The original Mafia goes down as one of my all time favourite videogames. It gave me an insatiable thirst for gangster games, and to this day every one I have tried has let me down, paling by comparison to the 19 year old title. So I guess it stands to reason that the only game that could hope to be as good is, in fact, a remake of the exact same game. Mafia: The Definitive Edition is a 2020 re-release, with fancier graphics and a whole lot more stuffed under its fedora.
The City of Lost Heaven was a marvel for its time. A sprawling, 1930s themed open world that housed tributes to every classic gangster movie. Nowadays, with the ever expanding scale of open world settings, Lost Heaven seems like a quaint and tiny place. But to me, who has gotten very tired of having to commute across endless videogame maps, this couldn't be more welcome. This is a game that respects your time. It also helps that the remake introduces a lot of quality of life features, such as the ability to skip unnecessary car journeys if you just want to get straight to the next level. Oh, also Mafia has levels! Remember those? It feels kind of odd in an age where every open world game redirects you from one mission icon to the next. Each level is its own carefully created adventure narrative, each feeding into a larger metaplot about thrill and paranoia, loyalty and betrayal.
What I appreciate the most about this rerelease is that there has been a huge effort to redesign levels, plot, dialogue and characters from the ground up. Rather than simply reskin everything, the devs have gone out of the way to pay attention to every last detail. For instance, there is the story telling. As much as I love the original, it could be fairly described as melodramatic and cheesy, whenever it wasn't being openly derivative of Goodfellas and The Godfather. The rerelease pairs down a lot of the silliness, plasters over some of the old incongruities, and gives a lot of the characters more originality and nuance.
As to gameplay, all the levels have been redesigned, some subtly, others in their entirety. For instance, they fix a robbery mission which originally had you lumping around crates like a mook, transforming it into a brand new stealth mission. The notorious race level of the original is still present, and if you are masochistic enough you can even replay the terrible thing on "classic difficulty". After two dozen attempts, I finally relented and reduced the difficulty down to something tolerable. The only quibble I have with the remake is that the game lacks the original's soundtrack, with all the licensed period music absent. Django Reinhart is sorely missed, and the generic music they use instead is no real alternative.
Otherwise, this is a perfectly executed remake of an excellent game that I would not hesitate to recommend to fans of the original. If you are new to the series and have any interest whatsoever, you should also give it a try.
VideoGame Nyaaa, Seee?
The original Mafia goes down as one of my all time favourite videogames. It gave me an insatiable thirst for gangster games, and to this day every one I have tried has let me down, paling by comparison to the 19 year old title. So I guess it stands to reason that the only game that could hope to be as good is, in fact, a remake of the exact same game. Mafia: The Definitive Edition is a 2020 re-release, with fancier graphics and a whole lot more stuffed under its fedora.
The City of Lost Heaven was a marvel for its time. A sprawling, 1930s themed open world that housed tributes to every classic gangster movie. Nowadays, with the ever expanding scale of open world settings, Lost Heaven seems like a quaint and tiny place. But to me, who has gotten very tired of having to commute across endless videogame maps, this couldn't be more welcome. This is a game that respects your time. It also helps that the remake introduces a lot of quality of life features, such as the ability to skip unnecessary car journeys if you just want to get straight to the next level. Oh, also Mafia has levels! Remember those? It feels kind of odd in an age where every open world game redirects you from one mission icon to the next. Each level is its own carefully created adventure narrative, each feeding into a larger metaplot about thrill and paranoia, loyalty and betrayal.
What I appreciate the most about this rerelease is that there has been a huge effort to redesign levels, plot, dialogue and characters from the ground up. Rather than simply reskin everything, the devs have gone out of the way to pay attention to every last detail. For instance, there is the story telling. As much as I love the original, it could be fairly described as melodramatic and cheesy, whenever it wasn't being openly derivative of Goodfellas and The Godfather. The rerelease pairs down a lot of the silliness, plasters over some of the old incongruities, and gives a lot of the characters more originality and nuance.
As to gameplay, all the levels have been redesigned, some subtly, others in their entirety. For instance, they fix a robbery mission which originally had you lumping around crates like a mook, transforming it into a brand new stealth mission. The notorious race level of the original is still present, and if you are masochistic enough you can even replay the terrible thing on "classic difficulty". After two dozen attempts, I finally relented and reduced the difficulty down to something tolerable. The only quibble I have with the remake is that the game lacks the original's soundtrack, with all the licensed period music absent. Django Reinhart is sorely missed, and the generic music they use instead is no real alternative.
Otherwise, this is a perfectly executed remake of an excellent game that I would not hesitate to recommend to fans of the original. If you are new to the series and have any interest whatsoever, you should also give it a try.