Mafia: Definitive Edition review – a generous remake that still shows some age
Wailing jazz on the radio. Sumptuous, glossy cars on the road. Opportunity in Tommy Angelo’s eyes. There are times, in Mafia: Definitive Edition, where you might wonder if the Great Depression was really so bad after all. Such is the luxury and imbalance of Hangar 13’s remake, a top-to-bottom effort that is at times gorgeous – to look at, to listen to, to be in, to play – but more often muddy, never quite knowing what it is, or really getting the more dated of Mafia 2002’s ideas out of its own way. The result is a compellingly awkward, sort of doubly-effective flashback to another time.
Mafia: Definitive Edition reviewDeveloper: Hangar 13Publisher: 2KPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out 25th September on PC, PS4 and Xbox One
Much of the original Mafia has changed. Lost Haven, Illinois, the definitely-not-Chicago in which Mafia’s set, has been drastically reimagined. Headline changes include taller skyscrapers to be more true-to-era; re-directed roads to vary up your journeys; re-designed districts like Chinatown and an entirely new, rural region to the north of the city. And it’s a devilishly pretty thing, when it wants to be: neon signs refracting across its storm-washed streets at night, sunlight off the glistening chrome of those good ol’ classic automobiles, beings of themselves, all roaring, phallic engines, screeching tires and erotic curves.
Mafia: Definitive Edition – Coming September 25 Watch on YouTube
And I could talk forever about that radio. A wondrous device, carrying the weight of this game’s world on its back and jabbing at the heart of the decade’s contradictions, the carnalism of the ’30s that rubbed against the puritannical. Mafia’s is a world built on hypocrisy, built through the Weimar-esque bursts of mid-depression creativity that were swing and dancing jazz that blare, between imperious political decrees and preaching reports, from police chiefs, governors, presidents, lecturing on citizens’ own responsibility for rising crime. We talk of world-building often, but it’s rarely done like this. Rare that you sink into a world solely through its actual, environmental sounds, and again so rare that it’s through sounds, the crooners over the car’s speakers and of their horns. Even then, you hear swing and jazz in a video game and think ‘apocalypse’, dead worlds and rotten cultures, thanks to Fallout or Bioshock or the like. Mafia’s sounds give life.
But just as Mafia: Definitive Edition can sing at the right moment, you can also catch it rather flat, with technical snags and ageing tendencies dragging you out of the world. Much has been made of the new views you can drink in, thanks to the game’s more “varied topography”, as publisher 2K puts it, but at distance detail can be poor and skylines washed out. This extends beyond the environment, with faces stunningly drawn and animated in Mafia’s many cutscenes, then often plasticky-smooth and dated as you walk about town.
Performance, too, putting my amateur Digital Foundry hat on for just a moment (they’ll be along with a much more sophisticated analysis than mine soon, fear not), is also a little wobbly, the issue not the frame rate but some other kind of relentless stutter, as though the world itself is struggling to load in as you pass through it at any kind of speed. It means driving – when you’re not sitting, listening, drinking-in – can be a nightmare, especially on anything below the recommended specs, as consistent, fraction-of-a-second freezes and hiccups make it hard to really nail a turn (on a PC a shade under those specs the game crashed, twice, on opening, and driving was impossible; on a slightly more powerful one the troubles reduced to bearable, if you don’t mind a perpetual headache).
