3/5 ★ – TheCriticalPandaBoi's review of Mafia: The Old Country.

So, I played Mafia: The Old Country and… wait what is this? Your favourite CriticalPanda is back so soon with ANOTHER video game review??? My goal is to become more consistent with these as I’ve played a bunch of games as of late! Mafia: The Old Country is the 4th official instalment in the Mafia series, created by Hanger 13 and published by 2K, I have played the other three games awhile ago, and honestly the whole reason why i haven’t bothered reviewing them is because I haven’t got much to say. The first game is phenomenal, perfectly captures the kinda Goodfellas vibe they were aiming towards, Mafia II is just okay, and then Mafia III is just a racist and soulless GTA clone, there’s my quick thoughts on them. I have been quite eager to check out this new one though, it’s been 9 years since we had the last Mafia game release and going into this, I was keeping expectations in the middle of the road. What did I think of it? Well, it’s a very complicated feeling, I wanna say it’s a solid game after sitting with it a few days, almost a week now, but I think it’s like the second best game in the series? Which isn’t saying much but I’m just happy to say there’s quality at all. To be entirely honest, I don’t think there’s much to really say about the gameplay, it’s very basic and I’d imagine if you play on the easy difficulty then it’s not gonna be fun, I had the most fun selecting the hardest difficulty honestly. The hard difficulty really forces you to get out of your comfort zone and really play around with all the mechanics the game gives you, you can’t just power your way through a fight without taking cover, you need to use everything to your advantage, and that’s where I feel the core gameplay loop is the most enjoyable for me. If you’ve played the previous Mafia games, then you’ll know full well how the controls operate and it’s exactly the same here, it’s clear they are aiming towards the more classic feeling of these games. The graphics are pretty solid, I don’t think there’s things to lose your marbles over, like I still think The Definitive Edition of the first game is the best looking game in the franchise, but I might just be spoilt because I played this literally a day after finishing Death Stranding 2 which is probably the best looking game I’ve ever played. That’s not to say this game doesn’t look good, there’s amazing looking moments with the lighting, for a game that’s only $50, it’s a good looking game! Despite this being a fully built and realised map, that’s technically an open world, the game treats it as a more linear experience so it restricts you within these out of bounds areas just like the original two, i liked that, it really stands out from games we tend to get nowadays. Also, going onto the actual price tag, it is EXTREMELY rare nowadays for a game to be under a $70 to $80 price, so the fact that this costs $50 is lowkey impressive to me especially from what you get out of it. I also think the characters here are pretty interesting, it’s not like fantastic or anything but they are serviceable enough characters. The most interesting character that actually gets depth is Enzo, and for the most part, I think Riccardo Frascari does a pretty solid job at bringing his voice to him, he is an interesting character in my opinion and I think the story does a great job at fleshing him out. The love story between Isabella and Enzo doesn’t feel forced or anything, albeit, I think Isabella’s only defining qualities that she actually has is how genuinely hot she looks but looks aren’t everything, we’ve seen this kinda forbidden love plot countless times. The only true reason why it’s somewhat compelling to me is because she’s the daughter of a mob boss, and if you know anything about the mafia, you know they don’t fuck around. I also really appreciate them having this take place in Italy, specifically 1900’s Sicily because it feels more independent and as it’s supposed to be kinda the rise of these crime families, a majority of them do come from Italy. Honestly, my wish list for another Mafia game is to have one be focused on an Irish Mafia and have it actually take place in Ireland, I might be stretching it out but i always feel like Mafia media love to focus on the American Mafia’s that has Irish, Italian or Spanish heritage instead of actually having them take place in these countries they originate from. So, we got a pretty solid story, tolerable gameplay, engaging protagonist… there’s gotta be some issue right? Well, of course there is, I feel like Enzo’s realisation into thinking that the Mafia is a bad idea is a bit sudden, it’s not a very long game, it’s about 13 hours long and that turn is bound to happen of course as the other games follow that formula, but I don’t know man, this one just comes out of nowhere. The ending is also kinda shit, I feel like it was one that defied any amounts of logic and absurdity, although the final mission with Enzo is pretty engaging on a gameplay perspective, logically there’s things here that literally makes no sense. The knife combat is also something that I’ve had a mixed feeling on, I have a friend who played this at the same time as me and he was really enjoying the knife fights, but I felt they were a little clunky. There were multiple times where I’d swing towards the enemy and the knife either doesn’t register a hit despite it going through their body, and it was the same when it was towards me, it just felt a little inconsistent whether or not the hits wanted to count, other moments I’ll admit was me just being a dumb ass and needing to blame the game for my own mistakes. I also just had a lot of random glitches where the land around me didn’t spawn in, or a visual glitch where the waypoints were just not showing up or telling me where to go. That’s another pet peeve, despite it being so little, it could possibly be my poor eyesight sometimes but I swear on my life, these waypoints were way too desaturated to see in this bright ass game, even when I turned the brightness down, I still couldn’t see them, but I think that was more of a me issue. I have all these issues but despite that, I still think I liked the game, it doesn’t exactly make me wanna replay it or get the platinum trophy, it’s just a play and then never come back to kinda game. Overall, Mafia: The Old Country is a solid enough return to form for the franchise, that’s not to say that I’d ever come back to this game, if anything you’ll probably get more out of it if you play the first game, but for what it’s worth, I think it’s a worth it game, especially for the price.