Mafia: The Old Country launches tomorrow, nearly nine years after the last mainline entry in the franchise, making fans more than eager to get their hands on this new game. Sure, in 2020, there was the Mafia: Definitive Edition remake of the original classic from 2002, but this is a new story, albeit one set in the past.
As the title suggests, Mafia: The Old Country does not take place in America's fictional cities of Lost Heaven, Empire Bay, or New Bordeaux. Instead, it is an origin story of the Sicilian Mafia set on Italy's island very early in the 1900s.
In that light, it is more interesting from a narrative perspective because it shows the true roots of the Mafia. Most American movies have focused on the American side, but the Italian side is where you really understand what it's all about - chiefly, the unyielding adherence to certain values of that world, for better and for worse.
As an Italian myself, I was doubly glad that Hangar 13 chose this setting. Sicily has long been neglected in videogames, and there's hardly a better chance to portray it than in a new Mafia title. To do so, the developers from Hangar 13 (headquartered in Novato, California, but with two offices in the Czech Republic) partnered with local game developer Stormind Games, known for titles like Remothered: Tormented Fathers and Broken Procelain, Batora: Lost Haven, and A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead.
Through a joint effort documented in a developer diary, Stormind helped Hangar 13 recreate turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sicily, and I'm pleased to report that the results are excellent. In fact, Mafia: The Old Country may very well include the best, most accurate rendition of Sicily ever seen in a game. Everything from the visuals to the dialect and the music is faithfully reproduced. To that end, I would recommend selecting the extremely well-done Sicilian voiceover and add to that whatever subtitles you need to maximize immersion.
That's particularly useful because the game is heavily narrative-driven. All the games in the franchise were, albeit to a different extent. Mafia III, for example, included a proper open world experience, whereas previous entries allowed for open world exploration but only offered minimal side activities.
For this new game, Hangar 13 cut all that. There are no real side activities to be found in Mafia: The Old Country, unless you consider gathering hidden fox-like statuettes or Trinacria symbols such a thing. No, the game is very linear, jumping straight from mission to mission. It can be compared to the Uncharted series in this regard (though the very last one, 2017's The Lost Legacy, actually allowed a decent degree of open ended gameplay that is absent here), with plenty of car chases and setpieces to mark pivotal moments in the story.
The game does occasionally allow you to roam a bit of the countryside of San Celeste (a fictional town located in the vicinity of Mount Etna, which would put it in Eastern Sicily) by car or horse, but there really is nothing to do there except look at the gorgeous environments. I can't help but think that's a bit of a shame - while I understand why the developers decided to go with a full linear design (and a lower price), I believe there's a lot of potential in an open world game set in Sicily, provided that it is filled with enough content to make the exploration worth it.
During missions, gameplay consists of a blend of stealth and shooting, just like in the aforementioned Uncharted franchise (platforming, however, is entirely absent). In most missions, you're given the chance to either go in guns blazing or get the drop on the enemies first. Sneaking behind an enemy triggers a little mini-game where you must mash a button repeatedly to fill a bar to knock out the unlucky foe. You can then grab the body and hide it somewhere it won't be seen; otherwise, some other guard could alert the whole map against you. The developers have conveniently (perhaps even too conveniently) placed a great many trunks throughout the levels where bodies of knocked-out foes can be hidden. This is where I noticed something odd: not only could each trunk fit as many as three bodies before becoming unavailable for further disposal, but the previously deposited bodies simply disappeared, with the trunk looking empty each time. A missing detail, albeit a small one, to be sure.
Whenever multiple enemies are looking in the same direction, you can distract one either with a coin toss or by grabbing an empty bottle from the environment and launching it elsewhere. If stealth fails, it will come to shooting. Here, Mafia: The Old Country includes various era-appropriate weapons, from small pistols to sawed-off shotguns, regular shotguns, and long-range guns. These can either be acquired by spending denari (the in-game currency that can be looted off enemies and acquired from small chests after breaking them open with a knife) or by simply looting from the ground weapons used by defeated foes. The shooting component is solid enough, if not quite exceptional. Enemy AI is not the smartest during stealth, but it appears to be more proactive when fights break out, advancing at a steady pace and even flanking the main character's position.
Unfortunately, the game lacks a seamless transition from stealth to melee combat, which is a bit jarring. If, for some reason, the enemy you're sneaking on turns early enough, you cannot really switch to fist-fighting like you would in another action/adventure title such as Uncharted. In that case, you'd have to switch to guns instead, as there is no bare-handed melee combat.
The game does include extensive knife fights, but only in one-on-one, cinematic duels against key characters. In these instances, the camera switches to focus solely on the two fighters, not unlike a fighting game. The moveset is a conventional one: the player can select two types of strikes, and also parry and counterattack, and dodge, which is particularly useful against those attacks that cannot be parried (as with most games, they are highlighted in red). They are, effectively, 'boss fights', including two big bars for each contender.
Mafia: The Old Country does feature some character progression, but it's honestly paper-thin. You can equip a few items that provide small boons, such as the chance to dodge a bullet or the ability to carry extra ammunition or bandages. These items can be found scattered throughout the levels, but they do not make much of a difference. Overall, the challenge level is decent when playing on Hard.
By far the best reason to play this game is witnessing the rise and fall of Enzo Favara. The protagonist of Mafia: The Old Country is an orphan youngster who spent long years toiling as an indentured laborer, practically a slave, in the sulfur mines. Following the death of his one and only friend in the mines, Enzo takes his chances and escapes, ending up under the protection of Don Bernardo Torrisi. He begins as the lowliest laborer there, but soon proves his worth in increasingly challenging circumstances.
Without spoiling anything, the plot is pretty much what you can expect from the genre: a talented low-born's tumultuous rise all the way to the top, only to fall again in the end. That said, even without any big twists, the story is told exceptionally well, especially during the cutscenes (the dialogues outside of the cutscenes have worse facial animations). The characters are memorable, if a bit trite, and will stay with you even after reaching the game's ending, which took me twelve hours.
From a technical standpoint, Mafia: The Old Country is powered by Unreal Engine 5 and looks suitably appealing, showing off gorgeous environmental details. Stuttering is thankfully minimal and perhaps that's mostly due to the lack of any open-world elements, which might have complicated matters. The PC version does not feature any ray tracing, offering only standard UE5 options. When it comes to upscalers, all main options are available: Unreal Engine's TSR, NVIDIA DLSS (with Frame Generation selectable in-game and the Multi Frame Generation override available via NVIDIA app), AMD FSR and Intel XeSS (both without frame generation). Even at max settings and 4K resolution, the game only needs about 6.4GB of VRAM.
Finally, the soundtrack is owed a well-earned mention for complementing the mood and ambience in such a striking way.
Reviewed on PC (code provided by the publisher).
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