Back in the saddle.
By Ameer Ammar
Mafia The Old Country is a game that I've been looking forward to for a very long time, ever since Hangar 13 knocked it out of the park with their great remake of Mafia 1, I have been looking forward to see just how they will continue this long running beloved franchise and a prequel to the entire trilogy was a surprising decision that I instantly fell in love with, I was super excited to experience that "vibe" that comes from anything set in Sicily, especially with the time period Mafia The Old Country picks which is the beginning of the 20th century.
So far, about a quarter into Mafia The Old Country's ~12 hours runtime, it has met all my expectations, Mafia as a franchise has always had servicable gameplay just good enough to keep you going with a fantastic well-written narrative that can make or break the entire experience, the franchise is always at its best when it focuses on that story and Mafia TOC so far is exactly that, A narrative-driven experience that goes from one mission to the other without any breaks, it really does feel like watching a really good mob TV show from the 2000s.
I was most surprised by the pace this game takes, previous Mafia games don't take very long to get you into that Mafioso gameplay but The Old Country is very deliberate with its pacing, it takes hours before you even get to shoot your first gun, instead, there's a strong focus on Knife combat which in the previews looked awkward but now that I've gotten to play it, it actually feels pretty good to play, with a proper dodge and parry system so you aren't just spamming the attack button.
I am really excited to see where the narrative goes, Enzo so far has been a fascinating protagoinst and the story has really taken its sweet time setting up the side cast and teasing some big twists down the road, for now, I am just really happy Mafia as a franchise is finally back and doing something new again and I am excited to keep playing this game.
On performance, Playing on the PS5 Pro the Quality Mode seems to be holding a ~40 FPS mark with VRR while Performance Mode is going 70+, my main disappointment is that Mafia TOC doesn't utilize any form of PSSR which means Perforamnce Mode looks pretty blurry by this system's standards, a post-launch patch adding PSSR or any other form of upscaling such as FSR3 is greatly needed as this mode's base resolution is simply not good enough.
There is also some level of traversal stutter common in Unreal Engine 5 open-world games, and reports are that the PC version of this has issues as well which I recommend looking into before diving into this game on PC.
For now, I am impressed with Mafia The Old Country especially at its $50 price tag, Look forward to my review when I finish this game.