HIGH An exceptional narrative. 

LOW Technical issues.

WTF Learning new curse words in Italian!

It’s impossible to deny that Hangar 13’s Mafia series has strong, cinematic aspirations. While many narrative-focused titles pull from popular films, there’s a distinct feeling that in the case of Mafia, the clichéd sentiment of “it feels like I’m playing through a movie” really makes sense. 

The strength of each iteration in this long-running franchise (spanning two decades and four console generations) has always been the writing, presentation, and immersive worlds. As a fan of crime films, I’ve enjoyed playing through each successive release, pointing out obvious parallels between the games and movies that inspired them. From the clear callbacks to Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas in Mafia II to the ’60s/’70s motifs in Mafia III, the series is a pastiche of the best mob movie tropes wrapped around some of the best writing videogames has to offer. 

The latest entry, Mafia: The Old Country, continues the pedigree by taking players back to the origins of the Sicilian Mafia. Set in the early 1900s, this third-person action-adventure has players controlling Enzo Favara on his rise from indentured sulfur mine worker to a bona fide member of Don Bernardo Torrisi’s crime family. His journey is one marred by bloodshed and the pursuit of vengeance, with loyalty to both the family and his closest friends tested throughout the roughly 12-hour campaign. 

Narratively, it’s almost unsurprising how well-written The Old Country is. It’s a gripping and mature tale that echoes the best mob films, especially the opening to The Godfather Part II. It hits all the major points that most crime films seem to hit, but it’s acted and told so well that I was engaged the whole time. 

Enzo himself is a fascinating character, echoing the likes of Robert De Niro’s character in Once Upon a Time in America or other notable tragic figures like Michael Corleone. There’s complexity in his journey, and the performance is strong. Other characters like Don Torrisi or his underboss, Luca, add to an already-rich story. 

This narrative is helped by excellent presentation throughout, ranging from exceptional character models to cutscene cinematography that furthers the idea that this is interactive crime drama. Cutscenes are presented with black bars above and below the screen to give a more cinematic feel. 

Those who have played earlier Mafia titles will feel right at home with the gameplay loop of the Old Country. Seen from a third-person perspective, The Old Country is a mostly linear and script-driven experience. Rather than focusing on a large, interactive open world that can be explored, the story is confined to a mission-based structure, which works. The change in structure allows for a more focused experience, with little filler slowing it down. 

The world itself is gorgeously rendered, with an amazing-looking Italian countryside. While focused on scripted sequences, there are some free-roaming areas that players can drive between or ride through on horseback. The world feels lived-in and real, and despite no gameplay incentives to explore aside from a few collectibles and bits of lore.

The snappy and responsive third-person shooting returns, with every shot feeling heavy and impactful. Snapping to cover and popping my head out to land a few hits on enemies was satisfying, and each gun has the expected pros and cons, like shotguns packing a bigger punch but being effective only at short range, while distance rifles feel unwieldy up close.

The biggest change to combat, however, is Enzo’s knife. Many missions require Enzo to use stealth, with players given the option to choke enemies out or quickly stab them to avoid detection. Knives can lose sharpness after use after silencing enemies or opening locked doors, so I appreciated this light resource management forcing me to choose when a knife was necessary.

Missions offer much variety, with some focusing on stealth and some that go loud and culminating in car chases throughout Sicily. One early highlight had me go on a collection run, picking up money that tenants across the map owed. One of the interactions tasked me with holding an unloaded gun on someone to force them to pay up, while another offered a firefight against bandits who were stealing from a farmer who’d already paid his protection money. There are plenty of great situations throughout the campaign, many mirroring iconic moments in mob films. 

My one major caveat about this otherwise-excellent experience is the presence of glitches. There was nothing game-breaking, but I noticed weird inconsistencies like enemies sliding through environments, audio cutting out abruptly in cutscenes, and NPCs clipping through objects. It’s a little immersion-breaking, but it didn’t ruin the experience.

Like the best crime films, Mafia: The Old Country succeeds thanks to a complex and dark tale of revenge and familial ties. It’s a short, yet satisfying ride, and Enzo’s tale is easily one of the best of the year. While some may lament the lack of an open world, the narrative and solid gameplay delivered by the developers makes this an offer no one should refuse. 

Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Buy Mafia: The Old Country — PC — PS — XB 

Disclosures: This game is published by 2K and developed by Hangar 13. It is available on PC, XBX/S, and PS5. This copy was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PS5. Approximately 12 hours were spent in single-player, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes and Use of Alcohol . According to the site: This is an action-adventure game in which players follow the story of Enzo Favara’s ascension through a Mafia family in 1905 Sicily. Players engage in various criminal activities (e.g., extortion, theft, murder) at the behest of the Mafia. Some missions can involve using knives, pistols, rifles, shotguns, and explosives to kill enemy rivals and bandits. Combat is accompanied by realistic gunfire and cries of pain. Blood-splatter effects occur as enemies are killed; blood pools are depicted under bodies. Players can also employ stealth takedowns (e.g., throat slitting, stabbing from behind) to kill enemies discreetly. A handful of story sequences require players to execute characters at close range in order to progress. Cutscenes also depict intense acts of violence and/or gore: characters shot in the head; a man’s throat slit at close range; a bound man in a chair beaten to death; a character’s finger sliced off. The game contains some suggestive material: women escorting men inside a brothel; a man tied to a bed by two women inside the brothel; dialogue such as “I found them still in the whorehouse an hour ago” and “Give me…more vino and all the lovely boobies.” During the course of the game, players’ character can consume alcohol and drive while under the influence. The word “f**k” is heard in the game.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are not present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are plenty of visual cues during gameplay, like indicators to let players know where enemies are around them, as well as when they are shooting. HUD elements can be adjusted in the menu. Subtitles are present and can be resized. As no audio cues are needed for gameplay, I’d say this is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: The controls cannot be remapped, but there is a diagram.

The post Mafia: The Old Country Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

In this king-sized episode, Carlos & Brad cover:

The Talos Principle II
Gangs of Sherwood
SteamWorld Build
Dusk
Astral Ascent
Mafia 1 & 2
The Invincible
Far Cry Primal… and more!

ALSO!!!!

After the credits, we also have a spoiler section focused on the endgame sequence and endings of Cyberpunk 2077. We give a pretty hefty spoiler warning before we get into it, but here’s a heads up!

You can also hear the show on iTunes and Spotify!

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

The post SVG 365: Strawberry Views Cow appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Interlocking systems that generate drama.

LOW Deep-seated anxiety on whether a gang likes me.

WTF A mortician gangster — handy!

For anyone trying to get into Empire of Sin and doing so on a console, I have two pieces of advice. First, ignore half the info on the screen for a while. Most of it seems there just to give players high blood pressure. My second piece of advice? Al Capone can eat it.

Empire of Sin is a combination of turn-based strategy ala XCOM mixed with the base and resource management related to expanding a Chicago mobster’s empire.

At the start of the campaign, the player is invited to select from 14 diverse gangsters based on real-life criminals of the period, each with their own backstory, personality, and abilities. I started with Salazar Reyna who comes from LA with a past that suggests he killed everyone associated with him, and his matching special lets him rain bullets on everyone within a specific circle. The other choices are equally interesting and they all have over-the-top framing.

In the early days, the player starts small by taking over vacant lots from thugs and turning them into Speakeasies, Casinos, Hotels, Brothels and Breweries to boosting their income. Notably, it is worth focusing on synergies between these businesses (hotels near brothels is advantageous in some situations, for example) as it will boost the cash earned.

Expansion of the empire will quickly lead to brushing up against other personalities, be they well-known mugs like Capone, or others such as Daniel McKee Jackson — a gentleman mortician with an awesome top hat.

At this point the player is expected to deal with diplomacy, offering peace pacts, trade agreements, and so on. Much of this is decided by the personalities of the gangsters and how the player responds. For example, if a sit-down invitation is ignored or a pact is broken, a rival is less likely to want anything to do with you. Peace is different in regard to non-aggression — some people that aren’t peaceful may actually still go to war with you if they hate someone else. Similarly, buying things from them, offering good deals, or just sheer desperation can make another boss more amenable. When diplomacy fails, it means war.

The turn-based combat offers the standard genre conventions of action points, specials and overwatch requirements, but a delight is that combat isn’t relegated to missions — a fight can break out while a patrol walks down the street, for example.

Enhancing the combat is that characters the player can hire have stats that can be upgraded, weapons and armor that can be equipped, and relationships that develop over the course of a playthrough. They’ll fall in love, develop rivalries, unlock traits, and can even die and be lost permanently for the rest of the playthrough.

In total it’s a lot to manage, and all of these things overlapping in the opening hours can be disorienting. The information to process comes in quickly as well — I frequently saw notifications that a faction liked me, then seconds later it would inform me that my standing with that same faction had dropped. Part of playing successfully is figuring out when information is important and when it’s not, and once that was managed, I was fully engaged. However, all of these systems were simultaneously too complicated and too simple.

The relationship meter, as just stated, inundates the player with fluctuating standings, but I found it best to ignore it most of the time. Setting up trades and peace pacts also seems important, but those are frequently broken, with little insight into why.

The economy looks like there’s a lot to be tweaked in order to make every business more lucrative, but on the default settings I almost entirely ignored fiddling with it and my income — even at my worst — outstripped my rivals.

