Review: Mafia: The Old Country (PS5)

In an era when blockbuster titles creep toward the ten-year mark to be completed, Mafia: The Old Country promises a refreshing shot of efficiency—offering a concise, story-first solo trek. Sadly, the cure is almost as bad as the disease: the adventure winds up tedious long before its dozen-hour finale, falling prey to repetition rather than richness.

The real disappointment with Hangar 13’s newest release isn’t its compact runtime or restrained scale, but how swiftly it exhausts its bag of tricks. By halfway, you’ll have sampled every mechanic it can muster; afterward, you’re simply punching the clock to reach the ending. A cliché-riddled narrative doesn’t help matters either.

This prequel rewinds the clock to turn-of-the-century Sicily, whisking you through terraced hills and sun-bleached vineyards. Hero Enzo, an orphaned drifter, is swept into the underbelly of the Torissi clan. Over the several in-game years, players watch him ascend rung-by-rung, committing darker deeds as his influence grows.

The vocal talent is absurdly good; every actor seems gunning for a trophy—Don Torissi especially strides between cordial paternal warmth and gravelly menace with mesmerizing ease.

Yet the script rarely surprises. Did you peg the crooked-toothed underling with the wandering eye as a snitch within seconds? Congrats—you’re right. Can you guess that your capo’s beautiful daughter is, gasp, your inevitable love interest? Double points. The plot unspools precisely as you day-dreamed in hour one without a single rug-pull.

Luckily, nearly every cutscene is staged with panache: hyper-expressive expressions, cinematic lighting, and artful framing make them oddly watchable. Even non-gamers might linger beside the couch, lured in by the characters’ magnetic presence rather than any narrative daring.

The moment-to-moment play is another story. Marketed as more linear than earlier entries, the game still sprinkles open-world threads. You might motor—or trot—across the map to active waypoints, and a leisurely free-roam mode exists for sight-seeing.

Wander off-piste, though, and the title scolds you with an instant-fail warning whenever you cross an invisible fence. The restraint feels contradictory: why grant the barest whiff of a sandbox if curiosity is punished? Likewise, collectible-hunters feel frustrated rather than freed.

Once you’re on the rails, objectives funnel into three tired paths: sneaking, shooting, or gentle exposition walks. None of the pillars offend, yet none excite. In stealth, discovery equals automatic restart, rendering each infiltration joyless and finicky instead of tense. The repetition numbs whatever polish the sneaking system might hold.

Missions invariably resolve with intimate knife duels reminiscent of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End’s flashy finisher. Parrying, dodging, and breaking guard look cinematic, yet the feedback feels weightless—you never sense genuine impact. By the tenth mandatory face-off, the novelty has long curdled into chore.

The period weaponry, meanwhile, errs on the side of antique imprecision: rifles and revolvers wobble and bounce, trading the visceral crunch of Mafia 3’s modern arsenal for floaty uncertainty. Firefights don’t crumble into disaster; they merely coast along until everyone on-screen runs out of hit-points.

To its credit, the saga flirts with variety through horseback races and vintage car rallies. These detours provide brief sparks, yet the campaign’s heavy linear shackles mean there’s too little bespoke content to keep the adrenaline flowing.

Visually and aurally, the piece dazzles: the metallic ping of an engine cooling after you park is a small sensory delight. Though the locale functions more as a diorama—beautiful to behold, hands-off to interact with—the art direction drips with atmosphere.

On base PS5 in performance mode (60 fps), the frame-rate wobbles when speeding through busy districts or during in-engine fades to cinematics. The dips are noticeable rather than catastrophic, thankfully, and rarely hinder the action.

Conclusion

Mafia: The Old Country doesn’t possess enough interactive ingenuity to sustain even its modest length. Core systems work, yet a diet of instant-fail stealth and feather-weight gunplay leaves the overall odyssey disappointingly ephemeral, despite the staggeringly detailed setting. The acting is top-tier, but the tale itself is telegraphed beat-for-beat, gifting players a gorgeously voiced crime saga that’s entertaining while it lasts yet slips from memory the moment the end credits finish.