{"id":10411,"date":"2025-08-07T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/08\/07\/mafia-the-old-country-review\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T12:00:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T12:00:10","slug":"mafia-the-old-country-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/08\/07\/mafia-the-old-country-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Mafia: The Old Country Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Since its debut, the Mafia series has steadily marched forward through the decades \u2013 the original is set in the 1930s, its sequel spans the \u201940s and \u201950s, and Mafia III unfolds during the late \u201960s. If the next step was going to be the \u201970s, or the \u201980s \u2013 or both \u2013 I was certainly ready. Casino intrigue, shine boxes, borrowing huge kitchen knives from Martin Scorcese\u2019s mother in the middle of the night \u2013 whatever it was, I was up for it. However, instead of moving closer to the end of the 20th century, Mafia: The Old Country takes us back to the beginning. And not just the beginning of the century, but to the formative era of the Mafia itself. Part mob drama and part Western, The Old Country may be a safe and conventional third-person action adventure on the surface, but it\u2019s a moody and engaging one that makes great use of its uncommon setting and is brimming with old school atmosphere so heady you can practically smell the sun-dried tomatoes.<\/p>\n

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After experimenting with a more freeform open world structure in the divisive Mafia III, Mafia: The Old Country returns to the format of the original Mafia and Mafia II. That is, it\u2019s linear and tightly story-driven, and the open world is largely just a vivid backdrop to move through between objectives, and during some missions. This has always worked well for the Mafia series, and The Old Country is no exception. <\/p>\n

This approach gives The Old Country an effective sense of place and scale \u2013 immersing you in a rich and evocative Sicilian countryside \u2013 but without bloat. It\u2019s a very detailed, varied, and convincing map, but there are no towers to scale or arbitrary icons to visit and clear. Your attention is simply required on the story, and the story alone. As a single-player sucker who inhales this kind of thing for its story, setting, and style, I was quickly hooked. If you\u2019re the kind of person who might be tempted to use the Sicilian language option alongside subtitles in the language of your choice, you\u2019re in the right place. If you\u2019re the kind of person who pounds through cutscenes craving their next chance to slap the citizens of Steelport with a giant purple dildo, it\u2019s possible the Mafia series may not be your speed.<\/p>\n

Family Splatters<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Beginning in 1904, The Old Country charts a chronicle in the life of young Sicilian Enzo Favara, who escapes a life of slavery in the region\u2019s dangerous sulphur mines \u2013 run by the ruthless Spadaro crime family \u2013 to find himself working for their local adversaries, the Torrisi family. The story hits a lot of standard beats, and all the usual suspects are here. The fair and kindly mentor, and the loyal best friend with a habit of testing the patience of others around him. The stern and powerful Don and his cynical consigliere. The slimy and treacherous rival boss, and the forbidden love. There are some neat connections to the existing games in the series too, for fans who pay close attention.<\/p>\n

So yes, it\u2019s a fairly familiar and predictable 13-hour saga for anyone with a basic level of gangster movie literacy, but the writing is strong and the voice performances are stronger. The highlight is arguably Don Torrisi himself, whose English voice actor Johnny Santiago injects with a quiet, husky intensity that is as credibly intimidating as a man in his position would need to be. He stalks the screen as the kind of guy that men who kill for a living would actually take orders from.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a fairly familiar and predictable 13-hour saga for anyone with a basic level of gangster movie literacy, but the writing is strong.<\/section>\n

Familiar too is the third-person action, as The Old Country plays like any typical cover shooter from the last decade or so. This was the case in 2020\u2019s Mafia: Definitive Edition, and it\u2019s the same again here, albeit with a wild west flavour thanks to the era-specific arsenal (like revolvers, repeaters, and various shotguns) and the fact that shootouts sometimes occur on horseback, and\/or against fellas who look like they\u2019ve just stumbled home off the set of a Sergio Leone picture after a full day of making Clint Eastwood look cool.<\/p>\n

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Even without engaging much with its rosary bead system of minor combat buffs (which I did <\/em>regularly forget about), it\u2019s not a massive challenge with the default, soft-locking aiming controls. However, I don\u2019t play these sorts of games to be relentlessly punished. Some enemies will hunker down behind large objects and walls, and others will stoically stride towards you to be blown out of their boots. The AI isn\u2019t always sharp (and it\u2019s definitely a little janky to find yourself completely flanked but still have the time to stand up and clumsily blast a bloke who had you dead to rights at point blank range) but the shootouts are nonetheless serviceable.<\/p>\n

The Old Country\u2019s stealth doesn\u2019t rewrite the rule book either, but it does strengthen the action overall. Stealth is sometimes required by the design of the mission at hand, but on other occasions it\u2019s available as an option. There are a number of encounters throughout with environments that have been laid out for us to be able to sneak around and pick off all the enemies one by one, but also seamlessly pivot to hosting an out-and-out gunfight should you flub it and be spotted.<\/p>\n

