The '30s cars, gorgeous as they may be, handle like blimps, wafting and floating around Lost Heaven's right-angle turns, or more often simply not. Gear changes, part of the original Mafia's drive for authenticity, are set to automatic by default in Definitive Edition, and I daren't try them manually. Cars are wonderful to look at - and to drive, so long as you go in a perfectly straight line and aren't rubber-banded in a mission. You are Tommy Angelo after all, cabby-turned-mobster-wheelman, caught up in all that allure of depression-era crime, and for all the shooting and wisecracking of mob life you drive your way through this game, fundamentally - even if you turn on the option to skip the unnecessary trips - and if driving is a dirge then consequently so is much of Mafia itself. Driving is utterly central to Mafia: Definitive Edition, as it was with the original. That can, also, be down to the mechanics of driving too, which could've done with more work. It means driving - when you're not sitting, listening, drinking-in - can be a nightmare, especially on anything below the recommended specs, as consistent, fraction-of-a-second freezes and hiccups make it hard to really nail a turn (on a PC a shade under those specs the game crashed, twice, on opening, and driving was impossible on a slightly more powerful one the troubles reduced to bearable, if you don't mind a perpetual headache). Performance, too, putting my amateur Digital Foundry hat on for just a moment (they'll be along with a much more sophisticated analysis than mine soon, fear not), is also a little wobbly, the issue not the frame rate but some other kind of relentless stutter, as though the world itself is struggling to load in as you pass through it at any kind of speed. In cutscenes, faces are luxuriously rendered and intricately animated. This extends beyond the environment, with faces stunningly drawn and animated in Mafia's many cutscenes, then often plasticky-smooth and dated as you walk about town. Much has been made of the new views you can drink in, thanks to the game's more "varied topography", as publisher 2K puts it, but at distance detail can be poor and skylines washed out. Mafia's sounds give life.īut just as Mafia: Definitive Edition can sing at the right moment, you can also catch it rather flat, with technical snags and ageing tendencies dragging you out of the world. Even then, you hear swing and jazz in a video game and think 'apocalypse', dead worlds and rotten cultures, thanks to Fallout or Bioshock or the like. Rare that you sink into a world solely through its actual, environmental sounds, and again so rare that it's through these sounds, the crooners over the car's speakers and arooogas of their horns. We talk of world-building often, but it's rarely done like this. Mafia's is a world built on hypocrisy, built through the Weimar-esque bursts of mid-depression creativity that were swing and dancing jazz that blare, between imperious political decrees and preaching reports, from police chiefs, governors, presidents, lecturing on citizens' own responsibility for rising crime. A wondrous device, carrying the weight of this game's world on its back and jabbing at the heart of the decade's contradictions, the carnalism of the '30s that rubbed against the puritannical. And it's a devilishly pretty thing, when it wants to be: neon signs refracting across its storm-washed streets at night, sunlight off the glistening chrome of those good ol' classic automobiles, beings of themselves, all roaring, phallic engines, screeching tires and erotic curves.Īnd I could talk forever about that radio. Headline changes include taller skyscrapers to be more true-to-era re-directed roads to vary up your journeys re-designed districts like Chinatown and an entirely new, rural region to the north of the city. Lost Haven, Illinois, the definitely-not-Chicago in which Mafia's set, has been drastically reimagined. Availability: Out 25th September on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. The result is a compellingly awkward, sort of doubly-effective flashback to another time. Such is the luxury and imbalance of Hangar 13's remake, a top-to-bottom effort that is at times gorgeous - to look at, to listen to, to be in, occasionally to play - but more often muddy, never quite knowing what it is, or really getting the more dated of Mafia 2002's ideas out of its own way. There are times, in Mafia: Definitive Edition, where you might wonder if the Great Depression was really so bad after all. A mostly thorough remake of 2002's original, Mafia: Definitive Edition has its moments - but it struggles by the standards of today.
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