Mafia: The Old Country Review

There is, at least, a lot of interesting intentions to Mafia: The Old Country. A loosely historically accurate, linear, narrative focused tale of organised crime and forbidden love set against the sun-baked rolling hills of a fictionalised Sicilian town, the pitch is relatively airtight. The journey of underdog to war hound for a prominent crime family is archetypal; throw in an ill-fated attraction between hound and a gilded-caged beauty, and you have the foundations of a safe but seemingly reliable narrative. Enzo Favara, a young miner recently liberated from indentured labour by the Don Torrisi, a softly-spoken-yet-firmly-patriarchal man who gnaws on vague notions of loyalty and family and doing what needs to be done.

But in an effort to emulate the visual and tonal language of mob films, The Old Country consistently draws attention to how clumsy a work it has actually produced. Slavishly retreading the most recognisable components of the genre, the game moves through half-baked story beats, themes, and characters.  As Enzo enters a free fall of colliding desires, the game’s potentially insightful class commentary is lost in genre pastiche and muddled execution. His relationships with the wider Torrisi family are exhaustingly familiar, every interaction playing out in the exact way you’d imagine and at the exact time, too. Despite this, The Old Country writes itself in knots to explain motivations and ideas, perpetually trapped between its desire to capture the subtlety of even well-trod cinema and its fear that the average player couldn’t possibly keep up.

I think I’ve seen this film before

The Old Country’s mechanical language is as derivative and sweaty as its storytelling, a hodgepodge of genre staples assembled without finesse or even vigour. Moving between unremarkable cover-based shootouts and stealth sections, Enzo’s small arsenal of era-appropriate firearms and distraction tools aren’t particularly satisfying, the occasionally crafty enemy AI being the only real thing of note among the game’s dozen or so missions. The overworld (technically “open” in a standalone mode, gorgeously rendered, but so devoid of interest as to be effectively set dressing) is often roamed on clumsy horses and boxy cars, though Enzo is frequently made to simply walk forward while dialogue drolls on around him. Elsewhere, the act of prayer and religious iconography is reduced to a pale imitation of collectible, your rosary serving as a threadbare perk system that is as conceptually embarrassing as it is anemic.

The Old Country’s gameplay issues come to a head in its knife fights, a storytelling tool meant to heighten dramatic moments and nod to the history of the blade in the region. These many encounters are both mechanically inert and narratively unfulfilling, though, as the simple loop of attack, dodge and parry is clumsily broken up by the same scripted struggles over and over. The difference between the tutorial fight and the climactic clash is effectively negligible in the game’s flattened interactive language. The Old Country pitches itself as a focused experience, but in those parameters, its mechanical failings are only further amplified; no single element of its design tuned well enough to justify its systemic or thematic inclusion.

You call that a knife? (I know this is a bad screenshot)

Even divorced from its gameplay, The Old Country is only ever a passing imitation of the genre and medium it so clearly adores. Cutscenes are rarely directed or framed in compelling ways; the bulk of the energy at any given moment is cradled by an ensemble cast who do their best with the script. The game’s facial capture and animations are broadly solid, allowing its actors to imbue thin characters with subtler moments of emotional truth. But an inflection here and stolen glance there can’t carry the weight of an ostensibly cinematic tale, as the final act succumbs to the kind of overbearing imagery and choices that make it increasingly difficult to trust games to tell these kinds of stories with any reliable formalism.

There’s a case to be made that The Old Country’s well-intended exploration of the socio-economic issues that serve as an undercurrent to criminal activity, especially as experienced by Sicilians in the early 20th century, is a point of interest for the game. And if The Old Country was able to couch this attempted commentary in an emotionally accessible or compelling narrative experience, it would be a worthy, somewhat unique addition to the genre. But in its self-conscious retreat to archetypes and muddled mechanical executions, anything remotely engaging about its historical commentary is lost entirely. Go read a book.

You’ve played this before, more times than you can count

Final Thoughts

There are glimpses of a better game strewn throughout The Old Country. For a major release, it is boldly committed to its deliberate pacing, frequently requiring the player to slow down and engage in menial labour or quiet moments. Paired with a better script, this intentionality could have been a joy, reproducing the considered pacing of the films it riffs on in a way wholly unique to video games. Instead, The Old Country eventually offers you the ability to outright skip these subdued moments, developer Hanger 13 so self-conscious of its work as to not trust the player to enjoy even a poor facsimile of the genre it’s so hungry to emulate.

Reviewed on PS5  // Review code supplied by publisher

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