Mafia: Definitive Edition Review - Old Gangster, New Tricks

They're lined up on the grid They're ready to go If there's ever a game more deserving of a remake than Illusion Soft Works 2002 Mafia, well, it doesn't come to mind at the moment, developed by a small Republic development team Check out that no one had heard of it, it was an open world action adventure game set in the 1930s, it's a game that a lot of people remember fondly and that's fair enough, I mean when this came out it was pretty advanced for the time. It had a gorgeous graphics engine and an immersive atmosphere and environment, not to mention a really great story - we're the first here, guys - and a really memorable soundtrack composed by a guy who I'm not going to insult by not saying his name.

Shut up, Paulie. You are playing as Tommy Angelo, a taxi driver in Sky City lost in the prohibition era, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the right time or don't know the right place depending on your point of view and then soon found himself employed. By the Solari crime family he welcomed the family mannequin along with his two friends Sam and, in a bad way, carried out all kinds of jobs and robberies while they came face to face with the rival Morello family in addition to scoring a hot wife named Sarah before for everything to fall apart like any good crime story should, instead of him ending up inside an empty mansion behind a cocaine-covered desk, although he ended up secretly meeting with a detective in a restaurant to give his confession and, with luckily getting his wife and kids into witness protection is the kind of plot you'd see in a movie and go back and watch some of those cutscenes from the old game even now the writing and presentation still shines and when you consider that all came out back in 2002, that's even more impressive, they cover up what's going on, however, let's not fool ourselves because, aside from the story and the voice acting, it's a game that hasn't aged particularly well and trying to convince someone so play this now. 2020 is like asking someone to ride a mountain bike for a dime, the shooting and driving controls for example aren't that great, a lot of the game time is spent driving from one place to another and it's also tremendously difficult with sporadic checkpoints that don't really help you much, so this remake developed by hangar 13 tries to address all that while keeping the main elements, i.e. the story and the characters intact, and you know what I think it makes a very good job congratulations great hero and it was just released completing the

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trilogy, not that you'd really know that because it seems like 2k is just doing a pretty average job of marketing this.

I don't think this is really aimed at people who have a fanatical love. or an identical throwback to the original, I think it's more aimed at people like me, the kind of people who played it in the past but turned it off a bit for all the reasons I highlighted above and as far as I can remember. I've always wanted a new version of the

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and finally here it is, so let's see if picking this up is an offer you can't refuse. We'll be welcomed into the family, so the first thing you'll probably notice is the presentation and, while this.

It's not really going to win any awards, it does a very good job of bringing lost heaven back to life. What it lacks in super high detail, though it makes up for with its art style. I mean, even the main menu is great, just look at it. This

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runs on 2K's in-house engine, the illusion engine that they have also used for Mafia 2 and Mafia 3. and allows for some cool environments and effects, you have nice lighting, there are rain and water effects, not to mention modeling really good damage output for realistic looking vehicles and characters and aside from that, and perhaps the most important thing to mention is that all the cutscenes have been completely redone and in some cases removed, including a sex scene originally very awkward between Tommy and Sarah, now instead of showing two low polygonal characters grinding together, they instead imply that the two spent the night bumping into uglies, which is much more elegant, you have an extra blanket or something , and heats, have also been completely extended and added.

There are also new sequences, there's one that takes place early in the game after a mission gone wrong, where Tommy comes home and talks to Sarah, who does a really good job of developing their relationship a little more. Gunfights and action sequences obviously look better with improvements. Gore and sound design and it probably helps that all of these now have a movement limit, making them seem a lot less robotic. This classic should work. I know it might upset a lot of people if they didn't use the original. voice actors, but I think the casting of these actors was also made to match their physical appearance, which has carried over into the game, so I don't see it as a big problem and, either way, the story itself doesn't change, which is the most important part, hey, I just work here, you will continue to ride that roller coaster with tommy through those moments of excitement, comedy, action, suspense, drama and romance, you will see tommy's journey from that baby in the woods to finding this new way of life. that leads right into the points in the story where everything slowly starts to collapse and he's dealing with deception and betrayal and being asked to do jobs that call his morality into question even though you're technically the hero of this story. .

