Mafia: The Old Country Review

Since its debut, the Mafia series has steadily marched forward through the decades – the original is set in the 1930s, its sequel spans the ’40s and ’50s, and Mafia III unfolds during the late ’60s. If the next step was going to be the ’70s, or the ’80s – or both – I was certainly ready. Casino intrigue, shine boxes, borrowing huge kitchen knives from Martin Scorcese’s mother in the middle of the night – whatever it was, I was up for it. However, instead of moving closer to the end of the 20th century, Mafia: The Old Country takes us back to the beginning. And not just the beginning of the century, but to the formative era of the Mafia itself. Part mob drama and part Western, The Old Country may be a safe and conventional third-person action adventure on the surface, but it’s a moody and engaging one that makes great use of its uncommon setting and is brimming with old school atmosphere so heady you can practically smell the sun-dried tomatoes.

After experimenting with a more freeform open world structure in the divisive Mafia III, Mafia: The Old Country returns to the format of the original Mafia and Mafia II. That is, it’s linear and tightly story-driven, and the open world is largely just a vivid backdrop to move through between objectives, and during some missions. This has always worked well for the Mafia series, and The Old Country is no exception.

This approach gives The Old Country an effective sense of place and scale – immersing you in a rich and evocative Sicilian countryside – but without bloat. It’s a very detailed, varied, and convincing map, but there are no towers to scale or arbitrary icons to visit and clear. Your attention is simply required on the story, and the story alone. As a single-player sucker who inhales this kind of thing for its story, setting, and style, I was quickly hooked. If you’re the kind of person who might be tempted to use the Sicilian language option alongside subtitles in the language of your choice, you’re in the right place. If you’re the kind of person who pounds through cutscenes craving their next chance to slap the citizens of Steelport with a giant purple dildo, it’s possible the Mafia series may not be your speed.

Family Splatters

Beginning in 1904, The Old Country charts a chronicle in the life of young Sicilian Enzo Favara, who escapes a life of slavery in the region’s dangerous sulphur mines – run by the ruthless Spadaro crime family – to find himself working for their local adversaries, the Torrisi family. The story hits a lot of standard beats, and all the usual suspects are here. The fair and kindly mentor, and the loyal best friend with a habit of testing the patience of others around him. The stern and powerful Don and his cynical consigliere. The slimy and treacherous rival boss, and the forbidden love. There are some neat connections to the existing games in the series too, for fans who pay close attention.

So yes, it’s a fairly familiar and predictable 13-hour saga for anyone with a basic level of gangster movie literacy, but the writing is strong and the voice performances are stronger. The highlight is arguably Don Torrisi himself, whose English voice actor Johnny Santiago injects with a quiet, husky intensity that is as credibly intimidating as a man in his position would need to be. He stalks the screen as the kind of guy that men who kill for a living would actually take orders from.

Familiar too is the third-person action, as The Old Country plays like any typical cover shooter from the last decade or so. This was the case in 2020’s Mafia: Definitive Edition, and it’s the same again here, albeit with a wild west flavour thanks to the era-specific arsenal (like revolvers, repeaters, and various shotguns) and the fact that shootouts sometimes occur on horseback, and/or against fellas who look like they’ve just stumbled home off the set of a Sergio Leone picture after a full day of making Clint Eastwood look cool.

Even without engaging much with its rosary bead system of minor combat buffs (which I did regularly forget about), it’s not a massive challenge with the default, soft-locking aiming controls. However, I don’t play these sorts of games to be relentlessly punished. Some enemies will hunker down behind large objects and walls, and others will stoically stride towards you to be blown out of their boots. The AI isn’t always sharp (and it’s definitely a little janky to find yourself completely flanked but still have the time to stand up and clumsily blast a bloke who had you dead to rights at point blank range) but the shootouts are nonetheless serviceable.

The Old Country’s stealth doesn’t rewrite the rule book either, but it does strengthen the action overall. Stealth is sometimes required by the design of the mission at hand, but on other occasions it’s available as an option. There are a number of encounters throughout with environments that have been laid out for us to be able to sneak around and pick off all the enemies one by one, but also seamlessly pivot to hosting an out-and-out gunfight should you flub it and be spotted.

You can toss coins and bottles for distraction, but unfortunately only some bottles (that is, the ones arbitrarily marked). It’s always a bit of an immersion breaker when levels are decorated with inconsistent props. I’d vastly prefer to just be able to pick up any bottle. Failing that, just delete the bottles we can’t pick up during missions. Crucially, you can pick up and move bodies, and there are boxes to stash them in. The stealth is pretty standard, but with distractions and body hiding it does feel like a proper stealth system and not a tacked on afterthought.

Enzo can temporarily highlight nearby enemies in the environment, which is essentially a superpower that’s handwaved away as his impeccable instincts (it probably could’ve been more logically introduced during the underground intro as some kind of innate ability he honed after spending the bulk of his childhood in a dark sulfur mine, but no matter). At any rate, once you have a feel for where your enemies are and which way they’re headed, all that’s left is to sneak around, grab them, and either button-bash to strangle them or tap your knife attack to speed up the process. That said, I actually rarely used the latter. Not because I was feeling merciful, but because stabbing your victims costs you a block of “durability” off your knife (which needs to be sharpened with a whetstone if and when it “runs out” of… stabs). It’s not a gamebreaker, but I’m not really into the idea of not being able to stab a bloke simply because my knife is immediately no longer pointy enough to do so after slaying a few of his mates (and whetstones were a consumable I didn’t always have).

I mainly just strangled my enemies to avoid this issue, but it feels like a slightly unnecessary system – particularly when durability concerns disappear during The Old Country’s new one-on-one knife fights.

These knife fights are essentially boss encounters, presented as a one-on-one showdown with another man. They occur outside regular third-person action gameplay, and you’re locked into these battles until there’s a result (or your opponent is scripted to scarper). The attacks, parries, and dodges in knife fights are bespoke to this mode alone. They’re flashy and bloody, but a lot of the time I did just feel I was simply dodging and slashing my way to a cutscene, where a further complication or a switch in momentum will occur. Sometimes you’ll trigger an animation that makes you a passenger for a while, then Enzo’s health bar recharges while your enemy’s does not. I’m not sure what the thought was there. The knife fights look cool, and they’re not like anything in the series to date, but they do feel a little low stakes at times.

Mafia: The Old Country – Meet Your New Family