The Mafia franchise has been somewhat overlooked. Though it attracted a loyal following with its first two games, it was also unfairly criticized as a Grand Theft Auto clone, routinely overshadowed by Rockstar’s impossibly successful crime franchise. Then, despite strong sales, Mafia 3 performed poorly with critics and audiences alike. Perhaps it was the disappointing performance of the threequel that made developer Hangar 13 change its tactics with Mafia: The Old Country, a game whose title is notably lacking the number 4.
But while Mafia: The Old Country takes place in a new country and was undeniably made with the best intentions, not to mention modern technology, it fails to reach the same heights as its predecessors.
While the first two Mafia games were never mechanically groundbreaking, they were rich in personality: their characters were memorable, their missions varied and unpredictable, and their cinematics pulpy and fun. They felt like old-school mob movies, giving audiences an insight into the alien, oft-romanticized world of Italian organized crime. And yet, while Mafia: The Old Country should feel even more novel due to its distinct setting, characters, and culture, it’s actually far more pedestrian, with gameplay and storytelling that feel painfully underdeveloped.
Mafia: The Old Country Feels Outdated and Bland
Older Mafia games are very straightforward on the interactive front, mostly boiling down to action setpieces like cover-based shootouts and basic car chases. Looking back on these games, though, you might forgive their mechanical triteness: cinematic cover shooters were all the rage at one point, and games like Mafia2 delivered on much of what players wanted from the burgeoning subgenre. In short, these games can be considered products of their time, which is why it’s remarkable how little Hangar 13 changed for The Old Country.
Mafia: The Old Country Isn’t an Open-World Game—Technically
As was reported long before its release, Mafia: The Old Country isn’t an open-world game like its predecessors, but this doesn’t lead to many fundamental changes. The story is broken into chapters, though all of it takes place in a fictional region in Sicily, and the entire map is explorable at many points. You can hop in a car or on a horse and meander through the countryside between mission objectives, or you can try out Explore Mode, which is a somewhat awkwardly implemented free-roam option accessible via the main menu.
The Old Country‘s quasi-open-world is even more underwhelming than those of its stripped-down predecessors. There are some collectibles, but rewards for collecting them are either nonexistent or paltry. Moreover, these items are just lying out in the open, not blocked by any challenges, puzzles, or the like; they are the worst sort of open-world filler. There are no roving mobs of enemies, no secrets to discover, no side content of any kind. It’s a rather bizarre approach to world design that, on its own, isn’t much of an issue, but is particularly disappointing in Mafia: The Old Country‘s broader context.
Mafia: The Old Country’s Stealth, Combat, and Driving Fall Flat
The meat and potatoes of gameplay unfolds during story missions, which are mostly inoffensive, formulaic, and serviceable, but rarely great. These missions typically consist of some combination of stealth and action encounters, which is a fairly standard template for an action-adventure campaign, but The Old Country doesn’t do nearly enough to flesh it out. Stealth boils down to walking behind an unaware enemy and tapping the action button, occasionally luring NPCs with a tossed item, or perhaps using the throwing knife ability, but none of these features feel purposeful. There is no stealth sandbox, no playground within which to experiment with different weapons, strategies, and the like. Stealth is on-rails, predictable, and unsophisticated.
The third-person shooting segments are much the same way. The game’s guns, of which there are only a handful, feel weighty and responsive, but each gun functions much like any other in its class, without any sense of individuality or utility. The late-2000s cover shooter formula has been reanimated in Mafia: The Old Country, as shootouts come down to nothing more than a deadly game of Whack-a-Mole. Like with stealth, there’s little room or reason to toy around with different techniques, tools, or playstyles.
There’s also a knife-dueling minigame that often triggers at the climax of a mission, a substitute for a traditional boss encounter. This is a rather clever way to implement boss battle elements into a more grounded game, but once again, The Old Country is let down by its rudimentary mechanics. Knife-fighting feels stiff and sluggish, resembling a cutscene with slightly more complex QTEs. And these fights never change, never evolve with different mechanics, moves, abilities, or environmental factors. Like so much of The Old Country, the feature feels tacked-on, never approaching its full potential.
I played Mafia: The Old Country on the hardest difficulty, so it’s unlikely that I missed many deeper mechanics.
What’s most bothersome about Mafia: The Old Country‘s gameplay is that it feels unfinished. The game gestures to deeper systems, but none ever materialize. For instance, you can collect various perks, but they are so inconsequential that they’re hardly worth thinking about. They grant bonuses like a slight increase in money gained from looting or increased damage with a specific weapon, but little more. Another example would be The Old Country‘s vehicles – there are a handful of cars and horses that players can purchase, each with distinct stats, but these differences hardly matter. There are only a handful of driving and riding setpieces during the main campaign, and they almost never allow the player to choose their car or horse beforehand. You can buy a new car or horse, but all you’ll be able to do is take it around an empty, lifeless world.
There are several other examples of Mafia: The Old Country‘s strangely rudimentary design, but the point is this that the game feels underbaked. It strips away the open-world formula of its progenitors, but doesn’t have anything of value with which to replace it. It doesn’t look like a lackluster PS3-era cover shooter, but it certainly feels like one.
Mafia: The Old Country Isn’t Rescued by Its Story
A game with mediocre gameplay can be significantly elevated, in all respects, by a good story. More than salvaging the overall experience, great writing makes certain games feel better to play, as players become emotionally invested in the fictional world with which they’re presented.
But for this to happen, the writing needs to be exceptional, and Mafia: The Old Country‘s isn’t. Make no mistake, it’s not terrible by any means, and it can even be decent at times, but it’s forgettable and by-the-numbers for the most part. The plot follows a bog-standard mob movie trope, with a young up-and-comer as the protagonist, a young beauty held back by her father as the love interest, and an intimidating, but nevertheless charming, patriarchal figure at the center of it all. For what it’s worth, these tropes are presented well, and the game’s cast can be quite entertaining, but there’s no X-factor, nothing that this story offers that countless others don’t.
To its credit, Mafia: The Old Country has a terrific English voice cast. All the game’s performances are rock-solid.
On top of that, The Old Country‘s plot is clumsily conveyed. Without getting into spoilers, there’s a lot of telling instead of showing. Character dynamics, fears, and goals, many of which drive the plot, are often referenced via dialog, rather than demonstrated through action. The game’s characters recite the story’s central theme several times during awkward dialog exchanges, instead of allowing players to arrive at that theme through independent analysis. Like its gameplay, Mafia: The Old Country‘s story gets the job done, but only in the most perfunctory and uninspired manner.
Mafia: The Old Country isn’t a bad game, just a tepid one. Its gameplay is flaccid and restrictive, its narrative is dull and predictable, and its world has no more charm or presence than an Unreal Engine tech demo. It nails the bare minimum, but a game like this, from a franchise as beloved as Mafia, should have gone beyond that.
Great graphics, facial animations, and voice acting
Fun action setpieces
Entertaining, likable characters
Restrictive, barebones gameplay
Predictable, derivative narrative
Virtually no side content
Minor graphical issues
Mafia: The Old Country releases on August 8, 2025 for PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X|S. Game Rant was provided with a PC code for the purpose of this review.
