1.5/5 ★ – _DogBiscuits's review of Mafia: Definitive Edition.

Life and crime of the 1930’s gangster is the draw of Mafia Definitive Edition. It is the closest counterpart games have to movies like The Godfather, Goodfellas, etc. And while we don’t reach the highs or originality of those films. Mafia makes for a well told compelling story. Backed up by good acting, a well designed setting and some great cinematography in cutscenes. Unfortunately the game lacks a lot of polish to actually play. Mafia feels closer in design to a seventh generation launch title, and not that of a 2020 release. A lot of player character animations are generally stiff, lack variety and don’t match up with the environment particularly well. NPC’s also suffer the same fate. While serviceable, they lack any sort of individuality besides their well done outfits. The gunplay I found to be rough. On higher difficulties enemies did not feel well tuned. They became bullet sponges that hit much harder. Given the players' limited range of movement and weapon options in a slow cover based shooter, I found turning the difficulty down to be the best option. Making the game a simple yet enjoyable shooting gallery. The general stiffness, simple level design really drags things down as there isn’t a lot of fine tuning to stand this game apart from the example titles like Uncharted or Gears of War that have come before. The fact that Mafia is simple and small in scale isn’t a bad thing though. The general loop of things is executed well enough. Start with a cutscene, drive somewhere with character dialogue, initiate a fight, complete objectives, drive home, another cutscene. We aren’t breaking new ground but it does justice to the old faithful formula that was enough to keep me going to the next chapter. A few missions are tedious and could do with some major retweaking (I’m looking at you race car mission), but it all falls under the “good enough” category to make it through to the end. There is technically an open world in Mafia but you will probably not experience it. The campaign never lets you explore it. It is its own option from the menu. And it’s probably best left alone as there is nothing to do besides search for collectibles and collect cars. There is maybe some value in just driving the cars though. While it’s not GTA levels of high speed mayhem, there is an enjoyable quality to driving old cars and watching their polished bonnets shimmer in the sunlight. Or switching gears to make sure you are traveling just slow or fast enough to drift around a corner. Now we move on to the best part. The story. Without spoilers, it fulfills that vision of being a gangster that feels so fun to think about. Trenchcoats, fedoras, money, tommy guns, flashy vehicles and Italian accents are all presented wonderfully. The time and respect is given to the cinematic gangster feel Mafia is so clearly inspired by. I don’t want to give off the impression that this is some next generation level of storytelling though. As it’s nothing we haven’t seen before in similar past works. But it is fun to enjoy. And has some heart jerking moments I hadn’t expected. Mafia’s best quality is its greatest downfall. It is simple. If Mafia ironed out its bugs, improved gameplay, character control, and upped the visual fidelity there would be a much better product here. But as it stands Mafia is just too behind the level of quality we come to expect for myself to honestly recommend. It even lacks behind some of ps3/360s best comparable games. If you are a diehard cinema or gangster enjoyer you might find what you are looking for. There are worse games to play. But there is also a plethora of better games that execute to a much higher caliber than Mafia can ever seem to muster. 3/10 Good: Nails the gangster feeling Cars are fun to drive once you get used to them Okay: A well executed, though familiar story Overworld gets the feel and look down pat. Just isn’t fun to explore. Bad: Gunplay is lacking movement, interactivity and enemy feedback Player movement can feel sticky and unimpressive to watch