2K’s prequel to the Mafia franchise takes place long before the events of Mafia (2002).
It’s been a long nine years since the Mafia franchise saw the release of its last numbered title, Mafia III, in 2016. The action-adventure series has not been dormant in all that time, having released both a remaster of Mafia II and a remake of the first Mafia in 2020 to reintroduce players to its crime-ridden world. Both games certainly whet the appetites of nostalgic Mafia fans, but it’s clear that the series had taken too long a break, and it was time for something new.
Those fans are now getting their wish with Mafia: The Old Country, a prequel set long before the events of Mafia (2002) that takes place in Sicily, Italy. For the latest Mafia game, developer Hangar 13 has eschewed Mafia III’s open-world elements for linear missions that veer a little too closely to its predecessors in design. Despite that, this remains the most beautifully-crafted world we've seen in a Mafia game yet.
Taking Mafia back in time
Mafia: The Old Country takes players to the earliest point in the franchise yet: the early 1900s, where they follow the rise of one Enzo Favara within the ranks of the Torrisi crime family. Enzo starts out as a humble worker in Sicily’s sulfur mines, before a violent encounter with a gas leak leads to a chance meeting with Don Bernardo Torrisi. The Don takes Enzo into the family, and thus kicks off his life as a mobster.
This makes for a slight variation of the traditional mob story, which typically involves an outsider coming into the mafia family and somehow rising to power from within. Every Mafia game has told this story before, but what sets The Old Country apart is that Enzo never truly feels like a real-deal mobster. He comes into the Don’s employment as a ‘carusu’, a miner who is seen as lesser-than when compared to his peers.
Enzo’s background makes it so that he never has the same standing as his peers, so The Old Country doesn’t focus too much on his rise to power. Instead, the story explores Enzo’s relationships with members of the Torrisi family, which only bloom due to his newly-minted life as a gangster. Arguably, the game is first and foremost a love story–his relationship with the Don’s daughter Isabella is pursued with the utmost secrecy, but remains the focal point of the final act.
Unfortunately, this overreliance on character drama doesn’t pay off. Enzo himself is a puzzlingly weak protagonist, whose motivations are muddied as he gets dragged around to either help out his friends, do missions for the family, or spend time with Isabella. He doesn’t seem to have much trouble with doing crime and killing people, nor does he seem to have much fondness for the family itself. Sure, the family is manipulative and evil by nature, but Enzo doesn’t seem to have a bone to pick with that either.
Enzo and Isabella, sitting on a tree
Much of the game’s slow-burn drama revolves around Enzo's love for Isabella, which ultimately becomes the only source of agency he is given in the story. It’s only due to Isabella that we see him take matters into his own hands for once, which is satisfying to see unfold, but it comes far too late for the player to care. It doesn’t help that his relationship with Isabella feels stale and generic, developed at such a rapid pace that it feels like their most important milestones were left out of the story entirely.
The Old Country’s idyllic scenery might appear a good fit for the slow-paced nature of its storytelling, but the game’s one-note characters and uneventful first act struggle to support the weight of its already dated gameplay. Red Dead Redemption 2 got away with a similar slow-burn opening thanks to the strength of its characters, but even in that game, most players got antsy to get out of the snowy mountains and ride into the open plains of its beautiful world within a few hours.
In The Old Country, it feels like we never leave those snowy mountains at all.
Driving, stealthing, and shooting
Mafia: The Old Country feels very much like older titles in the franchise, in the sense that it feels like a game made in the early 2000s. The game rotates between driving sections, stealth sections, shooting galleries, and knife fights throughout the campaign–and often in that precise order, leaving players feeling stuck in a predictable chain of linear objectives with only cinematics to provide them some reprieve.
This isn’t to say exploration is non-existent, however. While exploring the game’s towns and houses, players can pick up lore notes and collectibles to learn more about the world of early 1900s Sicily, and the fictional town of San Celeste, in which this game is set. These only add to the deep layer of immersion Hangar 13 has managed to flesh out for this game. Everything, from the NPCs going about their business in town to the interiors of San Celeste, feels lived-in and cinematic. You even have to crank car engines to get them started, which goes to show the game's dedication to period-accurate authenticity.