In combat there are plenty of options, and I was happy that I could auto-resolve fights that I was likely to win or obviously going to lose. However, when the enemy attacks an establishment, players must battle it out. Later in the campaign this can mean having to stop every five minutes to partake in a fight I know I can’t win. Worse, the game doesn’t always give context for where fights occur, making it hard to figure out if I should try and retake a venue or ignore it as an acceptable loss.

These issues are all a shame, because when Empire of Sin is firing on all cylinders it feels great to set up deals with one gangster so that I could double cross another, and then torch both their venues to bring them to their knees. I also loved turning someone against an ally, only to side with the ally before stomping them out of a neighborhood I wanted.

In moments like this, Empire of Sin often caused me to stay up late to see how a vendetta would play out. Unfortunately, despite all of its ambition, it feels like some areas still need work. I hope the developers keep polishing this title or at least carry some of these learnings into a sequel — despite the problems, it’s often as intoxicating as the bootleg hooch the characters sell.

Disclosures: This game is developed by Romero Games and published by Paradox Interactive. It is currently available on XBO, XBX/S, PS4, Switch, PC, and Mac. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the XBO, and XBX/S. Approximately 50 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Alcohol Reference, Blood, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, and Violence. The official ESRb description reads as follows: This is a strategy game in which players assume the role of an underworld crime boss in 1920s Prohibition-era Chicago. From a top-down perspective, players build and upgrade illegal rackets (e.g., breweries, brothels, speakeasies) while managing their crew and outmaneuvering/attacking rivals. Fighting sequences are turn-based, with players selecting movements/attacks from a menu; characters use firearms (e.g., pistols, machine guns, rifles), as well as knives, brass knuckles, and nail bats to kill enemy thugs. Fights are highlighted by blood-splatter effects, gunfire, and cries of pain. During combat scenes, players can choose to execute enemies, resulting in brief cutscenes that show characters getting shot in the head, beaten, or having their throats cut. The game contains some sexual material: brothels in which workers walk around in lingerie/boxers while chatting with customers; dialogue and game text containing sexual references (e.g., “What would I care about what some sex-crazed priest has to say…”; “After the discovery that the sex toys…haven’t been sanitized as well as they could be, the public seems to be avoiding your establishment”; “[Character] has spent too much time idle in a brothel and has acquired an STD.” A predominant theme in the game is the production of alcohol during the Prohibition era: players can own breweries; trade alcohol and purchase it in the black market; own speakeasies, upgrading types of alcohol served; order drinks from bartenders; have character traits such as “drunk” or “alcoholic.” The words “f**k” and “sh*t” appear in the dialogue.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are present.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles can be altered and/ or resized. The game is fully playable without sound and no audio cues are needed for successful gameplay. This game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

The post Empire Of Sin Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

I originally planned to go all-out and include some superlatives and other categories for this list. After some pondering, I would rather keep it simple but sincere. I mean, that’s basically been my M.O. for the past 9 months I’ve been writing at GameCritics. 

So, I’ll start this off with a quick story. 

Back in January of 2020, I took the Metrorail to Downtown Miami to meet up with So…Video Games co-host and collaborator Carlos Rodela. Two months later, after really struggling to find my place in the gaming industry, I emailed the editor for GameCritics on a whim. The first line in the response I got back was: “Hey CJ! Thanks for writing in. You’re the guy that Carlos met up with a while ago, yes?”

In a way, I owe whatever success or joy to Carlos. Because of that encounter, I have about 39 pieces up on the site, with at least four more in the queue. Every single time I see my byline or a blurb I wrote appear on Metacritic, my mood instantly lights up. Writing for GameCritics has not only given me a chance to put myself out there, It’s also introduced me to some of the greatest friends, collaborators and mentors I’ll ever know. It’s become my new home, and I couldn’t be happier. 

With that said, choosing my favorite games of the year is a daunting task. This was the first time I’ve played more than 10 *new* releases in any given year, so I had a lot to work with and a lot to cut out.

That means the likes of Rogue Company, 9 Monkeys of Shaolin, Twin Mirror, Art Sqool, West of Dead and Five Dates did not make my final list.

Games like Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Hades, Immortals Fenyx Rising, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Astro’s Playroom and Spider-Man: Miles Morales all fall into a separate category of games I need to put more time into. There are only so many hours in a day, people. 

The only rule I have for my list is that the game needed to come out in 2020 and could not be a remaster (though remakes are allowed, to qualify one special game).

These are my favorite games of the year.

