Mafia: Definitive Edition Reviews

Spoilers ahead!!

If you purchased the Mafia Trilogy Definitive Edition, then this was by far the gem of that purchase.

The story has been tweaked slightly to give the appearance that Tommy was more of a willing participant in joining the Mafia.

Missions have been streamlined. Characters are given more backstories so you bond to the characters. More light-hearted, fun, moments. You get more time with Tommy's eventual wife.

They new voice actor for Tommy gives him that much more character.

Overall it's everything you want from a remastered game (unlike its Mafia II counterpart). Tweaks where they are needed, huge graphic update, but the core remains unchanged.

You can play the 2002 Classic mode, which is just like the original. Speed limit is enforced. Health kits heal less. Enemies are better shots.

Or you can dive into the game in a more traditional Easy/Medium/Hard setting.

It borrows its gunplay and cover mechanics from Mafia 3. By no means is it perfect but it is improved immensely from original.

The achievements are pretty straight forward. A few collect achievements. Mostly story based. The hardest of the achievements is by far beat the game on Classic mode. Everything else is obtainable in 20 hours or less.

Great story.
Easy achievements.
Relatively low hours required to complete.

The Mafia series has without a doubt come a long way since the release of the original game in 2002. No doubt because the first game in the series was so influential when it came to story-telling, Hangar 13 (the developers of Mafia III) decided to remake the original from the ground up using Mafia III's engine.
The question for this review is "Does this game hold up to the disappointing standards of Mafia III?"
Let's find out, as we take a look into Hangar 13's Mafia: Definitive Edition.

Story
The story of Mafia: DE bases itself around the original game and as such follows Tommy Angelo, a working-class cab driver during the great depression working in the city of Lost Heaven who eventually becomes a prominent member of the Salieri crime family. During his tenure with the Salieri family Tommy, alongside his friends Paulie & Sam, takes part in various illegal activities such as bootlegging, robbery & extortion in the sleazy city of Lost Heaven!

Mafia: DE's story scores a 9/10 from me. Although some minor differences to the original source material, Mafia: Definitive Edition manages to take most of the plot from the original game and conveys it to a much wider audience that never experienced the original game's compelling story.

Gameplay
The gameplay of Mafia: DE is not too different from Mafia III, which may turn off old fans of the series from playing this game. However the game does make it clear that Tommy isn't as skilled as a fighter than Lincoln, guns sway much more & recoil more often than in Mafia III.
Mafia: DE brings forth many ideas planned in previous games in the series, such as melee weapons and motorbikes. This game also reintroduces the concept of semi non-regenerating health, only giving you health packs scattered throughout levels & in ambulances driving throughout the city. The police system from the original games makes a well deserved return, and will now fine / arrest you for committing crimes in their line of sight instead of just attacking you like in Mafia III. On that note, police will now come for you if you break traffic laws - but you can change this in the settings if you find this to be annoying.
Another returning feature is Free Ride, a game mode which puts you in the map with no real objective. It's basically a sandbox with side missions that require you to use your intuition / problem-solving skills to find & beat them. It's a great feature for the game to have, but once you've done everything else there's no point of returning back to Free Ride.
Most of the game's vehicles now have real handling! Every vehicle - excluding motorbikes - feels vastly different to drive (due to factors such as weight and HP), and the inclusion of motorbikes is a welcome addition.

Overall the gameplay of Mafia DE scores a 8/10. As stated previously the gameplay is not particularly different from Mafia III, which isn't an issue for me. My biggest gripe with the gameplay is the enemy / police AI - which bugged out frequently during my playthrough.

Graphics
Because Mafia: DE runs on the same engine as Mafia III, this game's graphics aren't too different from Mafia III. The graphics in both games are amazing in cutscenes, but can lack when it comes to gameplay. The only major difference I could notice was in the lighting, which is presented very well in cutscenes and the environments - particularly in the city at night or in the countryside portion of the map.

All in all the graphics here are worth scoring a 9/10, this game manages to take the amazing cutscene presentation of Mafia III and improve it greatly with lighting & contrast. The city of Lost Heaven & surrounding areas also look amazing on modern consoles.

Voice Acting
The voice acting present in Mafia: DE put me off at first, but I eventually grew into it. Presumably because I've been so attuned to east-coast sounding mobsters. Since this game is set in a fictional depiction of 1930s Chicago, the accents here are period authentic & believable. It reminded me of the film Scarface (the 1932 one) when it came to the portrayal of the accents & voices - which no doubt served as an inspiration for the actors involved in the game.

The voice acting is a pivotal part as to what makes this game as believable as it was, that's why I rate the voice acting a 8/10. Although there were some weird phoneticisms that I wasn't used to hearing, I got used to it quickly enough and it made the game's cutscenes more enjoyable.

Soundtrack
Mafia: Definitive Edition's soundtrack decides to replace most of the music found in the original game, whether it be licenced songs / official game music.
The game's official soundtrack is nothing short of brilliant, and sets the tone of each mission really well. For instance, many of the scenes with Sarah (Tommy's love interest) play relaxing jazz-style music which fits in with the tone of the scene & characters very well.
Aside from the game's original score, there's also licenced music to be found here. There are two radio stations that play music from your car & the music there fits well with the game too.

The soundtrack in this game scores a 8/10. It's not too different from Mafia II in terms of quantity of tracks, but it's nowhere near being Mafia III in terms of quality.