It’s worth noting that this is also, by far, the best the Mafia franchise has ever looked. The game’s skyboxes shine when driving down Sicily’s countryside, and some of the later setpieces–including an ambitious Uncharted-like chase sequence–provide impressive spectacle. Players can opt to skip some of the game’s longer driving sequences, but given how good the cars felt to swivel around in Sicily, I took them as an opportunity to soak in the gorgeous scenery.
The game’s combat and stealth sequences are much less inspired, by comparison. If my interest in compulsory in-game stealth encounters hadn’t already waned before playing The Old Country, it has now utterly withered away. The Old Country’s enemy AI is woefully unintelligent, and Enzo’s limited options in stealth make these sequences unengaging.
That being said, at least they go by quickly. I can’t say the same for the game’s many, many shooting galleries. Once again, the bad enemy AI rears its ugly head here as enemies either attempt to flank you by walking up to you face-to-face, pop out of cover to get shot at like a game of whack-a-mole, or suddenly adopt Terminator-like aim and reduce you to tatters in a matter of seconds.
Way to bring a knife to a gunfight, Enzo
Breaking up the monotony of these stealth sequences and shooting galleries are the bossfights. In Mafia: The Old Country, bossfights play out solely as knifefights, with Enzo picking up his switchblade to go ham on the game’s big bads, one after another. The game has its own melee combat system specifically built for these fights. Players have to chain together parries and ripostes, when they’re not breaking the enemy’s guard or dodging.
To this game’s credit, I found the knifefights to be shockingly fleshed out, and a lot more interesting to engage with compared to the tiresome shootouts. Where things quickly go off the rails, however, is the fact that players don’t just fight three or four bosses this way. No, Enzo has to fight more than 10 of the game’s bosses in increasingly absurd melee encounters. Not a single one of the game’s villains comes at Enzo with a gun in their hand. Instead, they all charge at Enzo and fling him into an arena repeatedly, always with a knife conveniently within reach.
Perhaps these sequences were peppered into the game precisely because Hangar 13 knew its shootouts and stealth sequences weren’t cutting it. Still, I can’t help but feel that all of these different gameplay elements were overused to the point of wearing out. This isn’t a long game (it took me roughly 10–12 hours to beat), but it really does leave one feeling weathered by its end. It’s not so much the lack of gameplay variety, but the lack of innovation that bothered me.
If these knifefights had escalated in pace or difficulty, or threw in a gimmick or two for me to deal with along the way, I might have felt better about them. As it stands, it does feel like the game made me fight the same boss 10 times over.
On the technical side of things, it’s also worth noting that I experienced numerous performance issues on the PlayStation 5. I experienced both crashes and constant stuttering during my playthrough. The latter issue cropped up most often while moving the camera around during driving sequences, or during transitions from cutscenes to gameplay. Thankfully, regular exploration and combat were smooth for the most part.
Verdict
Mafia: The Old Country is a gorgeous new entry in the Mafia franchise, bringing its scenic world of 1900s Sicily to virtual life with period-accurate costumes, cars, and weapons. Despite being such a far-flung prequel, this really does feel like a Mafia game through and through, with the same level of cinematic immersion and focus on character drama that keeps people coming back to the series 23 whole years later. There are also plenty of Easter eggs for fans of the franchise to dig into here, involving surprisingly deep connections to Mafia (2002) and Mafia II.
Unfortunately, The Old Country is stuck in the past in more than one way. Its repetitive gameplay and underbaked story ultimately fail to coalesce, and worse than that, fail to improve on criticisms of previous games in the series. Mafia needed to step into this generation of consoles with vigour, but here we see its latest entry make the same old mistakes.
Mafia: The Old Country is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, for US$49.99. We received a copy of the game for this review.