10. Mafia: Definitive Edition PS4, XBOX, PC (my review)

It’s rare for me to love a game simply on the merits of its writing and performances, but Mafia Definitive Edition is basically The Godfather of video games — it’s a sprawling and dark story of betrayal and the importance of family. Tommy Angelo’s tale is a beautifully tragic one and seeing it all play out was like watching some of the best mob dramas ever put to screen. If people continue to compare games to film, I hope Mafia DE is brought up in those conversations.

9. New Super Lucky’s Tale PS4, XBO, Switch, PC (my review)

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again — I miss the budget platformers of the PS2 era, so New Super Lucky’s Tale is a delightful romp that never failed to put a smile on my face by harkening back to a simpler time. Its adorable protagonist and accessible approach to platforming, exploration, and combat made it one of the most enjoyable experiences I had all year. It’s comfort food in videogame form, and in a year as dreadful as 2020, it’s something we could all use. 

8. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla PS4, PS5, XBO, XBX/S, Switch, PC, Stadia (my review)

I played this on PS4, and it ran significantly worse than the versions released on the new consoles. It wasn’t too bad because I still enjoyed the exploration and combat, but now that I’ve played it on PS5, I’m happy to report that AC Vahalla is one of the greatest open-world games I’ve played all year and among my new favorites in the series. Exploring gorgeously-crafted England as a Viking warrior on a much more powerful machine made it feel like a brand new experience, and I’m happy to dump even more time into this massive world.

7. Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 PS4, PS5, XBO, XBX/S, Switch, PC (my review)

I’m still playing this and it might be the reason I’m unemployed. I’ve spent well over 25 hours in Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 since I started in late November, and this addicting puzzler is what got me into Tetris, a series I always assumed I was too awful at to even try playing competently. I’d say more but I’m too busy trying to beat my own high score. 

6. Call of Duty: Warzone PS4,PS5, XBO, XBX/S, PC (my review)

While 2020’s main Call of Duty release disappointed me, the battle-royale spinoff released in March is probably the greatest multiplayer experience of the year. Building upon the foundation of 2019’s Modern Warfare with a massive map featuring 100 players was a smart move by Activision, and streamlining most BR elements made it one of the best to jump into regularly. It’s rare for me to play one game for months on end, but the thrill of Warzone’s play and trying hard to win with a group of friends made this my go-to online experience of 2020. 

5. Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time PS4, XBO (my review)

Thank the gods that Activision released more than one game this year, and one of them was a wonderful triple-A platformer. Crash 4 is a delight through and through, bringing one of gaming’s greatest mascots back to the spotlight he deserves. While I admit that the difficulty spikes were wild and I will probably never attempt to 100% this game, I can safely say it was nice to see a major studio bring this style of play back. 

4. Doom Eternal PS4, PS5, XBO, XBX/S, Switch, PC, Stadia (Mike Suskie’s original review)

I think a running theme in this list (and my reviews overall) is that I love games with simple mechanics or straightforward gameplay elements. It’s why I gravitate towards experiences like Burnout Paradise or Devil May Cry 5. I love games where the act of playing them is more than enough to satisfy me, and where forward momentum is the goal. Doom Eternal’s non-stop barrage of action checks off so many boxes that other triple-A games don’t while reminding me that not every major release needs to tell much of a story to be great. 

I wasn’t exploring massive worlds, filling out an obnoxious checklist, or making dialogue choices that didn’t matter here. Instead, I was killing demons in the most entertaining ways possible. I got into a comfortable groove of shooting, hacking up grotesque monsters with a chainsaw, and occasionally cracking skulls. Doom Eternal isn’t just a great shooter, it’s one of the greatest action games ever made.

3. Going Under PS4, XBO, Switch, PC (my review)

In my initial review of Going Under, I said that this roguelike dungeon-crawler was one of the most important games I had played in all of 2020. Now, unemployed once again, I still resonate with protagonist Jackie in her quest to do everything in her power to secure a job through an unpaid internship. 

Going Under’s writing is painfully hilarious, parodying start-up culture and the bullshit people go through in trying to work for a field they’re passionate about. Playing a game set in an office and having to do things over and over again for very little reward resonated a bit too well with me. It’s rare that a game *gets* me as well as this one does. I don’t know what 2021 holds for me as far as employment in the games industry, but I’m happy to know my experience and the experience of others is being told in a unique way. 

2. Fuser PS4, XBO, Switch, PC (my review)

Harmonix is a studio I hold near and dear, and I’ve spent hundreds of hours across Rock Band, Rock Band 2, The Beatles Rock Band, and Lego Rock Band. Getting the chance to play their latest title, Fuser, felt like taking a peek at the next step in music games. Being able to take different parts of songs and create weird and interesting mixes never got old. The Freestyle mode was a huge time sink for me, allowing me to combine the vocals from Erasure’s A Little Respect and the beat from Grandmaster Flash’s The Message to craft the greatest synthpop song never released. 

