Mafia 1 Full Remake looking glorious! (OUT NOW!)

[Lorddarthvik]

UPDATE UPDATE:

You can find my review-kinda-thingy a couple of posts down here.

I've finished the game a couple of days ago, done some free ride mode as well. TLDR is, it's a pretty damn solid game!
Steam says I spent 33 hours but I think about 10 of those was idling. So the story is rather shorter than the original, and there really isn't that much else to do apart from some crap collecting, car collecting, car finding, and car timed runs for reward cars and golden guns, and achievements. But for me, it was money and time well spent.




UPDATE:
The Game is OUT on Steam! And, it's NOT HORRIBLE! :D :D

played the first 3 missions, and it's pretty much as I expected it to be!
Characters still look like wax figures, but everything else look as good as it did in the gameplay trailers below, and it runs fine.

Original post follows:
--------------------------------------------
If you haven't played it originally, or if you did, doesn't matter. One of the very best games of all time is getting a proper, full remake! Get on the Hype Train right now!!
Not just some texture swaps, not just some added 2k shadows. A total full rebuild, with proper modern controls, new voice acting, and all the bells and whistles you would expect. If they do this right, it will be the best thing since sliced bread I tell ya!
I rarely pre-order, but with not ever really owning the original, although I played it like 20 times over, I had to make amends. Also bought the original cos it's 10 bucks and had some store credit to burn and I really really love taht game. Plays pretty well even today, it's just much easier in places than I rememebred.

Update update:
GAMEPLAY TRAILER

View: https://youtu.be/6Ng6Gc1Vn6g



Update: New Cinematic Trailer!

View: https://youtu.be/2H-ooDBx8FM


Steam link:

Mafia: Definitive Edition on Steam

An inadvertent brush with the mob thrusts cabdriver Tommy Angelo into the world of organized crime. Initially uneasy about falling in with the Salieri family, the rewards become too big to ignore.

store.steampowered.com

Teaser:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pea_9BFY4EQ


Screenshots comparison:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcilJ-xWZFs

 

[Bambooza]

If you haven't played it originally, or if you did, doesn't matter. One of the very best games of all time is getting a proper, full remake! Get on the Hype Train right now!!
Not just some texture swaps, not just some added 2k shadows. A total full rebuild, with proper modern controls, new voice acting, and all the bells and whistles you would expect. If they do this right, it will be the best thing since sliced bread I tell ya!
I rarely pre-order, but with not ever really owning the original, although I played it like 20 times over, I had to make amends. Also bought the original cos it's 10 bucks and had some store credit to burn and I really really love taht game. Plays pretty well even today, it's just much easier in places than I rememebred.


Steam link:

Mafia: Definitive Edition on Steam

An inadvertent brush with the mob thrusts cabdriver Tommy Angelo into the world of organized crime. Initially uneasy about falling in with the Salieri family, the rewards become too big to ignore.

store.steampowered.com

Teaser:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pea_9BFY4EQ


Screenshots comparison:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcilJ-xWZFs

It almost looks too good to be true. Last time I've seen graphic detail like that for a game this hyped was the division and we know how they liked to give false promises.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

It almost looks too good to be true. Last time I've seen graphic detail like that for a game this hyped was the division and we know how they liked to give false promises.

Yeaaaah, I try not to think about that too much lol Your skepticism is well earned with the way games do these days, and I wouldn't have jumped in if it was anything else really.
I got burned a few times, recently even after release, by games that are supposedly amazing (I'm looking at you, Doom: Eternal Resource Manager Simulator 2020!!)
I hope it will look this good, I don't really see anything unrealistic, with the way graphics generally look today this seems possible.

The original city is quiet small, they can go into a lot of detail with the buildings, but looking at them more closely they look the usual low-poly highres textured approach like any other game. They can probably afford to do some nice soft cast shadows with such low poly assets at a fair distance. that adds a lot. Maybe they got some raytraced light scatter going as well, but most shadows look to be the usual "soft" traced shadow maps.
The cars are just cars, simple to make detailed and shiny reflective stuff sells the illusion better (just look at Forza/GT, even on consoles they look pretty damn good), cloth is just high res textures again, some lens flares and glares on everything bright and shiny, notice how there is no overdone DoF effect close up which also helps, and lots of enviroment/distance fog that looks great in stills but might look cheap in motion, and most importantly, very brutal contrast that burns the image but makes it look good in stills, that I'm sure will be toned back for the actual game as it would be very distracting and look cartoonish when half the screen burns into black and white a lot.
The amount of soft light scatter and contrast is what really looks great and thus a bit concerning. Like on screenshot 1 (Steam) the bin and paper boxes on the right have amazingly detailed lighting. I dunno. We will see.

