With Mafia: Definitive Edition, the Hangar 13 studio managed to appropriate the cult game to give it a very slight touch of modernity. However, this remake retained the entire very frozen and somewhat archaic structure inherent in the first two opus of this license. Namely a well -placed intrigue on its rails, accompanied by an open world with limited interest, which is more a pretext to walk in vintage car in America in the 1930s with jazz on radio. Mafia : The Old Country offers us such a similar proposal that it seems obvious that this new game has been thought of to please fans of the first hour before anything else.
For this new story of gangsters, we play Enzo, a young man who started from nothing who will climb the ladder within the Torrisi family, one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Sicily. From a little henchman to a killing killer of the gift, there is in reality only one thing that motivates him: his boundless love for Isabella Torrisi, daughter of her boss mafioso who would not see a very good eye that an abandoned kid ends up with the apple of his eyes. In itself, the intrigue of Mafia : The Old Country is not very original, but that is exactly what we can expect from an epic of mafia in the heart of Sicily in the 1900s.
We can easily guess where the intrigue wants to take us, but the carelessness of the beginnings, the violence, the dramas and the betrayals punctuate the story very well. His predictability is only a detail and we can easily be carried away by Quality writing and a gallery of memorable, endearing or detestable characters. We came to have a story of gangsters and that’s exactly what we had, no more no less. Add to that some well -felt cameos and references to the previous opus, and there is something to make the fan of the Mafia games smashed in us. It will involve subtle references to the appearance of characters very strongly linked to the license, and the omerta obliges us not to say more about this.
If we invest emotionally quite easily in the destiny of these hardened criminals, it is also largely thanks to the Hangar 13 immersion work. We highly recommend that you play in “Sicilian” to have a very good dubbing with the very specific dialect and expressions of the region. Labial synchronization will not be perfect and the subtitles not always fittings (because based on English translation), but it still remains much more interesting than the English or French version. The Sicilian cast is so convincing that this little detail is easily forgiven to immerse us for 13 hours at the bottom of Italy.
Immersion is also a visual affair of course and Mafia : The Old Country is a very charming game. Whether we walk the coast, the Roman ruins, the small villages lost in the middle of the vineyards, this volcano (which is not at all Etna) in the background, or the immense areas and their master houses, it is a magnificent Sicily that the studio offers us. As in the ancients Mafiathis little open world will not offer any quest or secondary activity, and will be content to stuff items to collect everywhere. Not enough to encourage us frankly to explore each road, but we will always take a lot of pleasure in making a little detour with our racing car before heading to our next mission.
I do not consider this way of approaching the open world as a defect, since this aspect has always been part of the DNA of the license, but it seems important to specify that the studio remains intractable on this point, which is probably explained in part its lower sale price. It does not detract from the pleasure of admiring the Mediterranean landscapes. We can however regret the lack of NPCs, which is not necessarily embarrassing in the great outdoors, but is felt in the streets of the fictitious city of San Celeste, for example. Again, the studio seems above all to want to please longtime fans with this very specific formula which will not fail to surprise those who will discover Mafia with this opus.
If we have not met a single blocking bug during our adventure, it must be noted that This PC version suffers from a light stutteringsometimes has trouble loading one or two textures in the distance, and other small visual concerns that are not awful, but nevertheless perceptible. The loading times when you die also prove to be a little long and we expect Hangar 13 to go patcher it all quickly (if it is, it may be the case between the time of writing these lines and the release of the game). Enough to make the obsessed with Digital Foundry’s obsessed with teeth, but a minimal constraint for ordinary people. The combo of a classic but immersive plot and Sicily as a beautiful postcard were enough for my happiness.
We will not be able to say as much on the gameplay side, but it was not really a surprise. In early July, Hangar 13 unveiled nine minutes of play and the evidence was already obvious. We saw it A very archaic formula with TPS resting on the cover, which in itself is not bad, but is quite dated. The feeling of weapons is correct, the enemy bullets hurt very if we decide to go for the heap, but the AI is still relatively disappointing and seals the dynamism that could have had the clashes. The sensations are good, but see each mafioso coming to us without any subtlety offset everything.
Same observation in The infiltration phases during which it will be very easy to bypass our enemies as their behavior is predictable. The law of silence obliges not to say anything, but it was not known that Omerta also consisted of seeing nothing and hearing nothing. In the end, we will remember from these phases the discreet elimination mechanics, which consists in frantically pressing a button in time imparted under penalty of seeing our enemy struggles and calling for help. An idea not so bad, but which falls a little flat as these moments are of disconcerting ease.
In general, nothing is badly done in the gameplay of Mafia : The Old Countrybut everything is very agreed and blocked in the mid -2000s. We will especially remember the duels with a knife in terms of gameplay, which are rather pleasant, but obviously quite rare to really wear the whole video game proposal. The cars are relatively pleasant to drive, half adhering to the earth roads of Sicily, but this approximate side reminds us that we are still in the stammering of the automobile and also participates there on the immersive side of the game. Always on the side of small sympathetic ideas, but in the minimal impact, we will also keep in memory our rosary on which we can change the pearls and the medallion to have little bonuses.