Sure, some could argue that the ‘game’ part of Fuser isn’t terribly deep and the career mode acts as an extended tutorial with very little variation, but the actual toolset that players are given to mess around with is unlike anything I’ve played this year. It’s always nice to see innovators continue to innovate. 

1. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 PS4, XBO, PC (Brad Bortone’s original review)

2020 sucked. That’s no secret. A global pandemic had completely changed most of our lives for the worse, police brutality and state-sanctioned murders of POC are becoming the norm and I was (and still am) dealing with my own personal issues. It was not a good time, and I fear 2021 might get worse. Regardless, the one beacon of light in one of the darkest years came in the form of the world’s greatest nostalgia trip. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 brought back a style of gameplay I had missed for years and distracted me from the horrors of the real world in ways no other game could. 

I felt like I was six years old again, playing through Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 for hours on end. The rush of skating around levels, collecting SKATE letters, and landing insane combos has never felt better. This is the greatest remake I’ve ever played and arguably the best game Activision released this generation. While the past 365 days have been less than stellar, those first few hours I spent playing THPS 1+2 on launch night were the happiest I had been in ages. For a brief moment, I pretended I was Superman and it was amazing. 

*

The post CJ’s Overly-Sentimental Top 10 Of 2020 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH The quiet scenes when Tommy talks to Sarah.

LOW Noticeable glitches. Also, I suck at driving.

WTF This game had me craving whiskey.

Mafia: Definitive Edition opens differently than most action-adventure games. This remake of the original from 2002 isn’t trying to impress with flashy action sequences or copious amounts of exposition, nor are players walking through a tutorial that explains its third-person shooting mechanics. Instead, it opens with a nervous wreck of a man pleading for his life.

Cabbie-turned-mobster Tomas Angelo sits in a diner waiting for Detective Norman to arrive. Tired of constantly looking over his shoulder, he wants to broker a protection deal and tells his rags-to-riches story, detailing the events of 1930-1938.

Taking place in the fictional city of Lost Heaven (modeled after prohibition-era Chicago) players control Angelo through 20 chapters. Mission structure is fairly basic but enjoyable, as they’ll generally shoot their way through corridors or occasionally act as a getaway driver after large-scale heists. Developer Hangar 13 used Mafia III’s engine and structure here, meaning that the shooting feels updated and significantly better than the recent Mafia II: DE.

Yes, this is standard stuff that’s been done countless times in other games, but it still works pretty well and firefights are satisfying – I loved firing my one-handed shotgun from the hip or throwing molotov cocktails onto unsuspecting enemies.

While the basics are basic, Mafia‘s variety comes from the missions themselves. One of my favorite moments takes place on a farm where a whiskey sale is about to go down, but all hell breaks loose instead. It’s a perfectly-paced, phenomenal sequence of events with a linear structure keeping the action tight. Other great moments include trying to get businesses to pay their protection money, fighting a group of gang members messing with Tommy’s girlfriend, and even rigging a car to explode — these are typical mob movie beats, but they were immersive.

On the other hand, Mafia‘s driving missions aren’t nearly as good as the rest – in fact, they became the bane of my existence.

One such was where Angelo had to compete in a race, and I had to replay the mission a few times because the driving felt way too loose — perhaps it was due to using a period-accurate car? In any event, the race was annoying and I had to change the difficulty to Easy to remedy the problem.

While on the subject of difficulty, it should be noted that Hangar 13 has added several options that make Mafia more accessible besides general difficulty, including letting players skip any unnecessary driving between missions and offering a choice between an automatic or manual driving style.

The saga of the Salieri crime family (as told by Angelo) is paved in bloodshed and betrayal. The writing is strong, but the performances are even stronger. Lines are delivered authentically, with both voice performances and facial capture feeling believable. Seeing Tommy hesitate to answer his wife, Sarah, when she presses him about work-related issues is unlike anything I’ve seen in a game of this type, and it’s little things like this that elevate Mafia from a simple crime story to being a truly cinematic experience – a simple scene where two people sit on a couch in silence is one of the greatest moments in a game this year.

While the foot missions are great and the driving can be mitigated, the real star of Mafia is the story. If the exuberance and hedonism of Mafia II can be compared with Martin Scorse’s Goodfellas, Mafia’s somber tale of family is closer to Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.

With such high quality on display, each cutscene felt like the next installment of a serialized crime show, and it kept me hooked. Special props go to voice actor Glenn Taranto for his work as crime boss Don Salieri. He’s cold and calculating, but also inviting in a strange way. His performance is among the greatest I’ve seen in any game, and Angelo’s voice actor and facial capture model Andrew Bongiorno echoes a young Robert De Niro.

