Welcome to my review of Mafia: Definitive Edition on the PlayStation 4. It is developed by Hangar 13 (Mafia III) and published by 2K Games (Sid Meiers Civilization VI, XCOM 2). Mafia: Definitive Edition is set before World War 2. Decades before games such as GTA Vice City, Saints Row, and Watch Dogs.
This Is Mafia
Check out my previous review where I played Badland: Game of the Year Edition on the Nintendo Switch.
The Game
You play as Tommy Angelo, a day-to-day cabbie turned mobster. Mafia has a beautiful open world set in the 1930s and based in Chicago, a city named Lost Heaven. Tommy is driving his cab when all of a sudden his next fare is a couple of mobsters who need a getaway driver. For those of you not aware, this is a remake of a classic game from yesteryear during the start of the console war of PlayStation Vs Xbox during the year 2002.
The daily hustle and bustle is alive in this city, be it a casual drive for your next fare in your cab to get them from A to B, or driving Paulie and Sam to collect protection money, you’ll notice the city of Lost Heaven is a gorgeous location, one side of it you have the countryside, the other, the sea with a fairly big map to explore, not on the scale of other open-world games such as Grand Theft Auto 5, but you have to remember, this is a remake of a game that came out on the PS2, original Xbox and Microsoft Windows in 2002.
You do get the opportunity to explore the map, some of the chapters are linear. This forces you to do certain things and go to certain areas. However, other chapters allow you to ”free roam” whilst you’re supposed to be doing other jobs. Such jobs are “Go to this place and meet this person” to continue the story along.
The driving mechanics are not the best, but they’re also not the worst. I quite liked the addition of a speed limiter where you can just click the touchpad in. This then limits your speed to the legal limit, very useful if the police are near! The story is brilliant, explains everything you’d need to know, and doesn’t miss out on any of those nitty-gritty gangland missions you’d expect from a game set during the Great Depression
Look and Sound
The character models on the main characters are brilliant, very detailed and it appears that the developers have paid a lot of attention to getting this right, be it something as simple as a hairstyle or outfit that you wear, there’s certainly something about wearing a fedora and a trench coat whilst donning your Tommy gun. The city looks alive, be it day or night, rain or shine, Lost Heaven was a pleasure to be viewing on my screen. The vehicles and transport of Lost Heaven have beautiful detailing and there’s a good fair amount of traffic to keep your wits about you especially during those high-speed chases.
There’s also something satisfying about the audio in this game. Particularly the soundtrack, which was a pleasure to my ears. The voice acting in Mafia is awesome, real emotion in the voices. Even on NPCs around the city and also not-so-important story characters are all done to a high standard.
How Long?
The story in Mafia is fairly long, approx 11 hours just for the main missions. As aforementioned, there are a lot of collectibles to find for you completionists and a good selection of trophies for the trophy hunters. Most of the collectibles show up on your map when you are near. Some of these are comic books or cigarette cards featuring characters that are in the game. However, there are some hidden but there are little hints dotted around so keep your eyes peeled. I won’t spoil what they are.
Conclusion
Overall the game is a beautiful remake. I experienced some bugs for example police cars would randomly spawn in front of me on the road during a getaway, dropping down from the sky. Which to be fair gave me a good laugh. One bug caused me to have to reload the game entirely. I think the game is very fairly priced for the content you get in return. I score Mafia: Definitive Edition a 7/10.
