Been a very long time but isnt that the opposite of Mafia were if there was a cop and you broke a traffic law you were pretty much fucked since it was 1920's cars and the police cars were typical much better that yours? there was that mission with the racing car were because you were timed you had to pretty much ignore traffic signs but your car was much faster and could outrun the police anyway that was the exception to the rule.
Nah, you can escape from them even with the worst cars, you just need to be smart about it, like making a turn to some narrow alley and trying to lose them there, or going at full speed through a traffic jam hoping that the cops following you will crash into something (preferably a tram car). You also get an increasingly large collection of fast cars towards the end of the game, even though you'll probably not use them much since most of the time you'll be driving around at 40 mph anyway.
Mafia 1 probably still has the best wanted system I've seen in any game:
- Minor infractions only lead to a fine, and after paying it you can be on your way as long as you're not a repeat offender. Going just over the speed limit is worthy of a speeding ticket, but going at insane speeds is considered a much more serious offense.
- Cops rarely bother chasing you for minor stuff, especially if they're on foot. However, if they do give you a chase, they will get more angry if you refuse to stop.
- Medium transgressions may get you arrested, but the cops will only fire at you if you pose a real danger to the people around you, like start waving a gun around or drive over pedestrians.
- Initially only the cops that see you commit the crime get alerted; if you've committed bad enough crimes, they might call for city-wide backup by making a call from a phone booth.
- You can lose the cops by switching cars without them seeing it, or simply by getting out of the car if they haven't seen your face yet.
A lot of this stuff can be found in newer games in some form, of course, but it's usually done in a more "gamey" way, like having a clearly marked area on your radar that you need to escape without the cops seeing you, or something like that. The system is not perfect, of course: losing the cops is pretty easy if you just manage to find a secluded spot somewhere, and there's a bit of telepathy involved when all of the cops in the city are after you (then again, two-way police radio was invented already in the 1930's, so I guess it's not all that unrealistic). At some point driving around becomes a bit of a chore when you're just trying to get from A to B as cleanly as possible and realize that you're driving like an old lady. Still, it just says something about the level of authenticity they were going for. Such a system might be rather poor fit for something like GTA where you're basically a saint if you don't murder anyone while going to the grocery store, but then again, Mafia 1 was always a rather unique game, and the GTA comparisons were misguided from day one.
