The Mafia games were never celebrated for revolutionary gameplay or bustling open worlds, but they were always serviceable. More importantly, they leaned on strong atmosphere and cinematic storytelling to carry the experience. The Old Country fails on every one of those fronts.

The gameplay feels aggressively outdated and clunky. Movement is stiff, combat lacks impact, and everything feels so heavily scripted that it never once convinces you you’re in control. You can feel the developers’ hands on your shoulders at all times, nudging you exactly where they want you to go. Try playing stealthy and successfully clear a level? Too bad. The game forces a loud shootout anyway. Win a repetitive, dull knife boss fight? Congratulations, here’s a cutscene telling you that you actually lost.

One major boss encounter is a masterclass in frustration. A gunfight abruptly turns into a knife fight for no narrative or mechanical reason. You win. The boss runs. Gunfight again. Knife fight again. You win. The boss runs again. Gunfight again. Knife fight again. You win. And again, Gunfight again. Knife fight again. YOU WIN. And then all of a sudden the tells you, you didn't win. Every time you win, the game invalidates it with a cutscene and a last-second deus ex machina rescue. It’s not dramatic. It’s insulting. It trains the player to stop caring because nothing you do actually matters.

At first, the opening hours show some promise. Then you realize nothing new is ever introduced. The open world is a lie. A massive map exists purely for decoration, because the game goes out of its way to prevent you from engaging with it. You are constantly railroaded from mission to mission. It’s hard not to feel bad for the map designers, because their work is functionally wasted.

Historically, Mafia’s strength has been its storytelling. These games were essentially playable crime films. If that’s the metric, then The Old Country is a bad movie. C-tier at best. The story is painfully cliché and completely predictable. It plays like bad fan fiction mashed together from The Godfather and Romeo and Juliet, without the nuance, tragedy, or surprise that made either memorable. Every plot beat lands exactly when and how you expect it to. There are no twists, no risks, no fresh ideas. The further I progressed, the more frustrated I became. What started as intrigue turned into disappointment, then outright irritation.

And somehow, this is all before addressing the technical mess.

The decision to abandon the Fusion Engine, which was built specifically for Mafia, in favor of Unreal Engine 5 is baffling. The result is an unoptimized, smeary, visually inconsistent game that struggles to maintain stable performance. I’m running an RTX 4090 with an i9 and plenty of RAM. Max settings should be trivial. Instead, framerates swing wildly regardless of configuration. It looks worse, runs worse, and feels worse than previous entries.

In short, Mafia: The Old Country is a joke of a game. It’s not worth your time, your money, or your patience. I wouldn’t recommend paying more than $10 for it, and even then only if you have absolutely nothing else to play. You’re far better off replaying any other Mafia title. Yes, even Mafia III.

*SPOILER FREE*
I really wanted to love this game because I am a hardcore Mafia fan since the original was released but it's simply disappointing...
The GOOD:
- The cinematics and acting are great.
- The environments are beautifully crafted.
The BAD (in descending order):
- There is very little gameplay and the gameplay itself is very generic. It almost feels like an interactive movie. The enemy AI is very basic, the shooting mechanics feel very dated and the knife fights are also very basic.
- 0 replay value. The focus is too much on the story and once you see it to the end there is very little reason for playing it again.
- The Free Ride mode, which was added very late, is just very lazy and boring. Shooting waves of enemies or sneaking, along with a couple of races.

I honestly hope they don't play so safe with the next Mafia and give us something similar to the originals.

This game had the worst ending ever