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You can toss coins and bottles for distraction, but unfortunately only some <\/em>bottles (that is, the ones arbitrarily marked). It\u2019s always a bit of an immersion breaker when levels are decorated with inconsistent props. I\u2019d vastly prefer to just be able to pick up any bottle. Failing that, just delete the bottles we can\u2019t pick up during missions. Crucially, you can <\/em>pick up and move bodies, and there are boxes to stash them in. The stealth is pretty standard, but with distractions and body hiding it does <\/em>feel like a proper stealth system and not a tacked on afterthought.<\/p>\n

The stealth is pretty standard, but with distractions and body hiding it does feel like a proper stealth system and not a tacked on afterthought.<\/section>\n

Enzo can temporarily highlight nearby enemies in the environment, which is essentially a superpower that\u2019s handwaved away as his impeccable instincts (it probably could\u2019ve been more logically introduced during the underground intro as some kind of innate ability he honed after spending the bulk of his childhood in a dark sulfur mine, but no matter). At any rate, once you have a feel for where your enemies are and which way they\u2019re headed, all that\u2019s left is to sneak around, grab them, and either button-bash to strangle them or tap your knife attack to speed up the process. That said, I actually rarely used the latter. Not because I was feeling merciful, but because stabbing your victims costs you a block of \u201cdurability\u201d off your knife (which needs to be sharpened with a whetstone if and when it \u201cruns out\u201d of\u2026 stabs). It\u2019s not a gamebreaker, but I\u2019m not really into the idea of not being able to stab a bloke simply because my knife is immediately no longer pointy enough to do so after slaying a few of his mates (and whetstones were a consumable I didn\u2019t always have). <\/p>\n

I mainly just strangled my enemies to avoid this issue, but it feels like a slightly unnecessary system \u2013 particularly when durability concerns disappear during The Old Country\u2019s new one-on-one knife fights.<\/p>\n

These knife fights are essentially boss encounters, presented as a one-on-one showdown with another man. They occur outside regular third-person action gameplay, and you\u2019re locked into these battles until there\u2019s a result (or your opponent is scripted to scarper). The attacks, parries, and dodges in knife fights are bespoke to this mode alone. They\u2019re flashy and bloody, but a lot of the time I did just feel I was simply dodging and slashing my way to a cutscene, where a further complication or a switch in momentum will occur. Sometimes you\u2019ll trigger an animation that makes you a passenger for a while, then Enzo\u2019s health bar recharges while your enemy\u2019s does not. I\u2019m not sure what the thought was there. The knife fights look cool, and they\u2019re not like anything in the series to date, but they do feel a little low stakes at times.<\/p>\n

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Red Dead Redenzione<\/strong><\/h2>\n

As a linear adventure, The Old Country admittedly doesn\u2019t share the same scope of Rockstar\u2019s genre-defining Westerns \u2013 but it\u2019s certainly adjacent to them in tone and atmosphere. There\u2019s a certain undeniable swagger that comes with riding into town on horseback (and on the wrong side of the law), and The Old County captures this with similar effectiveness to the Red Dead series. <\/p>\n

The early 1900s setting doesn\u2019t just shine a spotlight on the early days of the Sicilian Mafia, it\u2019s also a window back to the Edwardian era of automobiles \u2013 when cars began competing with horses as the primary method of transportation. Developer Hangar 13 has done an exceptional job in this department, especially with the sound.<\/p>\n

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These 120-year-old cars have primitive engines, whining chain drives, and open cabins with no sound deadening, and The Old Country has captured their raw and lumpy burbles immaculately. It definitely can\u2019t be understated how much richness this adds to driving around the map. It\u2019s not just engine sounds, either. When a gramophone is brought on a drunken car trip, be sure to listen as it misbehaves when you bounce around off road. There\u2019s a lot of consideration here, and I respect that.<\/p>\n

Yes, there\u2019s a race mission \u2013 but it\u2019s not been shoehorned in here to taunt those who are still haunted by the infamously tricky racing event in the original Mafia. Sicily was the home of the Targa Florio \u2013 established in 1906 and one of the oldest motor racing events in the world \u2013 so it makes perfect sense in context.<\/p>\n

The Old Country\u2019s riff on this race is sadly all too brief \u2013 it\u2019s over in less than seven minutes \u2013 but it is one of the most memorable and thrilling missions. It certainly made me wish Enzo could\u2019ve cut ties with the Cosa Nostra and raced around Europe full time. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s more dangerous: betraying your oath to the family or trying to tame an aircraft engine that\u2019s had four tyres and a steering wheel strapped to it.<\/p>\n