Tommy is far from a good guy and by the end of the campaign you will have done some things that are pretty bad. All of that makes everything that much stronger when you get to the epilogue, yes, the epilogue, the stuff of legend. video game writing and one that manages to tug at the heartstrings even more now, I mean even though I know what's coming here I still feel like I've been kicked in the balls with a steel-capped boot when it finally happens, the games had a lot It also needed an overhaul, as the game has been modernized in a lot of areas.

I'm not sure if these are mechanics carried over from Mafia 3 and to be honest I haven't played that one yet, but either way it's very useful. to improve on the date of the original game and believe me that's a good thing at least, they just added a good amount of checkpoints now instead of spacing them out every 10 minutes or so and really that's all I wanted when it comes to the vehicles, no it's like you're really driving bugattis or ferraris, i mean it's the 1930s but they seem to drive a lot faster now especially when it comes to acceleration and as a result car chases are really exciting now that you have the option.

Now when choosing between regular driving or simulation, the feeling is closer to the original game I guess, and the simulation means that each car has a unique feel with different weights and factors like oversteer controlling how they handle, I mean, you won't take a corner in Full speed and pulling the handbrake in this mode, let me put it that way, choosing these modes is like choosing easy or hard when driving and I had no shame in turning this down to normal during that infamous racing mission, yeah , a mission. It was originally so bad that apparently even the developers apologized for it, unlike the original game we would have to go back and visit lucas and ralphie to learn how to lift all these different cars, now all you have to do is find them and break into them, then it's added to your collection, okay, it's a car, you've got it, the radar is now much easier to see cops too, so you'll get hot much less often, he goes and the basic GPS system makes navigation much faster instead of having to open that automatic map every five seconds like you had to do in the original like in the other games, committing crimes, even something as basic as a traffic violation will attract the wrong attention and along with the difficulty mode. you can choose how lenient you want these guys to be so you can make it difficult or forgiving it really depends on the player they gave up but I don't think so but I think the best mechanic they've added here is the option to skip the trip a great Part of what made the original game often too boring to sit between main parts of missions was that you honestly spent more time driving to your next objective than completing it.

There was nothing notable for most of the time. This is just you making that trip to the next point of interest in a car that often went as fast as a zamboni. What they've added now is the option to skip this journey entirely and just whisk you to your next objective. Obviously, this is completely optional and I don't recommend doing it right away because you'll miss a lot of the new dialogue between characters that occurs during the car ride. It has that whole GTA vibe where the characters joke around. each other which is fun to listen to, if it doesn't go well try not to let them see your face and it also helps establish the rapport and relationship between the main cast, not to mention the inclusion of radio now.

With licensed music and news broadcasts, it would seem like the best thing you can do on a night like this is stay home with your loved ones and stay warm and dry, I don't know, it's just a simple inclusion in the quality of life that It makes the game much less irritating to complete and simply eliminates that absolute effort of driving an early 1930s junker that handles like a Sherman tank on an ice rink. The open world is really just a showcase for the story anyway, so I don't see a problem with skipping the driving aspect when most of the time it's just filler, there's not a ton of additional content to see anyway. here, other than collecting comics and cards, Paul won't call you to ask you out. playing darts or bowling, let's put it that way, actually shooting is another of the most important aspects that has been improved.

Thank goodness the original game was a third-person shooter, but not one that did a fantastic job and even for its time, I mean, there's a lot. best third-person shooters from around that same time period, like one that starts with m and ends in acts, pain. The way it worked was you would crouch down, look around corners and fire off a couple shots at someone, then say your Hail Mary and hope your bullets did the trick. finds its mark now staying in line with the other recent games in the series the

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includes a cover mechanic to let you take cover wait for enemies to rear their heads and then put them out of their misery there are revolvers pistols shotguns and the old drum I gave Tommy Gunn a damn classic, but this time it's about as accurate as spitting pumpkin seeds at someone, which I guess isn't entirely inaccurate.