Now, at this point I need to temper my praise with a few caveats.

For one, Mafia has quite a few technical issues that could break the experience for others, although it didn’t dampen my own personal enjoyment – things like crashes, a strange audio bug that amplified voices of the characters but muted all other sound effects, or finding my car floating in mid-air, among others.

Also, like I mentioned before, the gameplay is fairly generic and I would imagine that players tired of linear third-person action games will try it and groan, but to them I say that Mafia is truly about the story. This is a linear shooter through and through, but it gets the job done where it matters most.

Mafia: Definitive Edition takes an old title and adds polish in the places where it counts most – story and character – while delivering a solid experience in most other aspects. The driving isn’t great and there are a few bugs that need to be squashed, but diving into this wonderfully tragic tale is an offer that no one should refuse.

Disclosures: This game is published by 2K Games and developed by Hangar 13.  It is available on PS4, PC and XBO. This copy was obtained via publisher and was reviewed on PS4. Approximately 12 hours were spent in single-player and the game was completed. There is no multiplayer.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M for Blood, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, and Strong Language. The official ESRB description reads as follows: This is an action-adventure game in which players assume the role of a Prohibition-era gangster (Tommy Angelo) rising through the ranks of a crime family. From a third-person perspective, players engage in a variety of crime-related missions: hits/assassinations, shootouts, racketeering, robberies. Players can engage in melee combat using their fists as well as weapons (e.g., bats, pipes, knives) to kill enemies; several missions involve gun battles with realistic firearms (e.g., pistols, rifles, machine guns). Melee attacks and gun fighting result in large splatters of blood, with corpses seen in pools of blood. Finishing moves during melee fights can depict characters smashing enemies’ faces, or stabbing enemies in the chest repeatedly. Cutscenes also depict intense acts of violence: a man shot in the head at close range; wounded/restrained men shot to death. During the course of the game, players can engage in a mission set in a brothel; prostitutes are depicted wearing lingerie as they speak suggestively to players (e.g., “…[W]e can do whatever you want.”). Sexual moaning sounds can be heard during one cutscene. The game contains brief references to drugs in the dialogue, and one mission depicts a crate full of drug packages. The words “f**k,” “sh*t,” and “a*shole” appear in dialogue.

Colorblind Modes: Colorblind modes are not present in the options menu.

Deaf and Hard of Hearing Gamers: All dialogue is subtitled and there are no audio cues required to enjoy the game. subs resizable/changeable?

Remappable Controls: No, the controls are not remappable, but there is a control diagram.The y-axis can be changed.

The post Mafia: Definitive Edition Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

In this episode, Carlos goes retro and is NOT happy with the results.

Titles covered:
>The Mafia Trilogy: Remastered (PS4)
>Dungeon of the Endless (Switch)
>Saints Row III: Remastered (PS4)
>Turmoil: the Heat is On (Switch)

Plus, listener Q&A and more!

Also, you can now watch animated clips from our podcast here!

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to SoVideogamesPODCAST (at) gmail (dot) com, or post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

The post So… Videogames! Ep. 182 appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

HIGH Eddie and Joe singing along drunkenly to "Return to me" in the car.

LOW The preceding half-hour, during which they vomit constantly.

WTF I failed one mission because the guy I was tailing ran into a taxi of his own accord.

Another crime story features another immigrant. Will he ascend the ranks of a criminal organization on the backs of a hundred bullet-riddled bodies? Will he carry out a series of missions for his bosses, each of which goes FUBAR? Will he rise to riches at the cost of friends and family, and ultimately come to regret his decisions in life? Mafia II answers those questions in precisely the way you expect. Now, you lucky fellow, you can skip playing the game.

Mafia II follows the criminal career of glass-jawed immigrant Vito Scaletta, who comes to the city of Empire Bay as a child and grows up to become its greatest mass murderer. In the space of about nine months as a free man, he kills his way through four major criminal organizations, plus a few assorted street gangs and couple dozen cops. He also finds time to sample conversations and events that loosely paraphrase whatever great crime or prison movie can be shoehorned into his plot. Mafia II is strictly rewarmed leftovers, repeating themes and plot points you've encountered a dozen times already in films that had better presentation and much better writing.

This isn't to say that the presentation is poor. The city of Empire Bay is beautifully crafted, the cut-scenes are rendered with great care and attention to detail, and the voice actors almost universally deliver fine performances. But Mafia II, though it's a strong effort, cannot rival film in visual or emotional fidelity. The limited expressiveness of the character models makes them unable to support Mafia II's slow fizzle of a story, or to imbue the game's more subtle sequences with the necessary emotional punch.

