I played on: Steam (PC)
I paid: £12.62 (This included the entire Trilogy’s Definitive Editions)
Available on: PC, PS4, Xbox One
Notes: N/A
Mafia was originally a sixth-generation game that followed
in the footsteps of Grand Theft Auto 3. Unlike the more cartoony, and
outlandish tone that GTA3 used, Mafia was a much more serious game. It was a
hard-hitting crime drama based around the various mafia families that rose to
power during the great American depression of the 1930s. This definitive
edition was a remake of Mafia that released in 2020, 19 years after the original.
I’ve never played the original, so I’m judging this definitive edition on its
own merits, without any nostalgia of the original. While it’s not a perfect
game, it's a damned good one, with a story that feels leagues above what I
would have expected from a sixth gen release.
Similar to the previously mentioned Grand Theft Auto 3,
Mafia and its Definitive Edition, are open world sandbox games. Unlike the
Grand Theft Auto series, however, Mafia puts the emphasis on its story and
really does deliver on this front. This is one of the best story’s I’ve experienced
within the genre. Not the best, to be clear, but when compared to the plots
from even modern Grand Theft Auto games, it’s a masterpiece. We begin the story
in 1938 with Tommy Angelo meeting up with a police detective, seeking
protection for his family from his former employers, the Salieri mafia. Then we
flash back in time to 1930 and the beginning of Tommy’s story.
This is where we begin the bulk of Mafia’s story and its
gameplay. We start with Tommy working the streets of Lost Heaven as a cabbie.
During a break one night, two mobsters end up forcing him to act as their getaway
driver after they total their car. This is where you meet Sam and Paulie, the
two people who go on to become your closest friends. Eventually you meet Don
Salieri and become a trusted member of the family. The Great Depression and
Prohibition have created the perfect combination of elements to allow organised
crime to flourish. As it stands the Salieri and Morello families are both
fighting over control of the city. The story follows Tommy from 1930 to 1938,
over his entire criminal career. We witness the push and pull between the two
major families, but I don’t really want to say too much, in fear of spoiling
such a well written plot.
The first thing that struck me about the gameplay is how immersive
it can be. The driving in particular is impressive, with cars feeling weighty
and realistic. The gunplay is nothing special, but it’s plenty enjoyable. You
play from a third person perspective and have to use cover to avoid catching an
unhealthy amount of hot lead. What really stood out to me wasn’t the action scenes,
but instead the moments in between them. You will have to drive you and your associates
around the city and it’s here that the world really pulls you in. Cops will
react to your speeding, driving in the wrong lane, or really any driving irregularities.
After coming from GTA’s police that will let you drive a hundred and twenty
miles-per-hour on the wrong side of the road while ramming every civilian vehicle
you see, this felt so immersive. In most games, waiting for NPCs to finish boarding
the tram so you can legally overtake it would feel mind-numbingly boring. In Mafia,
I was so interested in the conversation between Tommy, Paulie, and Sam, or even
the news on the radio, that these quiet moments felt like the highlight of the
game to me. During my time with the campaign, Lost Heaven never failed to feel
like a living, breathing, city.
Sadly, this immersion really starts to fall apart when you
enter the game’s Freeride mode, which allows you to explore Lost Heaven without
any objectives or missions to worry about. You begin to see how shallow the open
world really is. NPC’s will wonder about aimlessly, all the train stations will
be locked up tight, the trams won’t allow you access, and every building besides
Salieri’s Bar can’t be entered. Most alleyways are blocked off and every
interesting area that you get to interact with during the campaign is now
locked away. This world is all an optical illusion, and even attempting to explore
it, breaks it immediately. You can’t do anything in Freeride besides random
taxi missions and considering these have no dialogue what-so-ever, they get
real old, real fast. There is no other side content like in GTA such as Rampage,
Vigilante, Paramedic, or any other jobs. I really don’t understand why this
mode is included. As it is, once you’re done with the roughly ten-hour campaign,
there is nothing else on offer.
The other issue with this game is how the excellent story
connects to the mediocre gameplay. Ludo-narrative dissonance is the term that
best describes the problem here. What you do during the gameplay feels completely
disconnected from what your character does during the cutscenes. For example,
there’s this moment where Tommy must execute a gangster while he’s pleading for
his life. Tommy struggles to pull the trigger, with Sam having to step in and
do it for him. This made no sense considering I’d gunned down dozens of men
before this. There’s this moment later in the game where Tommy let’s an important
member of the Morello family live because he’s got a waitress as a human shield,
and Tommy doesn’t want to kill an innocent woman. This works well for him as a
character during the cutscene, but it made no sense when I know I’d been
playing him as a ruthless gangster, executing any civilian that witnessed me committing
crimes throughout the game. The Tommy I played as didn’t feel like the character
in the cutscenes.
I think the biggest problem with this game, is just that, it’s
a game and it shouldn’t have been. The world, story, characters, and writing
are amazing, but they’re not suited to the medium they’re trapped within. This would
have worked so much better as a trilogy of films, or a TV series. While the
open world is an impressively immersive experience while playing through the
story, it falls apart outside of it. The rest of the gameplay is mediocre, and
not worth the dissonance it creates with the story. I’m glad I played this
game, the story is worth a playthrough, but ultimately, it’s trapped within the
wrong medium.
Recommendation Rating: 6 out of 10.
