Mafia: The Old Country is a trip back to when games were simpler  

I didn’t expect Mafia: The Old Country to hit me with such a sense of deja vu. From the moment the opening scene faded in and Enzo’s battered motor carriage creaked across the dusty roads of rural Sicily, I felt like I’d been transported back not just to the early 1900s but to the days when story-driven action games ruled my PS2. It’s a strange sensation – a brand new game that feels unmistakably old, but in a way that’s oddly comforting.

Hangar 13 has clearly taken a look at what happened with Mafia III – the criticisms about repetitive mission design, the grind, the sprawl of an open world that sometimes felt like busywork and decided to go back to the basics. And they did. There’s no bloated checklist of side activities, no battle pass, no online mode shoehorned in. This is an unapologetically single-player, chapter-based experience, and I think that’s why it resonated with me so strongly.

That’s not to say it’s flawless. Far from it. The Old Country plays like a game with one foot stubbornly stuck in the past, and sometimes that stubbornness works against it. But it’s also what gives it a distinct personality in an era where so many action games are terrified of letting the player have a quiet moment and focus on the game’s story.

I’ll admit, Enzo’s story had me hooked from the start. Beginning life as a teenage labourer trapped in a sulphur mine, the game wastes little time setting up its premise: freedom comes at a cost, and for Enzo that cost is binding himself to the Torrisi family, the ruling mob clan in the Dorata valley. This is classic Mafia material – the desperate young man, the powerful family, the forbidden romance (yes, he inevitably falls for Isabella, the Don’s daughter). If you’ve watched The Godfather or Once Upon a Time in America, you’ll spot the references straight away.

What surprised me was how briskly the game moved from one major set-piece to another. There’s a motor race, a tense opera assassination, a christening that turns into a shootout. Each chapter jumps ahead months or even years, so you get the sense that you’re watching Enzo’s entire life story in fast-forward. It’s a double-edged sword as the pacing keeps things exciting, but it also means some of the meatier emotional beats barely have time to breathe. I wanted to see more of Enzo adjusting to life outside the mines, more of Isabella wrestling with her father’s expectations. Those moments are there, but the game is always nudging you towards the next car chase or knife fight.

The shooting, driving, and stealth mechanics are perfectly serviceable, but they don’t do anything you haven’t seen before. Cover shooting feels like it’s lifted straight from a game circa 2010, and while that’s fine, it’s hard not to wish Hangar 13 had refined things a little more. I lost count of the number of times enemies would get stuck on geometry or just stand there waiting for me to pop them. Still, when everything clicks, those firefights are tight and cinematic. There’s a mission where you’re pinned down in a vineyard at sunset, with bullets tearing through the grapevines and Molotovs lighting up the rows – that was the moment the game really sold me on its atmosphere.

And speaking of atmosphere: the world is gorgeous. Dorata valley feels like a postcard come to life. From sun-baked villages, rocky hillsides, to winding dirt roads that practically beg you to take the long way round. The lighting does a lot of heavy lifting here; the soft golden glow of dusk spilling across a quiet piazza is the kind of visual that sticks with you long after you’ve put the controller down. I’d imagine playing the PC version with visual settings amped to the max would give the best experience, but even on the PS5 Pro the game is not too shabby. It’s just a shame that so much of this world is locked off unless you go into the separate Exploration Mode from the main menu. I don’t understand why they made this decision as the whole point of having a world this pretty is to let players live in it, not just sprint through it on the way to the next objective marker.

When the game slows down though, it really shines. There’s one lovely moment where you sit and listen to a travelling storyteller spin tales of local legends while the villagers gather round. I also witnessed an NPC walking to and pissing over a bridge. It’s in these quieter beats that The Old Country feels alive, reminding me why I love Mafia games in the first place – not because of the action, but because they let you soak in a world and a culture that’s rarely depicted in games.

But again, these moments are fleeting. Before you know it, you’re back in another shootout or car chase. I get that this is a design choice but part of me wishes they had more confidence to just let players sit with these characters for longer.

So, what’s my final thoughts on Mafia: The Old Country? I’d say it’s a game that wears its intentions on its sleeve – it doesn’t want to be the next big open-world epic, and it isn’t chasing modern trends. It’s a throwback, yes, but it’s a strangely specific kind of throwback: one that takes you back to a time when games were shorter, leaner, and content with telling a single story well — or at least trying to. And I think that’s what I liked most about it.

It isn’t perfect, of course. The gunplay could be sharper, the open world could be less restricted, the emotional beats could have more time to land. But it’s one of those games that sticks in your head, even after you’ve put it down. At least for me, it did. Not because it blew my mind mechanically, but because it let me spend a few hours inhabiting a place and time I rarely get to see in games. And for all its flaws, that’s something I don’t take for granted – especially in an era where half the industry seems obsessed with filling your map with 200 icons and sending you on yet another quest to collect feathers or clear outposts.

Mafia: The Old Country is now available for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.