Latest news with #Hanger13
Digital Trends
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Mafia: The Old Country review: a game without an identity
Mafia: The Old Country MSRP $50.00 Score Details 'Mafia: The Old Country is a game struggling with an identity crisis that ends up crumbling as a result.' Pros Lovingly authentic world Impeccable performances Cons Barebones shooting and stealth Clunky knife combat Plot takes too long to get going Recommended Videos A poignant line from the early hours of Mafia: The Old Country states that we can choose who we are, not what we do. I kept that line in my head as I experienced this historical take on the crime franchise. The further I dove into the world Hanger 13 has crafted, the less apt that quote felt. It isn't just the fact that Mafia: The Old Country opted to take a more linear route than the last entry, but how the game itself never seems to settle on what it wants to be. This is a game struggling with an identity crisis that ends up crumbling as a result of disjointed gameplay systems and a protagonist who spends too long feeling like an observer than a driving force. Mafia media and tropes are so well-known and ingrained into pop culture that creating a new story that is both authentic and engaging is borderline impossible. The Old Country's strategy is to go all the way back to the origins of the mafia in early 1900s Sicily and follow Enzo's rise into the life of crime. At least in the case of the former, it is a wild success. Enzo's story begins with promise, but he spends much too long feeling like he's simply along for the ride. Without a solid focus on what kind of game it needs to be or a protagonist with strong enough motivation to rally behind, the entire experience begins to fracture. An offer you can't refuse As a franchise, the Mafia games each veered closer and closer to a GTA-like in terms of gameplay and structure. With Mafia: The Old Country, Hanger 13 decided to scale back the experience to a tight, focused experience. And while this isn't a purely linear game, somehow its handful of gameplay systems all still feel barebones at best and clunky at worst. Gunplay works, but not even the period-appropriate weapons can give it any sense of identity. The three core pillars of The Old Country are third-person shooting, stealth, and one-on-one knife duels, although I could argue that walking, talking, and doing chores are the bulk of the gameplay. As I cycled through each, with some unique setpieces like race or chase sequences sprinkled in, I quickly realized there was no part of them that I was looking forward to. The gunplay is technically the best, but it is about as basic a cover shooter as you can get. Encounters all boil down to going into cover and playing stop-and-pop with the enemies. I might get rushed by an enemy here or there, or flushed out by a grenade, but this is about as forgettable a shooter as can be. Gunplay works, but not even the period-appropriate weapons can give it any sense of identity. Stealth is perhaps a worse offender here. Enemy AI is comically braindead and doing each section as intended is needlessly tedious. The Old Country tries to take a page out of The Last of Us's approach here by having long struggles as Enzo chokes out a guard, which can be skipped by using your knife at the cost of durability. Yet without the survival themes or intelligent AI backing it up, it feels like a time-waster. I can toss coins or bottles to distract enemies, and even activate a listen mode equivalent to see enemies through walls for some reason. I completely ignored the mechanic of picking up bodies to dump them into crates after my first few stealth missions when I realized there was no point in spending all that time picking them up and transporting them — not once was a body I choked out discovered before I snuck through the area. this isn't so much a world to be explored but a container for hundreds of collectibles. Knife fighting was heavily marketed and could've been the feature The Old Country could hang its hat on. But not only does it not gel with the other two disparate gameplay modes, but taken on its own, it might be the weakest of them all. These duels bring the action in tight and swap the controls to something more akin to an action game, but feel weightless and unresponsive. There are two types of attacks, a dodge, a parry, and a guard break. Each move has its place and use, but the way duels play out never made me feel like I was mastering a system. Spacing and range always felt weird, and reading animations felt loose on everything but moves I was meant to dodge since they were the only ones accompanied by a visual indicator. The moment I really began to question what The Old Country's identity was was when the game opened up. Hanger 13 made it clear this game wasn't an open world, but that isn't completely true. There is a decently sized hub world that, at points, I am free to explore by car. But much like Mafia 2, this isn't so much a world to be explored or admired but a container for hundreds of collectibles. There are even vendors and later an apartment out there to visit, but the lack of waypoint system makes exploring or rounding up those collectibles a chore. It feels like a half-step into open world that confuses more than it adds. Welcome to the family The introduction to our new protagonist working slave laborer in a mine had tons of potential that was sadly never capitalized upon. Instead, Enzo abandons his early ambitions as soon as he makes his escape and is taken under the wing of the Torrisi family. At this point, he almost becomes a blank slate, just going along with no goals or personal motivations. A romance with the Don's daughter is rushed along to give him some purpose later, but Enzo's lack of personal stake in anything for the majority of the game makes it hard to get invested in his integration into the crime family. Thankfully the supporting cast of mobsters is far stronger. Don Torrisi is a bit of your stereotypical raspy-voiced father figure who values family, honor, and loyalty above all, but the interplay between the straight-laced and kind Luca and the entitled and brash Ceasare is a standout. I loved getting to know them through the more episodic structure the first half of the game takes, but that slow burn ends up feeling meandering without Enzo having a consistent driver throughout. I spent the majority of the game feeling like I was doing a series of disassociated side quests that ran the gamut of mob activities. I spent the majority of the game feeling like I was doing a series of disassociated side quests. Mafia: The Old Country is a game at war with itself. None of the pieces it puts down fit together to form a unified picture. It lacks any standout gameplay system to build around, nor a strong character with clear motivations to give the game a distinct identity. It is a game that feels torn between multiple different directions, with the only piece left unscathed being the strong performances, an authentic historical setting, and the writing of the supporting cast. However, that can't hold up a barebones gameplay experience and narrative hook that takes way too long to take hold. This is one offer you can safely refuse. Mafia: The Old Country was tested on PC.
