If you played the original, I think this is a slam dunk nostalgia trip, especially for the price. It's faithful in the ways that matter, but otherwise fills in the gaps in your memory with carefully-considered additions. Mafia: Definitive Edition is a remake driven by a similar approach to 2019's Resident Evil 2. ![]() This game has plenty of large-scale gunfights, inventive set pieces and car chases – even if the 1930s setting means most of those vehicles are slow as hell. But if you're a fan of GTA's singleplayer campaigns, and you've been waiting years and years for Rockstar to make another one, this shares some DNA for sure. If you're of a similar age now and you can play Apex Legends, Rocket League, Destiny 2 or Fortnite for free, I doubt Mafia: Definitive Edition seems that interesting to you. That specific playthrough left me with a lot of good memories, which enhanced my enjoyment of this remake. I can't entirely remove the context of how I originally experienced Mafia: taking turns to play it with my friend Donald when we were both teenagers, enjoying it on his dad's then-expensive Pentium 4 computer while eating frankfurters for lunch (you'll have to pardon the excessively granular detail on a sandwich I ate 18 years ago). I don't have any other gripes, really, though I do wonder if new players will see the same value in Mafia: Definitive Edition that I do. The Tommy gun is never my weapon of choice, for example, because it sprays bullets so wide that it's almost never that useful. While the feel and sound of the old guns in your arsenal is terrific, particularly the brutally loud bolt action rifle, the reticule doesn't quite offer the level of accuracy that I'd like. My only issue with this new version of Mafia is aiming and shooting. Maybe it's not trendy to make a blockbuster-level singleplayer game with a campaign under 20 hours long in 2020, but this is something I actually miss about games from 10 or so years ago. I've become averse to big-budget games that threaten to monopolize your spare time with bloated storytelling and too many missions. I finished this in roughly 16 hours, which I was very happy with – Mafia has one story to tell and doesn't waste any of your time in telling it. Unusually for a shooter, the story is the real reason to play – this is something Mafia: Definitive Edition has in common with its source material. It makes each of its leading men seem trapped, melancholy and fallible in their own ways. This is faithful to the original's arc and themes, but more dense with dialogue and characterization. I remember Mafia being one of the first games to wow me with its writing, particularly in its memorable ending. If the objective of this remake was to have it cohere with the rest of the trilogy, it's very successful. Well-acted cutscenes break it all up – while the original game looks like it's acted by Thunderbirds puppets by today's standards (though for the time it was fantastic), the presentation of the story in Mafia: Definitive Edition makes it feel convincingly cinematic. ![]() You'll gun down rival goons in a church, on a cruise liner and in a bank, among other lavishly-rendered locations. Mafia is pleasingly uncomplicated: you shoot your way through a whole bunch of set piece-heavy missions that follow the arc of the original game.
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