At a time when games take the best part of a decade to make, Mafia: The Old Country presents an antidote with a more streamlined, story-focused single player campaign. Unfortunately, it also demonstrates the potential pitfalls of a project like this, with a largely repetitive romp that somehow manages to outstay its welcome despite its 12 or so hour running time.
The problem with Hangar 13’s latest is not its length or dialled down ambition, but the fact that it fast runs out of ideas. By the time you’ve reached the midway point you’ll have seen pretty much everything the title has to offer, and from there you’re just going through the motions to see the story through. It doesn’t help that the plot is as predictable as can be.
This edition turns back time to the early 1900s, and takes you to the idyllic countryside of Sicily, where you’ll be surrounded by rolling mountains and sundried tomatoes. Protagonist Enzo is an orphan who quickly finds himself embroiled in a life of crime, and the story takes place over several years, as he works his way up the ranks of the Torissi family, performing increasingly unscrupulous acts.
The performances are out of this world, with every single voice actor putting in a potentially award winning turn as their respective character – especially Don Torissi himself, whose husky voice is both gentle and intimidating all at the same time.
But the writing is rote, and you’ll see each twist coming faster than a sledgehammer to the face. The guy with the bad teeth and lazy eye? He’s a grass. The gorgeous daughter of your overprotective crime boss? She’s your love interest. You’ll have mapped out the entire story in your head within the first few hours, and you won’t be wrong about any of it.
Fortunately the cutscenes are really entertainingly delivered, with great facial animation and some truly dramatic lighting and framing. It’s the kind of game that your family will want to watch you play, not because it’s a particularly ground-breaking or original take on the genre, but because the characters can’t help but draw you in.
Less engaging is the gameplay, however. Much has been made of this outing adopting a more linear format than past Mafia games, but it is still open world in a sense. Many missions will see you driving (or riding horses) to mission markers, and there’s even a free roam option if you simply want to explore.
The structure can be frustrating because if you stray from your mission markers, you’ll often be told to return to the objective otherwise you’ll instantly fail. This feels needlessly restrictive, especially as there are often things of interest to find nearby, like collectibles. The game doesn’t want you to poke at it, which begs the question why create a small sandbox at all.
Once you’re in a mission it’ll play out in only a handful of ways: stealth, shooting, or walking and talking. Mechanically all three are inoffensive but uninspiring, with the sneaking gameplay being the worst of the three, as many of the missions result in an instant failure the moment you’re spotted. The covert gameplay isn’t bad, it’s just restrictive and tedious, and repeated far too often.
Oftentimes a mission will end with a one-on-one knife fight, similar to the set-piece at the end of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. But this doesn’t feel particularly great; while you can parry, dodge, and break defences, you never really feel like you’re doing much damage to your opponent, and this mechanic is repeated endlessly throughout the campaign.
Meanwhile, the historical weapons feel imprecise and floaty, so you don’t get the same sense of brutal satisfaction that was present with Mafia 3’s more modern weaponry. As with all of Mafia: The Old Country, these pop-and-stop combat encounters aren’t bad, they just don’t feel particularly exciting, and will quickly overstay their welcome.
The game does occasionally attempt to mix up its gameplay variety, with a couple of race missions that see you both riding a horse and a vintage car. These are interesting encounters, but for a game that leans so heavily into its campaign, we feel like it could have done with a few more tailored missions to keep things feeling fresh and interesting.
We will say that the game looks and sounds incredible; we absolutely love the cranking of cooling metal when you park up your car and get out. Also, while the world serves as a kind of museum – designed to only be looked at but never touched – the art direction is really impressive, set in such a beautiful part of the world that you just can’t help but drink in the scenery.
On a standard PS5 we played in performance mode at 60fps, and it does get framey when you’re driving at speed through busy areas and when the game transitions into a cutscene. But these issues don’t really impede the gameplay too much, so it’s not the end of the world.
Conclusion
Mafia: The Old Country doesn’t have enough gameplay ideas to carry its relatively short running time. While the fundamentals here are fine, an overemphasis on insta-fail stealth sequences and floaty shootouts makes for a forgettable campaign, even if it takes place within a stunningly detailed world. The performances are extraordinary but the story itself is predictable, leaving you with a phenomenally acted crime tale that you may admire in the moment but will struggle to remember once the credits roll.
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