Daily Mirror
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Mafia The Old Country review – a beautiful but trivial take on what a crime gangster epic should be
This story of greed, crime, and forbidden love is wonderfully stunning to look at, yet disappoints for how unabashedly old-fashioned it is in almost every other regard. The next entry in 2K's wildly immersive gangster franchise aims to wind the clock back to the start, but in the process forgets to evolve its gameplay formula in any meaningful way. When in doubt, go back to the very beginning. Batman did it, Rise of the Planet of the Apes did it, and now it's the turn of 2K 's solid (if somewhat uneven) gangster series to give it a try by winding the clock all the way back to 1900s Sicily. I honestly don't blame developer Hanger 13 for taking this approach. Because while its remake of the first entry, 2020's Mafia: Definitive Edition, successfully revived a classic, the studio's last attempt to push the franchise into all-new territory with Mafia 3 didn't quite work out so well. Unfortunately, despite looking incredible and weaving a well-written tale with characters I came to care about greatly, on the gameplay side it's a similar story here again. Turns out the setting, however beautiful, isn't the only thing old-fashioned about Mafia: The Old Country. Starting off with the good: the location of Valle Dorata must surely go down in history as one of the most stunning, awe-inspiring places to explore in a video game ever. Though not especially large or sprawling, it makes up for this lack of size with an incredible amount of detail and variety present in almost every region you visit both in and outside of the campaign. From historic castle ruins that hint at times gone by and abundance of pastoral towns full of life, to the seemingly endless rows of vineyards that surround, not once while playing through Mafia: The Old Country's 12-hour campaign did I ever fail to be immersed. This is an amazing rendition of early 20th century Sicily packed full of detail and reasons to want to stick around. If only the game gave you any real reason to… See, much like the first two games in the series, Mafia: The Old Country again finds itself caught between two worlds. On one hand it takes place within an amazing open-world location you'll spend plenty of trips driving through, but then outside of a few collectibles, there's not really any real reason to do so. In fairness, Hanger 13 has been totally open about The Old Country being a linear game through and through, but then why tease us with the promise of something greater – and dare I say braver – if you're not going to deliver on its full potential? The benefit of keeping this Mafia prequel mostly on rails is that it's easy to stay invested in the narrative with hardly any distractions. Placing you in the shoes of new protagonist Enzo Favara, you'll follow his journey from beleaguered orphan to criminal gangster, getting up to no good and into all kinds of crime-related scrapes a long the way. Cars and weapons being mostly limited in their technology during this era gives The Old Country a slightly different flavour to any other game in the series. And it's an element the game is extremely wise to lean into given just how similar Enzo's overall story ends up being to Tommy Angelo from the first Mafia game. Rather than break any new narrative ground, Mafia: The Old Country is instead all too happy to lean into several tropes and clichés the gangster film genre is known for. It's in this regard where, aside from the utterly excellent motion-capture and voice performances, that this prequel ended up disappointing me most on the storytelling side of things. Here you have a fairly unexplored environment and a completely new cast of characters to fill it with, yet time after time, The Old Country fall into the trappings of what cinema aficionados will undoubtedly expect. I won't dig into these story beats too deeply for fear of spoiling the unsullied, but I'll go as far as to say that the Don's daughter, Isabella, and the nature of her relationship with the dashingly heroic Enzo hardly ends up being a mystery. Unrequited love, anyone? An offer to refuse In this way, Mafia: The Old Country plays it far too safe at almost every turn, being all too happy to merely 'play the hits' as opposed to taking its unique setting and technology of the time, and doing something truly different with them. Four games in, you think there'd be a hunger for this on the developer side. But alas, it's not usually the case, and very rarely did any story 'twist' end up shocking me. Enzo's journey more often than not elicited a shrug as opposed to a gasp. Sadly, this same old-school mentality also bleeds into the game's approach to action. Mafia: The Old Country's gameplay formula can essentially be boiled down into three main strands – cover shooting, driving, and stealth – and none