Just look at how GTAV can look with properly modding the graphics. Apart from some silly reflections on the buildings, it's pretty impressive I think. I wanna try this out, just need the time and SSD space to do it...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S24gQntcWg

gameplay of the mod

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg0kjItGons


Also the big city in RDR2 at night is a great example of how awesome stuff like this can look under the right lighting.

We are supposedly getting a look at some "actual" gameplay in a few weeks time, that could tell us a bit more. The original devs are working on this, I would expect they really want it to live up to the hype. They could still pull a no mans lie with this though, where the devs keep showing fake stuff and the publisher is pushing them too....

 

[Bambooza]

Yeaaaah, I try not to think about that too much lol Your skepticism is well earned with the way games do these days, and I wouldn't have jumped in if it was anything else really.
I got burned a few times, recently even after release, by games that are supposedly amazing (I'm looking at you, Doom: Eternal Resource Manager Simulator 2020!!)
I hope it will look this good, I don't really see anything unrealistic, with the way graphics generally look today this seems possible.

The original city is quiet small, they can go into a lot of detail with the buildings, but looking at them more closely they look the usual low-poly highres textured approach like any other game. They can probably afford to do some nice soft cast shadows with such low poly assets at a fair distance. that adds a lot. Maybe they got some raytraced light scatter going as well, but most shadows look to be the usual "soft" traced shadow maps.
The cars are just cars, simple to make detailed and shiny reflective stuff sells the illusion better (just look at Forza/GT, even on consoles they look pretty damn good), cloth is just high res textures again, some lens flares and glares on everything bright and shiny, notice how there is no overdone DoF effect close up which also helps, and lots of enviroment/distance fog that looks great in stills but might look cheap in motion, and most importantly, very brutal contrast that burns the image but makes it look good in stills, that I'm sure will be toned back for the actual game as it would be very distracting and look cartoonish when half the screen burns into black and white a lot.
The amount of soft light scatter and contrast is what really looks great and thus a bit concerning. Like on screenshot 1 (Steam) the bin and paper boxes on the right have amazingly detailed lighting. I dunno. We will see.

Just look at how GTAV can look with properly modding the graphics. Apart from some silly reflections on the buildings, it's pretty impressive I think. I wanna try this out, just need the time and SSD space to do it...

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S24gQntcWg

gameplay of the mod

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg0kjItGons


Also the big city in RDR2 at night is a great example of how awesome stuff like this can look under the right lighting.

We are supposedly getting a look at some "actual" gameplay in a few weeks time, that could tell us a bit more. The original devs are working on this, I would expect they really want it to live up to the hype. They could still pull a no mans lie with this though, where the devs keep showing fake stuff and the publisher is pushing them too....

Well, I'll wait until its released and you have had a chance to play.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

I see that not many ppl (well, like 3 actually) care about this, but I'll keep entertaining myself at least by posting when I come across some info.

- Gameplay or maybe a trailer should be shown at the PC Gaming Show on June 13th

Home - PC Gaming Show

Broadcast around the world the PC Gaming Show is an exhibition of the boundless creativity and technical brilliance of the PC gaming scene.

www.pcgamingshow.com

- interesting bit I found in my emails:

They are still looking for artists! The Env artist is nothing unusual,, but Gameplay Animator this close to release? They should have that down by now, or at least fully planned out.
Details read:

• Creating keyframe creature animations, in order to realize characters and test rig design
• Assist rig development by working with the animation TD and creature designer to inform structure and mechanics of the rig
• Planning, directing, and processing motion capture for human characters
• Work with designers, programmers, and artists to deliver content that fits their vision and constraints
• Implement animations in-game with proprietary animation software, test and debug gameplay animations

This tells me that they are still working on mocapped stuff. Most importantly, they don't even have their character rigs set in stone! WTF? That's about the first thing you Must do, or you end up like SC, in perpetually re-making, re-targeting, re-animating everything that has "bones"!
Or maybe they are just gearing up for DLC...

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Updated to add new trailer. There's supposed to be an interview as well, will add later.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

updated with gameplay trailer!

View: https://youtu.be/6Ng6Gc1Vn6g



It looks rather good, and the gameplay seems okay, altough I'd like to see some proper driving gameplay as well.
The mission seemed fully in-line with the original, but the arrangement and shape of the buildings got changed (which is not a bad idea imo).

One thing I noticed is how the player kept picking up ammo from boxes thrown around the rooms. I guess this was done so even the console gamers stand a chance in a fight with their poor aim.
I'm not sure I like this idea. It makes it too much spray-and-pray kinda gameplay, which is fun for a bit, but the original had the added difficulty of very limited ammo. Unless you could find the same gun on an enemy, if you ran out, you might even had to restart or at least had a much harder time completing some missions. This was a good thing, but it's now made easier for the soft-crowd of today, who grew up with games holding their hands and autosaving every second (and ofc the console players). Whether this makes the game loose it's appeal, I doubt it, but we shall see. Otherwise everything seemed solid, apart from the faces. All the faces looked kinda weirdly smooth and bright, like they were made of wax. (it's like someone messed up the subsurface scattering on the skin shader by at least a decimal point lol) I hope they'll add some more grit to the skin textures at least, currently it looks almost cartoonish in some places.
Oh yeah, and Tommy's face looks just a little fat in some scenes. Actually, everyones face looks a tad fat and younger. Apart from Frank, he looks perfectly as I have imagined he should.
Oh well, if the gameplay is there, and the story is the same, I'll be happy to play this again!

