Mafia: Definitive Edition Review (Raven)
Young gamers who never played the original will likely love this remake. Some older gamers who have played and liked the original may hate this reboot because it's not a 100% exact copy. I happen to fall among the latter, and since the original Mafia is my favorite game ever and holds such a special place in my heart, it would make sense for me to be picky and b!tch about the reboot, how it misses some details, how things have changed and so on. But you know what? When I played Mafia: DE I was overrun by the same ecstatic emotions that I felt when I first played Mafia and I totally loved this new rendition.
What else made this possible if not my nostalgia for the story, the city, the characters, etc.? But I didn't care - I loved it for what it was, loved to see the beauty of Lost Heaven backed by amazing visuals, loved to relive the story, loved the cars, the missions, pretty much everything. Yeah they could've worked on some characters a bit more, yeah they could've let us do some side jobs for Luca Bertone instead of simply using postcards for car missions, of course they could've let us play every part that was playable in the original instead of covering some bits with cutscenes, among a few other things. These are improvements that won't see the light of day, but I will never think that's enough to bash this game.
The game has been criticized for many reasons by the original's fans, from voice actors doing an allegedly crappy job to the gameplay being generic, and some gamers went so far as to immediately write Mafia: DE off because they saw Hangar13's name on it. I don't get it. Playing the remake I could often feel the love that the devs put into it, and not once did I think they were just doing their job making minimal effort. Mafia 1 was extraordinary in its details, it was a difficult yet rewarding game, and I suppose being so hardcore is why some of its fans can't get over the modernized remake. However, times have changed, the standards have changed, and I believe nowadays you often gotta appeal to a much wider audience than some 20 years ago if you want your game to succeed. And it probably just so happens that that audience is a tad more generic than it was in 2002.
In any case, I understand the criticism that this game got from some long-time fans of the franchise, and they definitely don't have to like Mafia: Definitive Edition. As for me, I didn't like it either. I loved it.