I had finished the original Mafia game a few years back, and really enjoyed my time with it. It was made during an era when open world 3D games were basically non-existent, and infact Mafia was in development before GTA 3, so it really was one of if not the first to come up with the concept. The origignal Mafia released in 2002, and almost 20 years later in 2020 they released Mafia Definitive Edition. A complete remake of the original game. I didn't know any of the details about the game except for the fact that its a remake, I bought it when it was at a discounted prince and finally got around to playing through it.
The most obvious thing is the graphics. The main reason they remake old games like this is to bring it to "modern audiences" and that means it requires fancy polished new tech graphics. They are great, the lighting effects, the specular reflections, detailed textures, breathtaking fictional city resembling pieces of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Driving around the city is very immersive, makes you feel like you're there in the 1930's and what it would be like. The occasional radio playing news stories about current events, and later on in the game talking about World War 2 are nice touches. The character models are great. Everyone is well done. Paulie, Sam, Don Salieri are spot on. Infact, I might like these new designs better than the original game! While the graphics are stellar, the writing, story, character designs are just as good. You couldn't really ask for a better job in the story department. The remake lets the plot unravel slowly, but in a very cinematic way. It almost feels like a 'movie-game' at times, the cutscenes are fairly lengty, and a lot of them. I don't really remember the original game having hours upon hours of cutscenes, of course its a 2002 game, but the remake feels like 50% of the time you're watching cutscenes or listening to characters talk. That's not a bad thing, because its so well done.
The remake features all the exact same missions and plot structure as the original. You go through all the missions in the same order, mostly everything is the same as it plays out originally. There are a lot of moments where I was like "Oh yeah, I remember that part! Oh wow, it looks famillar yet so nice now" I really think they did a good job wih remaking the game with modern standards and technology in that regard. I did an extensive review of the original game, so I'm not going to sit here and go through every mission again like I did the first time, but its basically the same thing. So the only things really to talk about in terms of whats 'new' is if they nailed the story/characters and plot telling (I think they did) and how the mechanics, engine, gameplay, feels and plays.
Well there's something to be said about the charm of the technical limitations of the original game. Since there was no template or framework of how to make an open world game, they came up with it all themselves. As a result, the original game has a very distinct personality and feel to it. Even down to the goofy (by todays standards) looking graphics and plastered on photograph-faces, and the 'clunky' rough around the edges engine and gameplay controls, it gave the whole experience a unique identity and vibe. Sadly, a lot of it gets lost in remakes like this. Nowadays we have standarized control schemes and mechanics and expectations of how certain gameplay styles work, as a result many games end up feeling like being in this homogenized blob of vaugely the same game. Mafia Definitive Edition falls within that scope. It has typical Cover based shooting, where the original game did not, it has the same sort of Crouch and walk behind enemies to press B to go into a cutscene animation taking them down stealth system, it has the same police wanted system from Grand Theft Auto, and the same sort of GPS map system that even shows cops and enemies on it, making you just stare at the radar most of the time instead of being immersed in the game. It may seem like nice convienent things to have in the game, more familliar modern standardized mechanics, but especially when remaking these old games that had their quirks and oddities about them, it makes them lose the identity they had and it becomes just another coat of paint on the same formula.
The original game had all sorts of quirks, like I think you had to sometimes refuel your car with Gas, if you drove too fast the cops could pull you over and give you a speeding ticket, (you still can use the speed limit but its kinda pointless now) this weird Mouse menu for doing actions, and so on. Funny enough, the original Mafia did not have quicksaves, but it had autosaves like modern games, but I swear in the original game the autosaves were further apart making the game much more tense.
Speaking of tense, the original game was a pretty damn hard game at times, however this remake is fairly easy. Especially the gunfights. This remake has like I said, the cover based shooting, and its trivial to exploit or outsmart the AI. Most of the shooting feels like wack-a-mole, you just sit behind cover and wait for the enemy to pop his head out and peek out of cover and shoot him. Sometimes, they will yell "Throwing a molotov!" and throw at your last location, wow its nice of them to let you know exactly when they're going to do it - makes the interaction kind of trivial because you know exactly when to move out of the way. Still, the enemy molotov's is a neat addition, I cant remember if they did it in the original game, but it was fun to shoot them as theyre throwing a molotov only to burn themselves and start yelling.
