Mafia: The Old Country review – by-numbers action game is elevated by Sicilian period setting | Games

OIn time, the industry drowned in such games. Single players, story experiences with a weekend with choreographed set pieces and an open world that was glazed with a fine fog of collector's pieces … But here in 2025 the age of the Battle Pass and Live Service Forever, Hangar 13S solo adventure over Sicilian crime families feel almost as the framework from 1900.

In fact, the old country has only a few new ideas to contribute to the cover shooter or the Mafia series. Hangar 13 already produced a Remake in 2020 of the original mafia: the city of lost skyBut in this game it often feels like the studios are being newly new in another environment. Both the plot and the structure of its individual missions seem to at least give Fedora for this title from 2002.

A typical example: the “win of a race to impress your Don” mission. This chapter was notorious in the original mafia because the racing cars from the 1930s were extremely difficult to use and the race was almost unavailable, but it was also a sophisticated multi -stage mission structure full of sabotage, theft and unexpected double crossings. Mafia: In the old country, simply ride into a city where a race is to take place, and then tells them that the Don needs a replacement driver and fall into the saddle to get an uneventful gallop that is not a real challenge. Such an experience in the witness would have been criticized ten years ago, but at the moment the scarcity of games like this means to stop by the basic mission design and instead to enjoy the strongest assets: its history and feeling of time and place.

It is 1904 and they are Enzo Favara, an unfortunate young man who has no family who works with his companion in the sulfur mines Carusi In their yellow colored rags and shaved heads. After Enzo is over in the mine tip and in fatal tip and fatal, he stands to his sadistic employers and makes a mighty enemy in Don Ruggero Spadaro, the local “businessman” that belongs to the mine. Don't worry – after escaping, he recorded by Don Torrisi, a rival of Spadaro, who appreciates the bravery and working morality of the young man. You can see where it is going.

What follows is a typical climb through the rows of a crime family, which takes three to five days when reloading a pistol due to the medium of knife fights and old Zeity shootings. Local companies refuse to pay. The workers go on strike. Bandits and competing families threaten their reputation. They travel to a regional scheme that is conveniently covered with hip -high covers, haunting and adjusting to them.

The missions are not always about comprehensive violence in fairness towards Enzo and his employees. Sometimes they sneak around and steer wake by throwing coins and bottles to lure them away from their way. There are many riding horses and traveling cars and a lot of expository chat to deepen the context of their actions on both sides of the fracas. These mechanics outside the fight are not particularly exciting, but this is a mafia game. It doesn't try to be a deep, system-laden experience-only one gangster story wants to tell you.

And the skin of his teeth succeeds in this endeavor. But it happens more about premise than by plot. The beats are predictable. The memorable moments are not clever dialoglinia or dramatic monuments, but lively historical details. Pupils that are lined up in storage chambers, baskets of citrus fruits stacked high in fields. Workers who stamp on grapes in the Torrisi -Weinberg. Historically precise recipes for Spezzatino di Maiums about kitchen counters. The Sicilian dialect is peppered during every conversation (I recommend switching everything to Sicilian audio cocyization with English subtitles). Here is a game that has made his research and brought a geographical and historical environment to life that was previously not visited by games. And so well made that it turns out to be a mafia: the saving grace of the old country.

It is difficult to fall that his knife struggles and shootings are a little more than functional, and his missions feel a bit too easy to develop a franchise company that is known for its sublime changes. But despite these reservations, it is still absolutely worthwhile to play for the wealth of its surroundings and the infectious enthusiasm for his dark topic.