Mafia: The Old Country review – A good movie held back by being a game

Mafia: The Old Country makes a strong first impression, with the then-17-year-old protagonist Enzo Favara toiling away in miserable conditions working at a sulphur mine owned by the Spadarro clan, all while a nearby volcano causes tremors.

The game does a brilliant job depicting the horrors of such a place, with the ominous rumbling mountain inducing a deep sense of dread. The character rendering during cutscenes is top-notch, with brilliant performances bringing them to life.

Predictably, things go south, with the mine collapsing, but the sequence feels awkward to play, with stiff animations and a lack of weight behind Enzo as he runs.

After making it out and scrapping with a Spadarro lieutenant, Enzo is forced to flee and finds himself in the servitude of the Torissi family, and the game begins to open up, for better and for worse.

In the wake of Mafia 3 with its open world, as discussed in our developer interview, the team returned to its roots with Mafia: Definitive Edition, a full remake of the more linear 2002 original, and Hangar 13 has brought that forward to The Old Country and mostly for the better.

But, sometimes, this linearity works against the player, as if you diverge from the intended path, even by accident, the game can quickly fall apart.

In one instance, during a high-speed horseback pursuit, you’re prevented from following bandits after they throw a Molotov cocktail. I didn’t make the turn in time, and my horse instantly decelerated and got stuck trying to turn around, as if my horse was wading through treacle, all whilst other bandits were shooting at me.

This isn’t something that would be hard to replicate; it was an easy mistake that sadly took me out of what was otherwise a fun, delightfully over-the-top chase sequence through beautiful countryside.

Sadly, a lot of the gameplay mechanics do not hold up well, and it’s only exacerbated when sandwiched between tightly-crafted cinematics.

Stealth sections are notoriously difficult to do well, and unfortunately, Mafia: The Old Country doesn’t cut the mustard here. The AI is predictable, and NPCs’ predetermined paths pose no real challenge. Anytime I was presented with a stealth section that was optional, I opted to blast my way through it.

But even that is a bit of a letdown. Using a mouse and keyboard, I didn’t find the shooting particularly enjoyable. There is a “Snap On” aim assist feature turned on by default, but I chose to forego this. The roster of weapons does make things a bit more interesting, however, with double-barrel shotguns and single-shot rifles making firefights feel more satisfyingly scrappy.

There are boss fights too, that essentially boil down to the same knife fight, which also feels a little wooden. Animations will play out when your foe reaches a certain health level, but you quite often awkwardly warp into these.

What is brilliant, though, is the driving mechanics. Imagine the (GOATed) driving model of Grand Theft Auto 4, but with early 1900s cars on rough roads with a healthy dose of sphincter-clenching understeer.

There is a race that sees you competing against five other cars, and while some of the moments are scripted, a lot of it is down to you absolutely hooning a spluttering deathtrap up and down hills and around corners.

The sound design, too, is incredible, with the valves all firing, and the throaty roar of old engines gulping gallons per minute is a delight. If Hangar 13 was ever to develop a turn-of-the-century racing sim, I would be pre-ordering it.

Early on, there is a horse race you compete in, which similarly had me on the edge of my seat. It’s simple stuff, but good fun.

Presentation-wise, the graphics are generally very nice, but like a rich tiramisu, extremely heavy on your PC's guts, and not without a lot of visual pop-in, despite the usage of Nanite. I saw a fair few graphical bugs too, with Unreal Engine staples such as slow-to-load textures, despite having 16GB of VRAM and a fast NVMe SSD.

The story overall is an enjoyable romp, with a good blend of classic mafia movie tropes in a more unique, less-travelled setting. The writing, though, is at times questionable.

Cast your mind back to poor Enzo, working essentially as a slave in a sulphur mine for most of his life. When under the employment of the Torissi family collecting protection money, Enzo and two other made men arrive at a quarry, only to discover, having not been paid, the workers have unionised.

I got quite excited here, wondering how Enzo would navigate the situation. Surely, he would grapple and struggle balancing his loyalties to his new family while being sympathetic to the plight of his fellow working man? Not quite so. Instead, Enzo gleefully draws his knife and absolutely lays into a poor lad without a moment's thought.

It’s only afterwards that Enzo casually wonders aloud if maybe what he did wasn’t so good, though this only amounts to his compatriot essentially assuring him with a, “Nah, bro, don’t worry about it. It’s free enterprise,” and Enzo lapping it up with, “Ah, fair enough then.”

There are a few blips like this early on in the game, where ideally you would like to see a bit more character development.

Another is when Enzo first kills a man. Granted, he has known violence his whole life, but not much is made of shooting a bandit in the back of his head. No shaking hands or throwing up. Just another day in early 20th-century Sicily, I suppose, and it’s swiftly followed up by a wave of more bandits to shoot to pieces.

I appreciate that the developers need to fit an entire story into the budget and runtime, but an extra 20 seconds of Enzo hesitating, soul searching and wrangling his emotions, only to succumb to protecting himself and his new life, unwittingly becoming a cog in a cycle of systemic violence that caused him so much suffering, would go a long way.

In spite of all of this, I have enjoyed my time with Mafia: The Old Country. In an age of open-world games with a billion things to do, it’s nice to be guided along a handcrafted linear story.

I just so desperately wish the gameplay better held a candle to the direction and cinematic flair of the cutscenes, whose luxurious quality and intimacy are the real standout of the show.

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