Achievements
The achievement list of Mafia: DE is considerably the easiest game in the series to beat. The most difficult achievements that I left for last were beating the game on Classic difficulty & collecting all 50 Mystery Foxes.
Playing Mafia: DE on Classic difficulty is not too different from playing on Hard. The only issue I had with this achievement was relatively early on in the game during the mission Fair Play, which eventually requires you to beat first place in a race course. As it was in the original game, this mission can be particularly gruelling to get through due to the race car's handling / controls - I don't think I need to explain much more about this mission. If you know, you know.
Another difficult achievement that I mentioned was Mystery Fox Domination, which requires you to collect each of the 50 Mystery Foxes scattered in select missions and throughout the open world. I found this one difficult because of a glitch which didn't count one of the foxes I collected. Because I didn't want to scour across the map just to find one fox I decided to reset my progress and start from scratch again. I eventually was able to get each of the 50 Mystery Foxes and finally completed this game.

Overall, my personal scoring for Mafia: DE's achievements comes to a 7/10. With some minor hiccups here and there, this is a relatively easy game to beat in the series for me personally. So I wish you good luck and happy achievement hunting!

Overall - 4.5 OUT OF 5
All in all, Mafia: Definitive Edition is a brilliant game that shouldn't be missed. Taking many elements from previous games, this is indeed definitive in terms of story & presentation. If you haven't touched this series yet, it would be best you start off with this game. As Don Corleone once said, it's "...an offer you can't refuse."

Prohibition has been enacted and organized crime is on the rise in America during the 1930's. The police are having a difficult time keeping a handle on things as gunfights, car chases, and even political figures are being targeted throughout the streets of Lost Heaven. Can we manage to stay alive long enough to rise through the ranks and gain some money and power, or will we find ourselves sleeping with the fishes in, Mafia: Definitive Edition.

Tommy Angelo is introduced as our main character as he speaks with a detective from the police and we're immediately wondering what brought him to this point. From here, Tommy recounts how he first came into contact with the Salieri family through Sam and Paulie. Things escalate pretty quickly for Tommy as he steadily gains the family's respect and goes from doing simple rough-ups to being trusted to kill high target individuals on behalf of the family.

Despite gaining plenty of respect and status, Tommy begins to wonder if this life is truly something he want. Hard choices and their consequences begin to sink in for Tommy that these dangers can come not only for him, but for the people he cares for and loves. Although we do know Tommy is talking with a detective at some point in his life, we can't help but wonder if it will be enough, and will Tommy truly be out of this life?

Let's divert from the plot for awhile to talk about the gameplay itself and what else we're able to experience in Mafia. Overall, the gameplay stays pretty consistent from the first couple hours all the way into the next dozen. As you may imagine, there's plenty of shooting that goes on with a fairly decent batch of guns to play with; a couple revolvers, a semi-automatic pistol, a pump-action shotgun and double-barreled shotgun, a bolt action rifle, and of course the tommy-gun too. While there are a couple throwables that are sprinkled in missions and some melee weapons like bats and knives, the combat does get old fairly fast. If you've shot your way past one group of baddies, you've shot your way through all the others, the biggest difference between these encounters is the areas you'll be having these gunfights in, which does help.

Besides the combat, the bulk of the gameplay involves you first driving to a location, which unfortunately is usually well across town, and occurs in most of the missions. When you're not driving to get to the objective, you'll also find yourself either chasing after a target or trying to get away from those chasing you. Usually the biggest differences you'll find in these chases is what vehicles you'll be using, each of which has it's own handling and feel so one getaway might be significantly easier simply because trying to make a turn doesn't feel like the vehicle is trying to fight you every inch. Like the combat sections, the vehicle sections also suffer from feeling very similar but thankfully you can cut-down some of this as there is an option to skip some of the 'drive to objective' parts. At the very least, I can say it feels like a treat seeing these older vehicles with their very unique designs and forms that we don't get to see anymore these days.

Playing the missions/story of the game will only take a few hours, maybe a day or two of play to get through, which then leaves you with the ability to explore the city. Unfortunately, the city itself is rather boring as you can't do much aside from; collecting cars, gathering collectables, and taking a walk/drive down the block. This is certainly an area of the game I wish had been trimmed down or just removed as the map feels too big and bloated for its own good since outside of those items and the missions... there's just not much to do. Having some additional side activities to do, or maybe taking over a rival gang's territory would have helped give the map purpose but as it is now, the city just feels like an unnecessary chore any way you slice it.

The story and final few missions of Mafia certainly start to really crank up the action and do a good job of bringing some of the other characters into the spotlight. There are just a couple confusing bits where some choices made by some characters don't quite make sense. And I just didn't feel as though the Salieri family was ever a tangible threat as you never see anyone other than Tommy, Sam, and Paulie from the family do anything other than get shot or stand around. Overall, while the plot and characters are good and serviceable, I never felt like it rose above that and had me attach to the characters much, not even Tommy.

Naturally though, let's talk about those achievements for a quick moment or two before we wrap this up. Overall the list here is a pretty easy endeavor as you'll more than likely snag 2/3rd's of the list just by going through the story. The remainder of the list will likely be your collectables and some miscellaneous ones like doing a wheelie on a bike. I would recommend doing the story on it's hardest difficulty setting first so you don't have to do an entire 2nd run, plus I only found a couple combat sections and the race to be somewhat difficult anyway. This completion won't be a pain in the neck, and thanks to the resources here on the site, you'll snag'em pretty quickly.

Mafia is a fairly good entry point for someone who may want to jump into the series but it's not a must play by any means. Some character moments and some good voice acting can help to elevate this game but it really won't leave a lasting impact either positive or negative once it's all said and done. At the very least, I would say Mafia serves as a nice filler game to play either casually or for the achievements as it can be finished pretty fast. While this isn't an offer you can't refuse, Mafia can still be worth it, especially if you manage to grab it in the trilogy collection, until next time, arrivederci friends!