From the static main menu to the camera-sweeping opening section to the in-game vehicles and open-world window dressings, Mafia: Definitive Edition is nothing short of gorgeous. The way light reflects off of wet surfaces is a thing of beauty, as is the blinding sun as you emerge from a restaurant out into the open world.
There is an incredible period-specific attention to detail in the building facades, clothing, vehicles, and signs that are peppered throughout the city. And that’s saying nothing of the literature and newspaper clippings.
Even the character models look authentic and believable for the most part. In Mafia: Definitive Edition guys are ugly because they’re just… well, ugly, not because their polygon count is insufficient.
Yes, Mafia: Definitive Edition is nothing short of a remaster masterpiece…
Until you scrape away that pretty veneer and actually get your hands on the game. The controls for your character while on foot — and for the camera as well — leave much to be desired. This is understandable when you’re talking about a remastered version of a game from 2002. After all, it is significantly easier (although still quite difficult), to slap a new coat of paint on jalopy than it is to completely overhaul its engine.
And to be clear, the jalopy reference was an analogy. I’m not referring to the driving here, which I think is excused because it’s based on cars from like 100 years ago. Old cars drive like bricks going down a sandpaper slide.
What I’m actually referring to is the controls for Tommy himself. Early in the game, there is a tutorial mission that tries to acclimate you to all the running and clambering over objects you might be doing later in the game. It’s framed within a mission that has two rival goons trying to bash your brains in with baseball bats.
The in-game prompt says to use L3 to run. Okay, that’s simple enough. Except it doesn’t specify if you have to press it or hold it. I instinctively assumed it was a press, so I pressed it, only to witness Tommy still trotting along at his brisk pace. So I pressed it again, except it seemed like Tommy was now ready to start running, but since I had pressed the button a second time he stopped. Needless to say, I was met with a round of bats to the noggin.
So the next time, I held the button, which also didn’t seem to prompt Tommy into making his getaway any faster. I’ve tried a few other times, but I still haven’t come to a consensus on how to get that son of a gun to hotfoot it outta there.
In a later mission, I was tasked with getting a fellow gangster out of a less-than-friendly rival family interrogation. This required accessing a mostly fortified motel and dispatching a couple goons. The first guy had a switchblade, and the game prompted me to press triangle in order to dodge and counter it. There are two circles around the triangle icon that seem to serve some timing purpose. Except the game doesn’t tell me what I’m looking at specifically. And when I try to press triangle at what felt like the intuitive point in time, I got shivved. I tried it again only to get another slice. So the third time I just spammed the triangle button, which got the job done, but I didn’t figure what I had been doing wrong or what I finally did correct.
And all the while, I was trying to coax the camera into at least giving me a partial glimpse of the action it refused to show me, since a full glance was apparently out of the question.
I’m a glutton for punishment and a fan of the Mafia story, so I’ll just have to muscle through. And who knows, maybe things will click and I’ll see the error of my ways, eventually becoming a made guy after all.
