Mafia: The Old Country - A Small World After All (Review)
- James Stephanie Sterling
- Aug 19
- 6 min read
Mafia: The Old Country
Released: August 8th, 2025
Developer: Hangar 13
Publisher: 2K Games
Systems: PC, PS5 (reviewed), Xbox X/S
You know when a sizable movie series gets a straight-to-DVD sequel that’s surprisingly good for what it is? That’s exactly what Mafia: The Old Country is like. You can tell the budget isn’t a patch on its cinematic predecessors, the ambition isn’t quite where it was, yet it has an integrity and a lack of cynicism that one expects from a piece of media in its position.
One can be damn near certain this game was at one point planned to be bigger than it was. Not to draw too close a comparison to something as fuckawful as MindsEye, but the newest Mafia installment is a linear game stuffed in a similarly nominal open world. Except it’s good and it didn’t come out with a whole bunch of undeserved hype.
I was unaware of the linearity at first, and was frustrated by what felt like an excessively slow burn, waiting for the thing to open up. It doesn’t. That’s not an inherently bad thing, of course, and if it had been presented without the vast map I’d have altered my expectations accordingly.
Linear or not, it does still take a while to get going.
The Old Country is the story of Enzo, a caruso who works his way from slavery in a sulfur mine to prominence in the crime family of Don Torrisi. Enzo’s tale is shown in detail from his humble beginnings, so we have to play through his time in the mine, act out his escape, and get a taste of his tedious chores at Torissi’s vineyard. The game still feels like a series of tutorials even up past Chapter 3, including two separate tutorials covering knife combat.
Despite the slow start, there’s just enough going on to keep things from getting too boring. The story is rote but nicely written, and very well performed with grounded vocal work that lends believability to its characters. Enzo’s mentor figure, Luca Trapani, is particularly likable, Isabella is a charming love interest, and Torissi carries himself with an icy aura of understated menace that’s really effective. Despite fairly average graphics, characters are really quite expressive without delving too far into uncanny territory.
Gameplay draws directly from what I like to call the “Seventh Gen Set Menu,” featuring all the typical aspects of an Xbox 360 action game. You have your third-person cover shooting, your rudimentary stealth mechanics (with obligatory magic instinct vision), some vehicular chases, and a minor upgrade system with purchasable weapons and charms that grant passive bonuses.
It’s unassumingly decent, though shooting is a bit unwieldy - aiming and camera sensitivities both share one setting, and there’s no way to tighten the former without the latter getting too sluggish. The optional snap aim doesn’t so much snap as meander toward targets, so it barely mitigates the issue. You get used to it, and there are charms that improve accuracy, but ranged combat always feels everso slightly off.
Missions are tightly designed for the most part, with a few nice setpieces and just enough balance between combat, stealth, and narrative sections to keep things from dragging. Enzo can’t take much damage, but bandages are generously provided and cover is plentiful. Basically, it’s Fine Videogame Content(™).
The Old Country is very proud of its knife combat, making a big deal out of it at any given opportunity. In fairness, it’s quite good stuff, offering tense little duels of stabbing and slashing. Mechanically, it’s just the usual dodging, parrying, and attacking, but the close camera presentation gives it gravitas, and opponents are surprisingly effective with their feinting, weaving, and occasional dirty tricks.
Excessive knife dueling does start to feel a bit silly as the story progresses. Events always contrive a situation for Enzo to end up circling his major (and minor) antagonists with a blade in hand while said antagonists gleefully respond. You can always sense a duel before it starts because they always start the same way, and there’s nary a named enemy who isn’t stab-happy.
The silliness of it entertains me, I hasten to add. 1920s Sicily apparently treats its knives the way Pokémon’s world treats its Pokémon - they’re the cultural locus, the singular way one settles a dispute.
Progressing through the story is fascinating on a meta level, given how this thing is an open world game with the openness carved out. An obligatory big map is there, but the only purpose it serves is to elongate missions by making you ride a horse or car to key locations. Well, I say that, but the game’s at least self aware enough to allow a skip button for most of the journeys. Ultimately, you end up warping from story point to story point in what comes off as an improvised compromise.
Not that the game is above automatically transporting you to destinations of its own volition. The campaign takes the initiative on cutting a lot of extraneous travel, which can make it feel almost like a whirlwind tour of Enzo’s life. On the one hand, it does ensure a snappy narrative with a quick pace. On the other, that pace is somewhat uneven since there’s clearly meant to be some downtime in places.
You can unlock new outfits for Enzo, as well as buy and customize a range of cars and horses. This is good on paper, but engaging with these features is only possible at very select moments. It can take ages until you’re next allowed near a wardrobe, stable, or garage to change your gear. With this in mind, it’s rather cheeky for 2K Games to sell DLC featuring such gear.
I have no doubt racing was intended to be a much bigger thing than it turned out to be. There’s a horse race early on, a car race later on, and practically nothing else for your rides to do outside of a smattering of chase sequences. Even then, it’s rarely your ride, as the story prefers to undo your loadout with its own choices at every turn.
Collectibles are where it really gets strange. There is a veritable army of collectible guff but you can’t collect half of it because of how often you’re on a tight leash. Pickup locations are marked on the map as soon as they’re in your general vicinity, but they’re placed just beyond the borders of mission areas so frequently I gave up on them before too long.
The most egregious collectibles are the Trinacria icons, some of which have to be shot down from wall fixtures to claim. Naturally, these fixtures will appear during parts of the game where Enzo’s ability to shoot is arbitrarily disabled. It’s almost a prank.
So how is one supposed to acquire these pickups? In an entirely separate free roam mode available by backing out into the main menu. This allows you the freedom to go wherever you want, but the only thing to do in free roam is to get those collectibles, as the world is otherwise devoid of activity. It’s so boring that I only tried it once and never got back.
Any rewards to be unlocked by acquiring these pickups simply aren’t worth the slog. You’ll find useful charms without them and most weapons are bought with liberally dispensed cash.
Like I say, this bizarro setup is fascinating. Frustrating in a significant way, but more deeply curious than anything else. It potentially says a lot about mainstream open world games that the world can be snipped almost entirely out of the equation and what’s left still amounts to a coherent experience… mostly.
Despite being fundamentally dented by its own creative cutbacks, there’s still a worthy little game to be found. There’s nothing you won’t have seen before, but its throwback gameplay is well presented and not unenjoyable. The story’s packed with such weathered tropes as a love affair hidden from a protective father, a tense truce between families spilling into war, and a playboy upstart who feels entitled to leadership, and I liked it all the same.
Old Country is the anti-MindsEye, in a way. Hear me out.
Both are open world games that somehow aren't open world games, each offering a checklist of 7th-gen gameplay features and a story full of familiar beats. Where MindsEye was a broken fail state that felt rushed and utterly unfinished, however, Old Country feels like a game that admitted its limits and pulled through with a well made, if slightly fractured, production.
Mafia: The Old Country could easily have been phoned in but the effort is evident - it sincerely does its best, and its best is good enough. Will it make a huge mark on history? Unlikely. Is its “pseudopen” world a vestigial albatross? Absolutely. Did I enjoy it? Perfectly adequately.
7/10
