His performance is among the greatest I’ve seen in any game, and Angelo’s voice actor and facial capture model Andrew Bongiorno echoes a young Robert De Niro. He’s cold and calculating, but also inviting in a strange way. Special props go to voice actor Glenn Taranto for his work as crime boss Don Salieri. With such high quality on display, each cutscene felt like the next installment of a serialized crime show, and it kept me hooked. If the exuberance and hedonism of Mafia II can be compared with Martin Scorse’s Goodfellas, Mafia’s somber tale of family is closer to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. While the foot missions are great and the driving can be mitigated, the real star of Mafia is the story. Seeing Tommy hesitate to answer his wife, Sarah, when she presses him about work-related issues is unlike anything I’ve seen in a game of this type, and it’s little things like this that elevate Mafia from a simple crime story to being a truly cinematic experience - a simple scene where two people sit on a couch in silence is one of the greatest moments in a game this year. Lines are delivered authentically, with both voice performances and facial capture feeling believable. The writing is strong, but the performances are even stronger. The saga of the Salieri crime family (as told by Angelo) is paved in bloodshed and betrayal. While on the subject of difficulty, it should be noted that Hangar 13 has added several options that make Mafia more accessible besides general difficulty, including letting players skip any unnecessary driving between missions and offering a choice between an automatic or manual driving style. One such was where Angelo had to compete in a race, and I had to replay the mission a few times because the driving felt way too loose - perhaps it was due to using a period-accurate car? In any event, the race was annoying and I had to change the difficulty to Easy to remedy the problem. On the other hand, Mafia‘s driving missions aren’t nearly as good as the rest - in fact, they became the bane of my existence. Other great moments include trying to get businesses to pay their protection money, fighting a group of gang members messing with Tommy’s girlfriend, and even rigging a car to explode - these are typical mob movie beats, but they were immersive. It’s a perfectly-paced, phenomenal sequence of events with a linear structure keeping the action tight. One of my favorite moments takes place on a farm where a whiskey sale is about to go down, but all hell breaks loose instead. While the basics are basic, Mafia‘s variety comes from the missions themselves. Yes, this is standard stuff that’s been done countless times in other games, but it still works pretty well and firefights are satisfying - I loved firing my one-handed shotgun from the hip or throwing molotov cocktails onto unsuspecting enemies. Developer Hangar 13 used Mafia III’s engine and structure here, meaning that the shooting feels updated and significantly better than the recent Mafia II: DE. Mission structure is fairly basic but enjoyable, as they’ll generally shoot their way through corridors or occasionally act as a getaway driver after large-scale heists. Taking place in the fictional city of Lost Heaven (modeled after prohibition-era Chicago) players control Angelo through 20 chapters. Tired of constantly looking over his shoulder, he wants to broker a protection deal and tells his rags-to-riches story, detailing the events of 1930-1938. Instead, it opens with a nervous wreck of a man pleading for his life.Ĭabbie-turned-mobster Tomas Angelo sits in a diner waiting for Detective Norman to arrive. ![]() This remake of the original from 2002 isn’t trying to impress with flashy action sequences or copious amounts of exposition, nor are players walking through a tutorial that explains its third-person shooting mechanics. ![]() Mafia: Definitive Edition opens differently than most action-adventure games. ![]() HIGH The quiet scenes when Tommy talks to Sarah.
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