The problem is most acute when it comes to Vito himself. Games have featured blood-spattered sociopaths before and will again, but this man seems curiously passive about his killing sprees. He plugs gangsters with the furious intensity of a man sorting the mail, yet late in the game he agonizes, without apparent irony, over whether or not to sell drugs. That kind of incoherence can be supported, but the writing and the visuals never rise to the occasion.

It is telling that the scenes of the game that resonated most with me all took place during conversations in the car or on the phone, when I could not see the person speaking. I often felt that Mafia II would have been better as a radio drama.

Characters end up talking in the car a lot because the gameplay focuses so greatly on driving that I occasionally forgot Vito had a gun. Generally, the driving isn't really integrated into the mission; it's just insisted on by a structure that tries to compensate for the game's lack of true open-world character by sending you on a tour of the city in every chapter. Mafia II goes to laughable lengths to get you to drive, whether it makes sense for the story or not.

We're taking Joe's car? You're driving. Marty's the getaway driver? You're driving. Henry shows up at your house and wants to take you for a drink in his car? You're driving, a very long way, in a finicky vehicle, through a city with very little regular grid structure, alongside AI drivers who can't seem to negotiate a turn at a green light.

Fortunately you can pass right by most of it, as the cops seem not to notice minor infractions like running red lights, driving on the wrong side of the road, or chasing a speeding limousine while your best friend leans out your window peppering it with bullets from his Tommy gun. Heaven help you, though, if you speed where the cops can see you, or accidentally bump into the back of yet another car that interprets a green light as a signal to stop dead in its tracks, because they will try to take you out.

Getting out of your vehicle does little to improve the situation. Mafia II too frequently relies on a clunky boxing mode with a control scheme too simple to allow for strategic play, but with fights so unforgiving that I longed for it. I had particular trouble getting the camera to where I could see what was going on in these fights for more than ten seconds, and the game constantly fought my efforts to maneuver the camera in tight quarters.

Although I didn't enjoy a minute of them, I found the presence of the fistfights interesting, as I did the game's occasional depiction of gangster drudgery–including an extended sequence in which you must choose the right cigarettes from the boxes in the back of your truck. Although it's difficult to accept subtlety from a game that asks you to look at some breasts every fifteen minutes, one can almost sense a desire to create a realist mob drama in this effort to flesh out criminal activities other than gunplay.

When the guns come out, of course, the bodies pile up into mountains and that sensation vanishes. In its gunfights Mafia II shows off a solid, if unremarkable, cover-shooting system with regenerating health to compensate for Vito's papier-mâché body and the enemy's dead-eye aim. Levels are designed with copious, naturalistic cover, although often I found it difficult to tell just by looking whether or not a given object would leave me vulnerable. Some cover proved to be surprisingly destructible or porous, and in other cases Vito would lose health seemingly just because bullets were hitting something near him. The AI also showed an occasional tendency to charge, a tactic that proved successful because I couldn't get the camera or reticule to keep up with them.

The shootouts also showcase Mafia II's irritating collectibles, the anachronistic Playboy magazines, which end the surprisingly brief reign of Alan Wake's coffee thermoses as the worst collectible ever placed in a game. What exactly is the concept here? Is Vito going to rub one out while Joe and Henry exchange gunfire with the Tongs? It feels a little more sensible when you find one outside of battle, laying around somebody's apartment or office, but frankly, the Playboy pics come across as nothing more than a craven and desperate ploy to sell the game on the basis of T&A.

In defense of its presence, the collectible pornography perfectly suits the game's misogynistic male characters, who treat women as disposable playthings. If a woman shows up in the game, it is to serve as a sex object or a proximal cause for Vito to punch someone in the face (or both). The men in this game don't appear to have serious relationships, or even serious conversations, with women. Hilariously, although it's willing to shove breasts in your face in the middle of a shootout, Mafia II is so terrified of the male form that it depicts men wearing boxer shorts during a shower scene and an attempted homosexual rape. The game's sexual mores seem to have been precisely engineered to appeal to teenage douchebags who have no idea how to interact with an actual female human being and an unholy terror of accidentally seeing a penis.

There is a trace of a worthwhile game here, one that emphasized the drudgery and tedium of organized crime, which would have played out in beautiful irony against Vito's fantasies of an exciting life, money, and power. That game might not have been any fun either, but unlike Mafia II it would have at least been original and intriguing. Instead, those elements have been interspersed with maniacally escapist shootouts and pornography, and shoehorned into a story stitched together from the corpses of a dozen better gangster and prison movies. Mafia II is every bit as soulless and dull as its bland sociopathic protagonist. Rating: 3.5 out of 10.

