so I would think this is a bit more of an original idea rather than a clone of GTA3 - however, that's not to say you're wrong... indeed there will be dozens of games coming out eventually that will be very similar to GTA3. Bare in mind though that games these days take years to make rather than months, so don't expect to see a slew of them until next year - christmas at the earliest.