You're like that dog Tommy, every time you flash your money around, you're a bitch in heat, and everyone in that is club now looking to fuck you, and once you get fucked, you're no good to us
Not many games leave a lasting impact on me, but I’d be damned if I never told you that Mafia, which has to be one of the greatest games I have ever played. It has a fantastic story with some stellar gameplay to go along with it. I should note that I have not played the original from 2002, so the Definitive Edition is the only version that I have played.
Pros and Cons
Pros
Fantastic crime drama story with amazing characters
Stellar gameplay with some nice weapons
A big open world to drive around in
Beautiful graphics that give off that rich mid 1930’s feel
Cons
Lock-on was a bit clunky during car chases
Obnoxious bug that will unintentionally fire your gun when aiming
Other minor bugs
Story
The year is 1930, Tommy Angelo is a struggling taxi driver during The Great Depression, one night he was strong-armed into helping two members of the Selleri crime family. After saving both Paulie Lombardo and Sam Trapani from a rival mafia gang, Tommy is rewarded for his help and is offered a position thanks to Don’s Ennio organization. Tommy is reluctant at first, however, the rewards he starts to get end up being too big to ignore. However, he also starts to get into more dangerous jobs that also increase in risk.
The story for Mafia is fantastic, it manages to create a very nice and enjoyable crime drama and I love the chemistry between the characters. The trio you get is all just enjoyable and at times they have a charm that makes them special. The story really starts to shine in the later parts of the game, but I can’t explain it due to spoilers, so you will just have to take it from me and this review.
Gameplay
Mafia: Definitive Edition has some new things to it that make it different from the original, one of the new features of the game is that you can now ride motorcycles, which is a first for the series. The gameplay mechanics are mostly based on the 3rd game in the series, including the classic difficulty, where ammo is managed more differently, and police respond to crimes more frequently. There is also a free ride mode, where you can take part in side missions, there are also some taxi missions and a racing mode for you to access too.
During missions, you will be thrust into combat-based missions, some of them require melee but the large majority of them will make you use guns for various reasons. There are a few nice weapons for you to use but my favorite has to be the Tommy Gun. It actually made me feel like I was in the 1930s and the gun just felt nice to use regardless. I wish I could have used the sniper rifle more, as it was only used in one mission of the game, and you only took one shot with it, overall, though, the guns felt nice to use and I never had any issues with any of them.
Since Tommy was a taxi driver before joining the mafia, he will be driving for most of the missions in the game. The driving in the game is fine, although the cars are a little hard to control at times, I think this is because they wanted the cars to have an old-like feel to them while driving. One feature that I love is the fact that you can have a limiter on the speed that your car can have, this helps in driving at times. Mainly because I don’t want to accidentally charge my car at full speed while turning because of the controls. I wish more open-world games with driving did something like this as I just love it all together.
I do in fact have three issues with Mafia: Definitive Edition, the first one has to do with when you are aiming your gun. Sometimes when you start to aim, your gun will fire automatically, I have no idea as of to why when I never pressed the trigger button, so I assume this is a glitch. Then there is the issue with the lock on during car chases, while they were few and far between, the lock on is a bit of a mess. The issue here is that sometimes the target you were firing at will change, and there is no way to switch targets at all. This makes the car chases a little clunky when aiming, not a huge issue, as it rarely came up but still something that annoyed me.
Graphics and Performance
The graphics for this remake are really beautiful and detailed, they give off this rich 1930s feel and charm that I loved. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM, I experienced no issues while I was playing and got 60 FPS.
I did encounter some minor bugs while I was playing, however, nothing game breaking but there were some. One of the oddest ones I have come across was this one bug where cars will just far from the sky, it actually happened to me during a police chase in the game. This actually resulted in me failing the mission and I had to redo it.
Final Verdict
Despite my issues with the game, Mafia: Definitive Edition is a fantastic game and one I highly recommend for those who love crime dramas. If you are someone who likes story-heavy games, then I think this would be a fine purchase for you to get. Although there is only 12 hours of the main game so I would wait for a sale.