Jeff: Agent 47, how do we love thee?

Tom: Let us count the ways. Actually, let us not. But he kicks more ass than any other video game antihero, that's for certain. I think he may even be better than Max Payne.

Jeff: I love Max, but he wouldn't stand a chance against 47. Agent 47 could kill Max with a rusty lock-pick. "Hitman 2": the greatest game we've ever played?

Tom: Man, I don't know, but it's up there. Why don't you clue everyone in on old 47?

Jeff: He's a trained killer with the sense of duty of a British soldier circa 1841 and the sense of mercy of Lucifer. He's bald, wears a black suit, and has a bar code on the back of his head.

Tom: This is because 47 is a clone.

Jeff: Yes. But most of his line is dead now. He's one of the last cloned hitmen left. The last game saw him trying to abandon his assassin past and living as the groundskeeper for a quiet church in Italy. That didn't work out too well for our 47, or ultimately for the fools who kidnapped his church's priest.

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Tom: Our first foray into the world of video game D&D-style role-playing. Ominously, the instruction booklet for "Champions of Norrath" is about as thick as a Chuck Palahniuk novel.

Jeff: Only better written.

Tom: Jeff, I honestly don't know if I'm up for this. It's been a long time. I associate D&D with too many unpleasant things: acne, chronic masturbation, Renaissance fairs, the lute. You know I once had a woman almost not sleep with me because I admitted I dabbled some in Dungeons & Dragons when I was a kid?

Jeff: I can think of much better reasons not to sleep with you than that. You should calm down. Role-playing is not evil devil-worship. It's a small, pleasant escape nook for social rejects and the overly imaginative the world over. And really, who are we to judge?

Tom: You've reformed quite well, you know. I've always admired that.

Jeff: What do you mean?

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Tom: Yeah, it's pretty great to see that good old distinctive Atari logo on a game again. Especially when that game is "Transformers."

Jeff: So you were a big Transformers fan?

Tom: Hell, yes. I loved Transformers. I used to pit my hapless Go-Bots against them in these massive cross-genre robot holocausts.

Jeff: Uh huh.

Tom: I loved toy miscegenation. The best for me was G.I. Joe versus the Transformers. The Joes and Cobra had to make an emergency pact to fight off the invading Transformers. My god, I used to go on epically playing for days. It was like my own little David Lean film.

Jeff: G.I. Joe fought against Cobra, right?

Tom: Yeah. And what the heck was the deal with Cobra's command structure? You had a supreme neo-pagan king in Serpentor, and in Cobra Commander you had a commander-in-chief-type figure who may or may not have had authority over Serpentor, but then you had all these secondary leaders like Destro and Major Blood and the Baroness and Zartan and Storm Shadow.

Jeff: Zartan was...?

Tom: Zartan was the swamp guy. He changed colors in the sun.

Jeff: Right.

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Tom: They say movies are getting more like video games, but here's a video game that's practically a little movie.

Jeff: I can't decide if it's brilliant that Jet Li is leading the action-film-star pack by appearing in a video game built around him or merely succumbing to the first stages of career stagnation.

Tom: I haven't seen any big action-movie appearances by him lately, come to think of it. I think his career may have peaked when it was rumored he was going to be Boba Fett in "Star Wars: Episode III."

Jeff: Only you would regard rumors of an appearance in George Lucas' diminished franchise as a high point in someone's career, particularly a performer as cool as Jet Li. Anyway, he's still huge in Asia.

Tom: So that's a billion fans right there. And this game, I think, was explicitly made for the Chinese market, seeing that all of it is actually in Cantonese. A brave choice not to redub it for the American audience, I would say.

Jeff: Not so brave is your refusal to buy a new television, you self-styled literary intellectual, which is so small we can't read the subtitles.

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Tom: A game, I assume you mean, that doesn't involve pushing buttons or manipulating joysticks.

Jeff: Exactly. An old-fashioned battle of wits I call "Beatles Song or Bond Movie."

Tom: Go for it.

Jeff: "Tomorrow Never Knows"?

Tom: Beatles.

Jeff: "Tomorrow Never Dies"?

Tom: Bond! My turn: "From Russia With Love"?

Jeff: Bond. "Back in the USSR"?

Tom: Beatles. "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"?

Jeff: Oh, too easy! Beatles again. "The Man with The Golden Gun"?

Tom: Bond. "Happiness is a Warm Gun"?

Jeff: Beatles. "Goldfinger"?

Tom: Bond. Badfinger?

Jeff: Er--

Tom: Aha! Beatles-produced group! How about "Live and Let Die"?

Jeff: Very nearly both.

Tom: All right. The game is loaded and here we go: Electronic Arts' feverishly anticipated new James Bond title, "Everything or Nothing."

Jeff: You really loved the Nintendo 64's "Goldeneye," as I recall.

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Jeff: Based on the box and instruction booklet, "Mafia" seems heavily reliant on "The Getaway" for its overall look and feel.

Tom: "The Getaway" itself having leaned conceptually hard on "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City." Both are terrific, sui generis games, though. I don't blame people for copying them.

Jeff: Everyone wants to be a gangsta. "Vice City" had the pastel-clad crime world of 1980s Miami, and "The Getaway" gave us the underworld of contemporary London. "Mafia" takes us back to the mythic roots of the genre -- into the world of American organized crime circa 1930. I'm thinking Capone, Cagney . . .

Tom: If this is a 1930 "Grand Theft Auto," then I assume we can look forward to dancing the Lindy, sleeping with flappers, running moonshine, stuffing ballot boxes for Mayor Daley and tommy-gunning snitches.

Jeff: We open with some truly beautiful cinematic flybys of the awkwardly named little neverland of Lost Heaven, where "Mafia" takes place.

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Tom: As this loads up, I have to ask: Are we ashamed, at our age, of playing video games?

Jeff: Not completely. I liked video games when they looked terrible. Now it seems like we're living in some kind of golden age.

Tom: Think of the other things we could be doing. Sitting in a bar. Walking outside.

Jeff: Having meaningful relationships.

Tom: Here we go! "NASCAR Thunder 2004." My first thought: Terrible, sub-Korn, alterna-rock soundtrack.

Jeff: I was expecting, at the very least, Kid Rock.

Tom: The default state for when you create your own racer is Florida.

Jeff: Let's not create our own racer. Let's just race. Look at all the racers you can pick from!

Tom: Normally in an E.A. sports game you're selecting from an impressive pool of ethnically diverse young princes. These guys are all Ray-Ban-wearing, sideburned honkies.

Jeff: It says here you can do full races, in real time. A real-time NASCAR race would be what ... five hours? That's just how I want to spend my Sunday -- "trading paint" in a real-time NASCAR race.

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