One of the biggest surprises of 2020 was the unexpected announcement of a full remake of the iconic mafia. Originally released in 2002, this gangster simulator was a realistic representation of the criminal life of America in the 1930s for its time, but the fact was in many respects terribly old. In his case, a simple remaster would rather never work. No wonder then that as part of refreshing the entire mafia trilogy, it was decided to rebuild the first installment from scratch, which in my opinion is a pretty good idea.
MAFIA
It is 1930, the protagonist is Thomas Angelo, a young tariff who accidentally becomes entangled in the mafia world when unexpectedly appears in his taxi, people from the Salieri family fleeing from a rival gang. The natural talent of our protagonist to drive the car impresses even the Don himself, who offers the driver a role in his organization. In this way, the budding gangster begins to climb the mafia career.
Hangar 13 studio, known so far only from the very unequally received Mafia 3, has used an unusual tactic in creating this mafia. A modern engine from part 3 with the scenario and gameplay of one and hundreds of improvements bringing the classic into a new decade. At first glance, this is just the first mafia on a new engine, the game is still divided into two separate segments - a linear story campaign where we follow the story of Tommy and the mafia. In this mode, unlike, for example, GTA, access to the open world is very limited, does not contain side missions or additional distractions, and the game focuses 100% on the narrative. Players interested in exploitation have to run a separate driving mode on any of the main menu, where you can play in the sandbox of Lost Heaven city on your own.
In this respect, Mafia may seem like a game from a different era, but I think most people will be satisfied with the combination of novelty and classic formula. More attention was paid to the narrative. It's exactly the same story, but one-to-one scenario is not mapped here. It has been slightly "rewritten", care has been taken to ensure that cutscenes do not stand out from the modern ones - this means some movies are now longer, some stories have been bolded to add a bit of depth, and other boring parts have been filled with new detail. The structure of the missions, number and order has not changed, but a new "layer" has been put on the dialogues and tasks, thanks to which the game keeps you tense from the first to the last minute and never becomes monotonous.
Older players will probably complain that something has changed, here the scene has been cut, but in my opinion these changes were a plus. Mafia 1 was a relatively long title, I finished the new version in about 8 hours. In the quests, I noticed that where in the original we could choose whether we want to approach the enemy by sneaking or shooting at him, in Remak we only have the first option. I consider this "compression" of the campaign a good step, because at times the classic could be longer, in my opinion, but whatever you prefer. An unambiguously good decision was to modernize the gameplay, control, or the save system, which is now based on popular auto-save, but a lot of other nice improvements were introduced to the final edition, for example a realistic car driving system where the player was forced to follow the rules of the road. Dangerous driving could have attracted the attention of the police, at the push of a button you could even turn on the speed limiter, which did not allow you to exceed the safe threshold. Not everyone has to like it, so in the configuration menu, we can freely set the model of driving between modern and classic cars, as well as the behavior of the police. There is even a special difficulty level that tries to replicate the Classic Mafia.
The game now has a modern system of markers indicating the goal of the task, so you don't have to keep glancing at the map, although you can still. Fans of the collectibles will also be pleased - there are comics and other collector's newspapers scattered all over the city. Motorcycles have also been added to the game, why not. The use of the Mafia 3 engine has its good sides, but also bad ones. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the New Mafia did not learn much from the mistakes of its predecessor, graphically it is still very uneven, the elements close to the camera look great, but the city panoramas drawn from long distances look strange. But for the most part, the game looks really nice, especially at night and in the rain.
Mafia: Definitive Edition is a good game, but not great. I think the Mafia fans, especially the ones, will reach for this title anyway, I personally had a great time.
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Dobra giera!👍