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.

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HIGH The player’s choices have far-reaching consequences.

LOW Repetitive encounters and samey-looking environments.

WTF No fast travel and constantly respawning enemies?!

Vampyr is a prime example of a double-A title offering a surprisingly strong premise and a decent trifecta of drama, combat and exploration despite a lacking presentation and failing to fully frame the protagonist’s inner turbulence. Though I was initially drawn to it thanks to other reviewers describing it as a “soulslike,” this game goes beyond that label and ends up a triumph, albeit not a flawless one. 

Set in an early 20th century London on its knees due to a raging plague and the looming shadow of WWI, the story opens with would-be prophetic lines spilled out at a cadence trying to mimic Shakespeare. As the echo of these lines swirls over a ditch full of dead bodies, the camera slowly hones in on their focus — middle-aged Jonathan Reid, lying dead atop the pile.

Suddenly opening his eyes as the voice of the narrator climbs to a zenith, Reid finds himself back in the living world, now ridden with the curse of vampirism. However, more than just a member of the undead, he’s still an esteemed surgeon – one who’s performed blood transfusions a plenty, and enjoys an excellent reputation among his peers.

Vampyr spends a lot of time postulating on the routes a scientifically-inclined, logical vampire would follow to ‘solve’ their situation. This may or not equal a cure, since the main story beats sway towards both a head-on resolution and also to what might be the true nature of ‘divine interventions’ in the centuries leading up to this historical setting.

Personally, I didn’t expect to stumble upon something that entertains so many philosophical sides of this premise. In support of this, Vampyr is chock-full of well-written and well-acted dialogue. Midway through the prologue, Dr. Jonathan Reid reveals his determination to fully unmask the façade of something he’s not sure is entirely supernatural, and his resolve grants a fresh status to the horror that someone might experience from a situation like his.

Aside from Reid, the cast has several mainstays whose personas become enriched as the plot progresses, yet, the legions of side characters populating this ultra-bleak version of London are the real stars here. Each of the city’s four districts is home to a group whose inner relations are already established and direct their lives.

Every night, Reid can freely mingle with the cast, interview them on intertwining topics, and possibly uncover a way to fix some of their current predicaments. This is done by selecting an answer from a list or completing a short quest for these troubled individuals. Of course, most of them hide dark secrets that are believable and human, each of them worthy of a character study by Reid. So, one of the tabs in the menu is dedicated to his notes on these characters’ traits, allowing the doctor to make deductions about how to pressure them into getting to the meat of each matter.

…But why bother with niceties when a vampire is surely able to overpower mere humans? For one, we need to level-up our anti-hero (alas, the enemies often come prepared) and completing side quests grants us experience points. It’s true that drinking blood opens up the skill tree and allows us to prepare Dr. Reid for his new way of “life,” but there’s a catch — while we can mesmerize almost any denizen and make them follow us to the nearest gloomy alley for a meal, emptying the streets of London won’t do us much good. The districts have their own ‘health bars,’ and if we are overzealous with feeding, they succumb to chaos. At that point, normal humans will no longer appear in that area, and in their place, we’ll find increasing numbers of infected beings that would otherwise dwell underneath the surface.

So, while we could hunt everyone in sight if we choose to, I opted for the humanitarian approach and cared for the cast, which often meant having to muster remedies for a list of random illnesses (headache, cold, fatigue, etc.) and offering any other sort of help that was needed.

Keeping up with this workload isn’t easy, though. Vampyr is stingy with its color palate, so the districts look similar, and the whole map is tilted somewhat queerly, making it hard to remember the layout of the streets. On top of that, there’s no option for fast traveling, so anytime I needed to help someone on the other side of the map, I had to re-trace the same path, over and over again, every single night. This wouldn’t have been such a drag if it wasn’t for respawning enemy groups.

As mentioned in the opening, Vampyr indeed is a soulslike of sorts, offering an impactful combination of stamina-draining actions (attacks with our main and off-hand weapons), blood-draining superpowers (casting exploding mist, firing a blood lance, etc.), and a cooldown-based ultimate move – but not much more.

Though this may sound exciting on paper, there aren’t many combos that one can use to maintain the combat’s freshness, and the severely limited enemy variety exacerbates it. This becomes more prevalent as the adventure nears its conclusion – I expected some late-game discovery that would allow me to fire on all cylinders at once and steamroll my opposition, but alas, no spectacular evolutions happen combat-wise, ever.

The underdeveloped combat is far from a deal breaker, though. Vampyr successfully sinks its fangs into most of its topics, not only catching me off-guard in its profound exploration of the vampire mythos, but also enthralling me with Jonathan Reid’s razor-sharp focus on getting to the bottom of it all. Anyone hungry for a vampire-themed adventure with both blood and brains would do well to join this one in the shadows of the night.

— Konstantin Koteski

Disclosures: This game is developed by Dontnod Entertainment and published by Focus Home Interactive. It is currently available on PS4, XBO, Switch and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the PS4 Pro. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the game and the game was completed. This is a single-player only experience.

Parents: This game has received an “M” rating by the ESRB, and contains Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, and Use of Drugs. The official rating summary reads: “This is a third-person action game in which players assume the role of a surgeon (Jonathan Reid) roaming through London as a vampire. Players learn vampire skills/abilities; track citizens as potential prey; and battle other vampires, ghouls, and vampire hunters in frenetic combat. Characters mostly use swords or guns to attack enemies; Jonathan can also rip out the throats of human enemies by stalking and biting them. Some sequences depict executions of characters on and off-screen–a man’s decapitated head appears on the ground in one off-screen killing. Blood-splatter effects occur frequently, and some environments depict mutilated corpses covered in blood. The game includes some sexual material: references to a priest molesting a child; a prostitute soliciting a character on the street (e.g., “Pay me a glass and I’ll be gentle…Pay me a bottle, and I’ll be nasty…I promise I’m cheap and clean.”). During the course of the game, a character is depicted slapping his arm for a vein, then injecting himself with a drug off-screen (“that is better…I will make it through one more night.”). The words “f**k” and “sh*t” appear in the dialogue.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I’ve played around two hours with the sound turned off and didn’t have much trouble. Granted, some enemies signal their follow-up ranged attack (i.e. a pistol shot) via a sound cue, but the rhythm of their repeating attack patterns is not hard to identify with sound muted. On the other hand, reading the texts of the collectible items was a bit of a hassle since the font was smaller than I’d like. However, Jonathan will comment on any important find, making it easy to keep track without trying to make out every single line. Also, there are three options for the size of the subtitles. I’d say this game is fully accessible.

Remappable Controls: This game offers a controller diagram, but the control scheme is not remappable. The sticks move the character and the camera, the directional buttons are for switching weapons and using healing items, the face buttons are for attacking and dodging and the bumpers are for special attacks.

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