are particularly boundary-pushing. I wasn't expecting Gears of War levels of gunplay here, but I could never shake the feeling that aiming as Enzo felt particularly floaty – even after trying out different firearms and equipping certain unlockable charms and beads specifically designed to counteract this. Luckily, when the cinematic shootouts do hit, they hit hard, and most usually occur as part of a larger set piece that culminates in an explosive climax such as a car chase or burning building escape. Stealth, perhaps unsurprisingly, is also a mixed bag. There's nothing particularly wrong with it per se, since throwing objects to distract enemies and sneaking behind them to either choke them out slowly or instant-kill them with a knife, are well-worn mechanical staples. Just because something is functional, though, doesn't make it engrossing, especially when these scenarios crop up a lot. Driving, meanwhile, is very fun, particularly since the environments you move through are always a joy to be in. The Mafia series has always had a great reputation for letting you get behind the wheel of a variety of historical cars, and this aspect returns here in full force. Better yet, the dedicated 'carcyclopedia' returns in The Old Country, allowing true petrolheads to pore over the full details of these ornate automobiles and then take them out to enjoy them in the game's dedicated Explore mode. The final gameplay mechanic worth mentioning is a pretty irritating one. At various points in the story, in order to build up some degree of stakes through combat, The Old Country will pit you against a single foe in a one-on-one knife fight confrontation. Though not exactly a quick time event, the act of dodging, blocking, striking, and slashing eventually grows tiresome, particularly since no new mechanical elements are ever introduced at any point. This is a game that starts with a knife fight and ends pretty much with the exact same knife fight, which might work as a method to let characters talk at close range and build drama, but is super repetitive from a gameplay perspective. I wish Hanger 13 would have found a different way to transform what should be a tension-filled set piece into something less predictable. Mafia: The Old Country isn't a complete disaster of a game, but it is very much a game out of time. In several ways it achieves what it sets out to do, setting players off on an engrossing, wildly cinematic, crime-fuelled gangster story set within a beautiful location with you at the centre of it. Beauty, of course, is only skin deep, and when it comes to what you actually do in this world, Enzo's journey climbing up through the ranks of the Torrisi crime family ends up feeling underbaked, unsurprising, and disappointingly old-school in its approach. Ultimately, The Old Country fails to make the most of its world's uniqueness, as evidenced any time you must leave your vehicle to interact with it.
Yahoo
13-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Major PS5 Action Adventure Game Gets August Release Date
Developer Hanger 13 and publisher 2K accidentally revealed the release date for its upcoming action adventure game, . Fans of the long-running series won't have to wait too long to get their hands on the next entry. In a recent Steam blog post from Hanger 13, the company shared it will hold a developers panel for Mafia: The Old Country on May 8 at PAX East in Boston, MA. Much of the information is standard for these kinds of posts on the english version of the post. However, other language versions of the article revealed the release date for the upcoming game. That date is August 8, 2025. Those lines have since been deleted. The developers panel for Mafia: The Old Country, hosted by Kinda Funny's Greg Miller, will feature a brand-new Gameplay Trailer and share some behind-the-scenes footage from the series' past, present, and future. Although not confirmed, this release date may be formally revealed during the panel. The event will have a Q&A section with Studio President Nick Baynes, Game Director Alex Cox, and Cinematics Director Tomas Hrebicek. Additionally, those who attend may receive 'a little reward for their show of loyalty.' Mafia: The Old Country was revealed during Gamescom Opening Night Live. The short trailer showed its 1900s Sicily setting. 'Uncover the origins of organized crime in Mafia: The Old Country, a gritty mob story set in the brutal underworld of 1900s Sicily,' says the game's description. 'Fight to survive as Enzo Favara and prove your worth to the Cosa Nostra in this immersive third-person action-adventure set during a dangerous, unforgiving era.' Mafia: The Old Country is the fourth entry in the series—the inaugural title launched in 2002, the second in 2010, and the third in 2016. (SOURCE: Insider Gaming via Gematsu) The post Major PS5 Action Adventure Game Gets August Release Date appeared first on PlayStation LifeStyle.