So most of the gunfights are trivially easy, but still enjoyable if not just for the superb graphics, animations, hit reactions, sound effects. All of the gloss and polish that a modern engine offers really helps out here. I played on Medium difficulty, by the way. There was a 'Classic' difficulty, so I am curious what that does, but I figured Medium is the one the dev's present as the go-to choice that they expect most people to pick, so thats what I went with.
There's a melee system that you have to use a few times, but its barely worth mentioning. Its so easy and trivial its laughable. All you do is spam the B button and sooner or later a prompt pops up for you to do a quicktime cutscene and instantly win...Wow.
The driving mechanics are probably the highlight of the game, thankfully. Much of the game is spent driving around, and frequently having to drive fast and race past certain enemies or arrive at certain locations on time. The cars feel weighty, almost slippery, but polished and fun to control. The physics have a real glide and drift to them especially when breaking, that can take some time to learn but satisfying once you get good at driving. The infamous Racing level is of course back, and it was brutally hard in the original game. You have to come in first place on this race course, and I remember failing so much back in the day. Well I'm happy to say its still challenging here in the remake, though maybe a bit more forgiving as I beat it on my third attempt or so. Still, great fun and excitement. Other memorable levels are back, of course, they all are. But most notably: The boat assination, the whorehouse hotel, the bank heist, and the airport shootout.
The controls , atleast on controller, are a mixed bag. Most actions you do require you to hold the button, instead of a simple press. Getting into cars, you have to hold X, picking up guns? Hold X for a second or two, and so on. This really fucked me over many times, especially since I'm use to Y being enter cars like in GTA games. I think the controls could of been done a bit better, but the shooting and driving feel slick enough. Just interacting with the world can be fucked at times.
Speaking of the airport mission, it was pretty disappointing. I dont know what it is with this remake, but some missions you can just trivialize by running past enemies and getting them over in 20 seconds instead of actually engaging with them. I dont remember that being possible originally. For instance, the airport level, its supposed to be this huge impressive fun shootout with 100 cops, but I somehow accidentally ran past them all and triggered the level ending cutscene in like 10 seconds. That was disappointing. Other memorable levels is that mansion hedgemaze, where in the original game you sort of have to 'stealth' around and kill enemies with a baseball bat, I remember it being really frustrating but challenging and kinda fun, but here in the remake it was super trivially easy as the radar tells you where the enemies are, and it has this stupid modern stealth system where you can crouch around at full speed and they wont hear you, so you just sneak behind them all and press B for the kill cutscene. A few more times they force this stealth on you where in the original game I dont think they did. One of the last missions, has you sneaking through a warehouse full of boxes to find diamonds, and its a forced stealth mission where you boringly have to crouch behind guards and do quicktime kills on them. Well In the original game its not a stealth mission at all, but something else entirely. Maybe it wasnt a great section in the original game either, but still forced stealth mission are one of the last things I look forward to in games, especially remakes. And yeah this part sucked. I kept failing and getting caught because I didnt want to crouch behind a wall and wait 2 minutes for some AI to go on his pathfinding route.
Overall I think the remake is a great playthrough for someone thats beaten the original game, but I don't think its a replacement for it, or a "Definitive Edition". Its a curiosity, a novetly, an interesting re-telling and respin of the concepts in the first game. But the original has its own personality, its own mechanics and playstyle, this remake strips much of it away for 'safe' standarized generic mechanics, which is fine, I enjoyed my time, but it left me feeling a bit like a big part of the original experience was lost in translation. At least it does a great job retelling the classic story, the cutscenes, characters, writing, are all gripping and sucks you into the world, really does feel like a top class high budget movie a lot of the time. Is it better than the original game? Maybe, maybe not. It does some things worse, some things much better, the original game did have a lot of things that frustrated me, I would say if you beat the original game, this is then also a must play.
7/10
No comments:
Post a Comment