I was genuinely happy to see Mafia: The Old Country when it was announced during the 2024 Game Awards, both because the series has been pretty consistent in terms of quality and because it was a genuine surprise to see another entry. For a series that has never really been trying to compete with other sandbox crime simulators, its staying power has been pretty amazing.
Much like with The Godfather II, it seems easy to assume that taking Mafia: The Old Country back to the past would be a recipe for instant success. However, returning to its roots has resulted in Mafia playing out more like The Godfather III—small moments of brilliance overshadowed by a genuinely mediocre experience.
Mafia: The Old Country tells the story of Enzo—a young man sold into slavery in a Sicilian sulphur mine in the early 1900s. However, after a daring escape from his captors, the Spadaro famiglia, he finds himself on the land of Don Torissi, who saves him from his captors, with whom Torissi has been feuding for years. Enzo begins working as a farmhand, but quickly finds himself embroiled in the life of crime, violence and power.
The story may genuinely be the best thing about Mafia: The Old Country. The overall pace of the game and the storytelling never really slows down and consistently keeps you hooked to see what happens next. Personally, I don’t love describing games as “cinematic,” because the two are very different mediums, but Mafia: The Old Country genuinely feels like you’re playing a movie. Every scene is framed excellently, backed by a soundtrack that constantly changes to set the tone and mood of every scene.
“If Mafia: The Old Country has any other thing going for it, it’s definitely its visuals.”
Furthermore, the story does an amicable job of creating genuinely likeable characters, despite all of them being some degree of bad guy. It tries to present complex ideas about morality and the degree to which injustice can be met with justifiable criminality—as you go from a victim of violence and abuse to the one who hands these things out, but for the right reasons. There are no real good guys in this story, only multitudes of morally grey characters who are all incredibly charming and genuinely likeable.
However, the rest of the gameplay in Mafia: The Old Country doesn’t fare as well. I saw a review online say that Mafia: The Old Country isn’t trying to be a Grand Theft Auto clone, and to a certain degree, that’s true—it’s trying to be Red Dead Redemption II, but it’s barely achieving that as well. For as good as the game is at making you play it to experience the story, the act of playing is about as mundane as an “AAA” game can be.
Nothing about any aspect of Mafia: The Old Country feels particularly satisfying to participate in. That’s not to say any of it is bad; it’s just not as good as it could have been, or has been in other games of its ilk. Driving cars or riding horses is fine, controls are relatively tight and feel more akin to proper movement of the joystick than controlling a beast of either flesh or iron.
Shooting is as bog-standard as any “AAA” action game, defined as it is by cover-based combat. But even with aim-assist turned on, aiming can be wildly imprecise, and enemies feel like damage sponges—able to withstand multiple shots from even bolt-action rifles unless you’re pegging headshots every time. Enemy AI is smart enough to try to flank you or drive you out of cover, but no shootout ever feels tense or chaotic.
There are stealth segments as well, and they are fairly unremarkable. Early on, I noticed a pattern of enemies being placed in seemingly unapproachable areas, only to have a bit of dialogue and then wander off for easy take downs. There are distraction objects placed almost everywhere, and players can flick coins should they not have anything nearby to grab. At one point, I broke an enemy’s AI by flicking a coin below a ledge his pathfinding didn’t seem to know how to approach, and he just stood locked in place, allowing me easy entry to the place he was guarding.
And would you believe if I told you this game also gives you the look-through-walls Spider Sense, which is apparently obligatory in every “AAA” action game with stealth elements? It doesn’t even make sense in this context—why would a 20-year-old guy, who had been working in a mine as a slave since he was five, develop superhuman senses like this? At least it kinda made sense why Joel could hear through walls.
The only element that feels the most fleshed out is the knife fights, which take on a sort of tournament fighter style as players need to mix slashes, stabs with parries, dodge heavy attacks, and utilize their own heavy attack to break their opponents’ guard. It’s a decent bit of gameplay, but I couldn’t help but laugh at how it was constantly utilized as a sort of “final boss” moment of several chapters.
“I don’t love describing games as ‘cinematic,’ because the two are very different mediums, but Mafia: The Old Country genuinely feels like you’re playing a movie.”
It just came across as kind of ridiculous that these moments would always follow these intense and desperate shootouts and car chases, only for two people to have to suddenly “prove their honour” in one-on-one knife combat. At one point, I joked to myself that a pretty predictable key story moment would end with a boss fight like this, and my jaw literally dropped when it did.
If Mafia: The Old Country has any other thing going for it, it’s definitely its visuals. For transparency, we were provided a review code by AMD, in the hopes we would be able to utilize the AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 4. Unfortunately, for this review specifically, I was running Mafia: The Old Country on my Alienware 16, using a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060, but even still, I was constantly impressed by how good the game looked.
The Sicilian countryside was constantly rendered with impressive detail, making almost every moment of driving to locations genuinely picturesque. While they’re not always perfect, character models are presented in incredibly high detail during cutscenes, only further cementing this game’s “cinematic” quality. Although I did laugh a little when I tried to vault a ledge, and Enzo went into a T-Pose for a second.
Audio is equally good, but not always flawless. Like I mentioned above, the score for Mafia: The Old Country is phenomenal, and the voice acting is seriously impressive. All of the actors bring a genuine authenticity to the game, which can be taken even further if players set the language to Sicilian. However, there is a lot of repeated music used for certain moments like gunfights, and knife-fights, and it’s very easy to hear repeated throwaway dialogue for enemies—so much so that at one point they almost overlapped each other.
Mafia: The Old Country is the textbook definition of fine, which is a shame because the first game was such a stark contrast to anything that had come out at the time and had so many unique ideas. For this sequel to come out and do little else than push the boundaries of visual hardware is genuinely disappointing. Like I said, the story is definitely worth experiencing, but the game isn’t going to be remembered.