Disclosures: This game was obtained via retail store and reviewed on the Xbox 360. Approximately 12 hours of play was devoted to single-player modes (completed 1 time).

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game contains blood, intense violence, nudity, sexual content, strong language, and use of drugs and alcohol. A man is hacked to death with butcher knives. Men drink too much and, aided by the stench of a decaying body on a summer's day, they vomit. A man infiltrates a slaughterhouse through a sewer and is showered in excrement. A woman fellates a man and shortly after he calls her a "f–king c*m dumpster." Even by the standards of video games, Mafia II's content is especially cruel, vile, and misogynistic. Do not buy this game for your children, or even any adults you happen to like.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing: Subtitles are available and there are no essential audio cues. However, the music on the radio is an essential component of the era aesthetic and the game will be less impressive without it.

The post Mafia II Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.

Since the days of Al Capone and Elliot Ness, America has had a fascination with the mafia. La Cosa Nostra has reached the point of iconic status in this country, not far removed from the cowboy–don't believe me? Check out popular entertainment…there are a lot more films and TV shows out there about gangsters these days than there are cowboys.

Why the morally conservative American culture has such a fascination with immigrant crime bosses of Italian descent both fictional and historical (Tony Soprano, John Gotti, Don Corleone, et al.) is not something I can explain. I suspect the reasons are similar to the Japanese interest in their own Yakuza, though–in a regimented and moral society, we all dream of breaking out of the constraints and taking control of our own destiny. That we get to feed our violent impulses in the process is the veritable icing on the cake.

Whatever the reasons, there's no denying that the Mafia, a distinctly Italian organization, has become a part of the American collective consciousness. The Sopranos, The Godfather, and Goodfellas all seem to bear that out. Now though, the Italian crime families are moving on to new turf–the videogame. Illusion Softworks' Mafia is one of the latest entries in this fledgling genre.

Mafia on the Xbox is a port of the infinitely superior PC version (as was the PlayStation 2 release). And while a PC-to-Xbox port should be a generally good conversion (given the similarities in architecture), the port of Mafia is a tragedy. The console version of this title pales in comparison to the PC original in almost every way imaginable.

Graphically, the game is bland. The PC release had a lush and vibrant world that appeared almost alive with sharp lighting affects, a smooth frame-rate, great textures, and a decent draw distance–none of these things make it to the Xbox.

The Xbox port is flat, clunky, and sports the textures of a Dreamcast-era game. The frame-rate is all over the place, the lighting is dull, and the end result is a world that looks almost two-dimensional. What was once vibrant and alive on the PC has become more akin to one of those film set western towns–all façade with no real depth.

About the only things that look good in the game are the character models in cutscenes and the game's multitude of vehicles. The shame of the car thing is that the pop-up while driving is so bad that other cars just "pop up" right in front of you, meaning players won't actually see the pretty cars until they're right on top of them…

The controls are another area where the Xbox port falls well short of the PC version. The clunky control scheme will lead to countless deaths and failed missions either because they simply aren't responsive enough or because there is no control movement for a specific situation (e.g., you can roll to the left or the right, but not the front or the back). Driving with the Controller S is the one area where the Xbox version is actually better than using the mouse and keyboard on the PC–however, this positive is soon outweighed by countless negatives, like trying to aim. Aiming in Mafia makes the aiming in Grand Theft Auto look like Halo.

Despite the flaws, Mafia has one thing going for it in a big way–and that's the story. Told in a recounted fashion similar to Goodfellas, the game tells the tale of Tommy Angelo on his rise from taxi driver to made man in Don Salieri's crime family. The game features an intensely cinematic feel that highlights how games and movies can be similar in a positive way for a change. Rather than forcing players to "watch" the game, Mafia strikes a near-perfect balance between story and gameplay. This is one of the few things that made the transition from the PC version to the console without getting mangled in the process.

Gameplay is mission-based and will inevitably be compared to Grand Theft Auto. Since the setting is the 1930s, don't expect to fly helicopters or drive a Lamborghini–knives, tommy guns, and classic cars from the era are the order of the day.

When the mission mode gets old, there's also a free roam setting that allows players to drive around causing random mayhem, and a race mode wherein gamers can choose various rides they've unlocked in story mode. However, in reality, story mode is where most people will spend all their time with this game. The story is engaging, and it's the one positive in a sea of mediocrity.

And while the story is a great one presented in an engaging fashion, it's just not enough to save Mafia as a whole. The bland graphics, clunky controls, and atrocious load times (nearing 40 seconds in some instances) are nearly insurmountable shortcomings. Mafia and publisher Gathering may make you an offer, but believe me, it's one you can (and probably should) refuse. Rating: 4.5 out of 10.

The post Mafia Review appeared first on Gamecritics.com.