 

[Talonsbane]

Looks very interesting. I'll have to look into it more when my bank account isn't looking at me like Oliver Twist saying, "Please Sir, I'd like some more."

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Some not so great additions for shaking off pursuers in car chases and I hate that I have a minimap cos I keep looking at it. And they moved the bridge over one street which feels strange for someone who knows the city by heart. But other than that, 3 missions in, so far so good!

 

[vahadar]

I played the original one back in the day and it was a blast. This reboot is just great, I just hope the car driving mechanics will be better than in the first one (only complain i had back then).

 

[Mich Angel]

Well what you know, that look really good and if story is there and enhanced why not..

 

[Lorddarthvik]

I played the original one back in the day and it was a blast. This reboot is just great, I just hope the car driving mechanics will be better than in the first one (only complain i had back then).

The driving was a common complaint. I found it perfectly fine and fun. I used to drive with a ffb joystick and even tried it with ffb wheel and pedals. Wheel was useless for actual chases but just driving around the immersion was awesome! Played through the steam version a few months ago with keyboard driving, won the race on highest difficulty no problem. It just a question of getting used to it imo.


My review:

Now as for the remake, oooh boy, that race is tuff! It took me like 8-10 tries, about half an hour to beat it on Classic with my old xbox360 gamepad. It was fun once I got the hang of it, but it's no GTA style driving, more like GTR lol
It's probably much easier on lower difficulties.

Driving in general is as you would expect from a modern GTA style game. It's something people will consider much improved I think. I used simulation mode, so no idea how the arcade mode feels. I'd say it's on par with GTAV-s arguably best-in-class driving, just a tad more realistic in handling (lack of grip at speed, understeer) and braking distance (looooong, no abs ofc).

Finished the game on Classic (highest) difficulty, it was awesome!
They did make some minor story changes that felt kinda unnecessary, but it's still very coherent, engaging and exciting.
Most missions are similar but feel fresh, more streamlined, more modern, and much shorter in some cases. The shootouts were rough in some missions, so I died quite a few times lol. Thankfully you can headshot your way through em, I never encountered a regular enemy that couldn't be taken down with one shot to the head from a 1911. (btw, the 1911 is still the best gun in the game. fast, accurate headshots, very satisfying. 1911+Tommy gun will get you through the game). If you've played mafia 3, it's that combat system, just maybe even a bit more fast and more risky with no body armor and more aggressive enemies that use cover and move around quiet a bit.

They also added some on-rails shooting bits to certain missions where you were originally the driver, those felt annoyingly difficult and turned otherwise serious missions into arcade shooters. This bit I didn't like, a very unnecessary addition...

Also a new addition is ramps and road works dotter around the city, these are marked when you are in a chase and let you loose your tail if you pass through one. It's demonstrated in the intro mission, where it takes away the controls to show a short cutscene of the cars crashing behind you. This is the WORST part of the games design imo. You just started playing and the first thing that happens is they take away the controls in th middle of a car chase? WTF were they thinking??
The cutscene don't happen after that mission, so you get to keep driving.

My personal gripe is the changes to the city. Moved some streets and bridges, changed the location and orientation of the Bar, and for some reason Hoboken is now called something else. Really annoying for someone who had the map memorized, cos there was NO minimap in the original! But, they did a great job recreating the city buildings and landmarks. Everything is recognizable, I can still mostly tell where I am just by looking around, so big ups for that!

The game uses the mafia 2-3 garage system, so you don't have the cars you acquired lined up inside like in the original, which is a shame.

One very very minor thing: Refueling was a really unique thing back in the day, it was a fun mechanic in Mafia 2 as well. This time around, you just pull into the gas station, push a button, fade cut, and your done. I do understand why they removed the original black pump attendant in todays political climate, even though it was a historically accurate flavor in the original. Come to think of it, I can't recall seeing a single black character in the game, but they do have a china town filled with asians, so I don't really get what they were aiming for... It's not like they could avoid being called names by the media either way, so why bother not adding more historical flavor?
Anways, this really doesn't take away anything from enjoyment and immersion, so it doesn't matter.
What matters though, is that most cars are really dirty especilly in free ride mode, but there is no car wash! and you can't clean em up in the garage either.
There is no car tuning/customizing like there was in mafia2-3. I don't miss it at all, but it would have been nice for the freeride mode.
The took out the originally optional "car thief" missions from the story mode, and placed em in freeride. They are just generic "go find it" missions now. A waste of originally good content.

