Mafia: The Old Country (PS5)
I’ve always appreciated games that know exactly what they want to be, and Mafia: The Old Country is one of them. It doesn’t try to be a massive open world sandbox, and that’s exactly what makes it appealing. For players like me, tired of bloated worlds and long winded campaigns, this tighter, more focused experience hits the spot. When I heard it would be mostly linear and around 10 hours long, I was genuinely excited. Not every game needs to drag itself into a 40 hour marathon to feel satisfying.
Unfortunately, the first thing that hits you isn’t the story or the gameplay; it’s the graphics, and not in a good way. Playing in Performance Mode on PS5, the resolution looks heavily upscaled, with constant shimmering, ghosting, and a soft, blurry image. FPS drops pop up more often than they should, and distant enemies are harder to spot than they should be with that blury image. I eventually gave in and switched to Quality Mode for the last few hours, locking myself at 30fps just to escape the blur. Character models and animations look stuck in the PS4 era, though I have to admit that the lighting is gorgeous.
The gameplay didn’t exactly win me over right away either. The first blade fight in the prologue left me underwhelmed, with clunky animations and sluggish responses. Thankfully, things improved after the first episode. As a long time fan of the series, I really enjoyed the Mafia I and II but bounced off Mafia III, I appreciated the shift toward more linear and stealth (well… kind of) oriented gameplay. Is it on the level of Hitman, MGS or The Last of Us? Absolutely not. But i believe that no one expected it to be. Comparing a $50 title’s mechanics with those games would be an obvious mistake. That being said, the mechanics are okay at best, and while the lack of stealth-friendly weapon design makes sense for the early 1900s setting, it still limits the experience. Missions rarely allow for creative approaches, sometimes feeling like something out of the PS3 era. I still would have liked more depth in the gameplay, as it often feels very dull.
However, there are nice touches here and there. The stamina bar when choking an enemy is a small but nice detail. Blade combat becomes more refined once parrying is introduced, though it never reaches a truly satisfying flow. Every boss fight turning into a blade duel quickly becomes predictable, even repetitive. Still, driving, whether it’s cars or horses, is genuinely enjoyable; especially with simulation mode and manual shifting. Gunplay is punchy and satisfying, despite some bizarre AI movement.
Speaking of AI… yikes. The enemy intelligence is so poor it kills the enjoyment in the stealth approaches, to the point where it feels like stealth wasn’t even designed as a core mechanic. Combine that with poorly placed save points, and any stealth approach turns into an exercise in frustration.
Where the game really shines is in its narative. The music is authentic and perfectly fits the scenes. The slow, story heavy prologue works well, letting us play through Enzo’s backstory instead of dumping exposition. The characters are well written and surprisingly likeable, with motivations and ambitions that feel believable. The dialogues helps a lot here; it’s sharp and natural. The tension in the second half is especially effective, pulling you into the world in a way the gameplay never quite does.
In the end, I’m having a hard time giving Mafia: The Old Country a score. Despite all its downsides, I genuinely enjoyed my time with it. Its narrative, atmosphere, and sense of tension are rare qualities in modern games, but its clunky animations, outdated mechanics, and awful AI feel like leftovers from a previous console generation. It’s worth experiencing for the story alone, just don’t expect the gameplay to match it.
"7.5/10"
