MAFIA: DEFINITIVE EDITION
The PlayStation 2 classic has been remade. Is it untouchable?
You’ll be sweating bullets and gesturing like a frustrated De Niro chasing flies by the time the credits roll on this remade classic mobster epic. The PS2 original, despite being a poor port from PC, set a new standard for narrative games back in 2002. Hangar 13’s rebuilt it from the mean streets up to deliver an experience that screams: “Ping! Pow! Boom! Bing!”
If you hadn’t guessed it, Mafia: Definitive Edition is all about selling the mobster fantasy. Drawing on pop cultural notions of mafia life – The Godfather, Wiseguy, Once Upon A Time In America – the game layers on period atmosphere like cream in a thick tiramisu. This is the classic dissection of the American Dream, as cabbie Tommy Angelo is press-ganged into helping Salieri family gangsters Paulie and Sam escape an ambush by the rival Morello family. It’s 1930 and Tommy’s innocent view of the city of Lost Heaven has been shattered.
SHOOT FOR THE TOP
Over the next in-game decade Tommy rises through the ranks of the Salieri family, making friends, starting an actual family, and doing the Don’s very dirty work. Where this remake shines is in the way the script, pacing, motivations of characters, and events have been refined to deliver a contemporary, nuanced take on the original story. It ensures the turning points in Tommy’s life land with greater authority – his wife Sarah subtly seeds doubts, and the original’s dramatic tonal shift, when an innocent girl is car-bombed by accident, feels significant; where
2002 Tommy quipped “That’s one HOT chick,” our new hero is shocked into silence.
The changes affect some mission structures directly, with some old, laboured stages stripped out completely or reworked. The hit on Sergio Morello Jr in You Lucky Bastard is streamlined to a diner shootout and then a motorbike chase through the city, winding between crowds of protesters and down narrow alleys, before chasing your target between the clouds of steam obscuring a cramped train yard. (Oh, did we mention motorbikes are in Mafia now?)
MOB RULES
Moment-to-moment action has been stripped away and remodelled. Based on a revised version of the Mafia III engine, the old turtling shooting of the 2002 game has been replaced by a coverfire system – tap q to glue to cover; push a direction on the thumbstick and w to move to new out-of-gun-range areas. Likewise shooting itself is more robust and accurate, and matched with a modern physics and damage model. There really is nothing quite like riddling a car with Tommy Gun bullets and watching it spark, shatter, break, and buckle.
Getting in close and tapping e launches punch combos, while w will see Tommy dodge attacks. You can make use of melee weapons, and killcam close-ups offer a veneer of complexity, but compared to some games – such as Sega’s Yakuza series – combat is simplistic and repetitive.
How much joy you get from Mafia DE’s gunplay comes from how involved you become in the game’s world, which is a beautifully realised slice of a fictional yet historical setting.
The game is set in a large open world, but Mafia DE is functionally a linear shooter. The city of Lost Heaven, with its gleaming skyscrapers, sprawling bridges, and cluttered districts (Chinatown has been completely redesigned) is a canvas upon which Hangar 13 paints its action.
This is not Grand Theft Auto. You’re never free to explore the city at leisure, though within missions you can veer from the Gold Path to seek out the game’s limited collectibles – vintage books.
DON DEAL
Within those moments of intense action, however, Mafia DE really shines. Every mission has a defining event or an explosive eye-catching setpiece that ensures this periodset shooter feels unique.
It’s hard not to be drawn into an action game that has you fighting across a steam boat as celebratory fireworks ignite around you. You’ll shoot your way out of a church, run across vented rooftops, chase down a plane, and survive a bulletpeppering restaurant hit.
The visual uplift matches the cinematic ambition. One of the original’s standout missions, A Trip To The Country, teeters into horror as you venture onto
“LOST HEAVEN IS A CANVAS UPON WHICH HANGAR 13 PAINTS ITS ACTION.”
a farm during a storm to find your missing crew. The action veers between tense exploration and all-out action, with sporadic lightning illuminating your enemies amid the downpour. The thunderous new orchestral soundtrack booms behind the action to great effect. With characters dressed in heavy overcoats, shotguns in hand, it’s the quintessential gangster image.
FUNNY HOW?
Despite the many changes and improvements, Mafia DE is still an 18-year-old game behind the face lift. This is occasionally noticeable, whether it’s in the limitations of the combat, the overly simplistic AI that pleads to be gunned down, or the cracks in the game’s engine (escape to the countryside and pop-in plagues the game).
In a world where GTA enabled us to break free of the constraints of linear structures, Mafia DE can feel restricting, particularly as the world
Hangar 13 has created is one of the best-realised, most evocative spaces on PS4. A Freeride mode offers endless exploration, but with only collectibles to find and no extra missions, it can feel empty.
Yet you’ve come here to live out the gangster dream, and in this respect Mafia DE rarely makes a misstep. As you drive between missions new audio dialogue cements character relationships, and radio news evokes the interwar period perfectly with newly recorded ball game reports and world news – the Nazis are coming! It’s in these many details the game finds its voice, and it’s one we love listening to.