Mafia: Definitive Edition Review
My time with Mafia: Definitive Edition was action packed and heart racing, but very, very brief. This ground up remaster of 2002's Mafia is a gorgeous game filled with cars, guns, family, and heartbreaking betrayal.
Mafia: Definitive Edition cover art
I will start off by admitting that Mafia: Definitive Edition served as my introduction to the franchise, therefore I will not be spending a lot of time comparing this game to the original. I will instead be looking at this game with fresh eyes and talking about it as a 2020 release. With that being said, let's talk about everything Mafia: Definitive Edition has to offer.
New Heaven by night
1930's New Heaven is a delight. When looking back on my time with the game, the setting is perhaps what stands out to me the most. Hangar 13 did an absolutely phenomenal job recreating the city, which draws inspiration from others like New York City and Chicago. New Heaven manages to tastefully showcase multiple different cultures within the city which have been uniquely designed to represent the diverse population of New Heaven.
Bustling Central Island
Chinatown
Quiet suburban streets of Oakwood
Poor Works Quarter
New Heaven is also full of little moments that really expand world building and give the player the feeling they are living in and experiencing a living, changing world. Every once in awhile I would notice a plane or blimp in the sky which made the world feel so much bigger than the city streets you spend all your time on. Multiple different models of period accurate cars were a blast to drive around and the original score and radio stations were great to set the tone of the time period. Radio announcers would report period accurate news and play clips of President speeches and recaps of baseball games. The announcers would also report on news directly related to events that take place in the story.
One touch I love in games is when developers include in game photographs of characters together. This is such a great world building technique that gives more life to the characters you see on screen.
Tommy and Sarah Angelo
Sam, Tommy, and Paulie
I will be giving my very surface level thoughts on the story mode as I believe if you are even remotely interested in this game, I highly recommend avoiding spoilers. The game contains two main modes, Story and Free Ride. The story is linear set within the open world of New Heaven and has the player driving to and from different objectives around the city. Free Ride allows the player to customize their loadout and vehicles while letting them explore New Heaven and search for different collectibles. If you have no intention on collecting each collectible (there are a TON), Free Ride is basically worthless unless you want to cruise around and explore the city.
The story follows cabbie Tommy Angelo as he makes an honest living in New Heaven. Tommy is unsure about his life path until one fateful evening when he finds himself caught between two rival families. Don Salieri pays Tommy for his role in helping fellow family members Sam and Paulie and eventually decides to continue doing business with them. He continues to work and climb the ladder until he finds himself doubting the very people he has sworn his life to. Mafia: Definitive Edition has no lack of crime, booze, and betrayal, telling a well crafted tale of life within the crime ridden streets of the prohibition era.
Right off the bat the player is encouraged to not drive recklessly as it leads to unwanted attention and even arrests from the police. This again makes New Heaven stand apart from other open world games like GTA where there is not an emphasis on blending in and really living life in the game's world. This is made difficult by the fact that New Heaven contains not a single stop light and NPCs are free to roam where they please and pretty much makes driving "legally" impossible.
Waypoint in Mafia: Definitive Edition
The waypoint system in Mafia: Definitive Edition is perhaps the most unique and successful waypoint systems I have seen in an open world game. Instead of a glowing line highlighting the path for the player, the waypoint appears as a street sign with arrows pointing in the objectives direction. This adds to the driving experience and is less immersion breaking then other, more common systems. I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that my favorite thing about this game is it's waypoint system, but I guess it just goes to show how important a seemingly unimportant feature such as this really is.
The voice acting is stellar. I really appreciate the diversity of Italian accents which relate the character back to their home and specific regions. That being said, there are multiple instances of bad lip syncing and character emotions and facial animations often fall flat. This is very unfortunate as many tense scenes feature phenomenal voice work, but simply can't be bought due to poor optimization.
I found myself disappointed when I completed Mafia: Definitive Edition as it is very easy to blow through the story. Each level was structured almost like a TV show which left you wanting more and as levels continued right after the other, I found it very hard to put down. After a couple days as the game really started to sit with me, I began to appreciate the shorter length. This did not have to be a sprawling open world RPG filled with side quests and a million player choices to hold my attention. This game has a specific story to tell, Tommy Angelo's story.
Mafia: Definitive Edition GameScape Review: 8 / 10
Realistically, the only cons I find myself giving this game are some clunky controls, lack of helpful tutorials, and the optimization issues previously stated above. Being a remake of a 2002 title, there are dated features such as the two separate game modes, however, Hangar 13 does a fantastic job of optimizing this game for the current landscape. Mafia: Definitive Edition is a perfect game to spend a weekend with and I promise, you will find it hard not to fall in love with the game's charm and suspense.
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