The graphics do look amazing, only thing that is missing compared to the trailers is the ground clutter like junk and leaves. It's not really noticeable, you will be driving all the time anyways.

Sounds are fine. The engine noise, the shots, background noises all great. I especially love the small detail of the metal pinging as it cools down after you get out of the car.
There are 2 radio stations, one is music only (I think) the other has ads and news on it, usually describing the aftermath of what you just did a mission ago.
What I don't like, is the original music is missing as well. Only the main theme remains, everything else is new. Even if these new songs are more period correct, I miss the old ones.
Voice acting is great.

As for the characters, in some scenes they look like perfectly scanned highly detailed digitized humans, in others they look like puffed up wax figurines. It's really hit n miss. Most of em look very different to the originals which I didn't like at first, but as they are all fully rounded characters, it's not an actual issue. They feel real and fit in perfectly. The only significant change is Vincenzo, totally recast as a younger crazy mofo instead of the old master of arms.
One more thing that I found annoying, is how much oru hero smiles. Even when he shouldn't. It feels more like a bug than a feature though, so it might get patched later but I doubt it.



All in all, it's one if the very best games I've played in a long time. Short but well put together. Maybe not the masterpiece the original was, but close enough. I was prepared to be disappointed, but I wasn't. You can feel it was really made by the people who made the original all those years ago, with the same vision and passion. Just better tech.


Tldr.:
Buy it! It's a perfectly good single player story driven game set in an open world, great graphics, great story, great characters, solid action! It lives up to the legacy!

Top tip: play it on classic difficulty with simulation driving mode for the most satisfying experience.*
*unless you are a lowly filthy casual who doesn't have 500+ hours in racing sim games like GTR and Asetto Corsa. You scum...

 

[vahadar]

The driving was a common complaint. I found it perfectly fine and fun. I used to drive with a ffb joystick and even tried it with ffb wheel and pedals. Wheel was useless for actual chases but just driving around the immersion was awesome! Played through the steam version a few months ago with keyboard driving, won the race on highest difficulty no problem. It just a question of getting used to it imo.


My review:

Now as for the remake, oooh boy, that race is tuff! It took me like 8-10 tries, about half an hour to beat it on Classic with my old xbox360 gamepad. It was fun once I got the hang of it, but it's no GTA style driving, more like GTR lol
It's probably much easier on lower difficulties.

Well actually i played Mafia1 after GTA3, so it was hard not to compare those games for the driving part.
I purchased the reboot but havent got time to try it yet, i'll give it a try this week-end after reading your review ;)

 

[Lorddarthvik]

Well actually i played Mafia1 after GTA3, so it was hard not to compare those games for the driving part.
I purchased the reboot but havent got time to try it yet, i'll give it a try this week-end after reading your review ;)

Yeah, the was the case with most ppl, with me as well. Trying to play mafia1 like it was GTA3 only got you killed, so lots of ppl thought it was a shitty ripoff of GTA. I pickerd it up, played for 10 minutes then let it rest for a month or two before I played it again, now with a fresh mindset that it wasn't GTA. Thats when it clicked.

I just hope you get to play it within the refund period lol, I don't want to be responsible for you spendin the money on a game based on my review hahahaha

For me the most annoying thing in the original was the melee mission, still is lol.
In the new one it's fairly easy, cos you got a Dodge button! Just start with a Dodge then keep hitting em until they fall. Easy and satisfying!

But on the flip side, there is forced stealth now, which is kinda annoying. Thankfully that's only part of one mission.

I would rather had the old mission where you gotta haul boxes, but I guess it's not new and innovative gameplay like it was back then, so they replaced it.
Funny how I only discovered in my most recent playthrough that I could ask the two guys standing next to a barrel to help with the hauling lol makes the mission much faster.

 

[vahadar]

I just hope you get to play it within the refund period lol, I don't want to be responsible for you spendin the money on a game based on my review hahahaha

I'll hunt you down if its crap
Dont worry I never ask for refund, i take full responsibility of my choice with games hehe, have over a thousand game on steam, probably 3/4 of them i havent played yet due to lack of time/interest.

 

[WildKarrde]

I totally plan on getting this one eventually. IMHO, it was one of the best non-GTA GTA-like games.

 

[Lorddarthvik]

While they took out some of the fun little things, they did make it perfectly enjoyable imo.
They added in taxi driver mode and racing into the free ride with the latest patch, so you can have some fun in it even after the story mode is over. Only thing I miss is Yellow Pete's shop, but as you can freely select any weapons, it's not that big of a deal. The police is still really hardcore, so you can't really GTA up the city, but it's at least accurate to the original lol.