I mean, my understanding is that those things were chosen more for their bullet capacity than their ability to hit what you. When you are aiming, there is also a bolt action rifle and along with alcohol, during prohibition, you think that the ammunition for this thing has also been banned. Shotguns aren't that good either and lose their accuracy and damage exponentially the further someone gets from you. The point is that it would be better to use harsh language than to try to shoot someone, so, as in the original game, it seems that revolvers and pistols are still the way to go and a well-placed headshot takes out anyone. would-be wise out of his misery fairly quickly.

If you remember the hand-to-hand combat in the original, it was really just a matter of whipping out a baseball bat or a feather duster and hoping for the best, now there's a basic dodge system that's idiot-proof and I mean I also think it's nice how the enemies wait their turn to try to hit Tommy instead of ganging up on him. You sometimes get some good finishing moves when someone is low on health. Admittedly, this is pretty wacky and feels like combat. system from a decade ago, I sometimes saw enemies go through walls when I knocked them out, but look, I'll take this system any day of the damn week to top that mess of the original game and finally finally We included some basic stealth mechanics, as well as using cover to stay out of sight, you can also sneak around to make this noise and silently take someone out from behind so that the dog mission where you infiltrate that villa with the security cookie can now be completed. completed in a reasonable amount of time without forcing so many race exits that it starts to feel like groundhog day and I think the best thing about all of this is that it allows you to control all of this stuff yourself, I mean if you still want the cops to stop for speeding or running red lights, you have that option and the difficulty options have a mode called classic difficulty, in addition to making the shooting more difficult, this difficulty mode also includes a lotof features intended to make the game feel more like it's 2002. counterpart, so ultimately it's hard to fault the new inclusions, especially when you have multiple ways to customize it to your personal preferences, this also carries over to the structure of the missions and you don't even need to look much further than the first couple to see how things have improved a lot to improve one of the initial missions where you go as Tommy as a taxi driver, I mean, originally, this lasts like 15 or 20 minutes for you to drive around the city collecting these mundane fares, this was obviously done as a means of acclimatizing you to the layout of the city, although that's not entirely necessary due to the auto map and I suppose it was also done to highlight how boring tommy's life is before he joins the crime family, but holy cow, this mission alone was enough to throw anyone out of the game from the start, so now in the remake, aside from driving, it's much less tedious due to the improved vehicle. handling, they have also reduced the number of fees you have to take to complete this mission, I think five to three.

Sure after this walkthrough you get attacked by those two from the Morello family and then you have to run over a bunch of valleys to escape them or sorry spoiler this part has also gotten a lot better because now you don't have to depend on that rng so as not to get shot in the butt and why they ever thought it was a good idea to do such an early mission so easily. Fallable is beyond me, sure some people may not enjoy the way certain missions have been cut which is fair enough, unless I somehow managed to miss them all, it seems like those side objectives for Lucas have been completely removed. missions where you would carry out some kind of objective for him and then he would show you how to break in and steal certain cars.

I mean, I don't think it's a huge omission considering it didn't really have much of an impact on the overall story, but it's an aspect of the removal that would justify hardcore fans of the original getting upset. Thank you very much, there are a few other minor issues with the game and I noticed some physics glitches where bodies were reacting strangely during Combat something that was definitely not supposed to happen during a sequence. The enemies that I assume were supposed to attack me instead turned into pacifists and just stood there, but man, I really have to scratch my brain to think of absolute flaws that I found and never found something that completely broke the game or the kind of stuff that had me going on the Steam forums and crying about it, guys, of course, as a fair-weather Mafia fan, Mafia Definitive Edition is a little hard to criticize as I do.

I said I can understand how it might upset some of the purists and how some things have been changed or removed, but I never felt like any of this was done at the expense of the overall experience, at the end of the day this is a game about Tommy Angelo and his escapades with the Salieri crime family, those key moments and sequences have been kept intact and that's really all that matters. The original Mafia to me was a cinematic game that also had challenging and crushing gameplay. The remakes tried to focus more on the cinematic aspect and then let the player adapt how challenging they wanted the game to be rather than conforming to the developer's idea of ​​a challenge.

The quality of life improvements completely fixed all the issues I had with the original. game, which means that overall I have no problem recommending this to anyone who likes shooting wise guys by drinking liquor and avoiding income tax, and that's a hard offer to refuse.