KickStarter Mafia: Trilogy - rerelease of Mafia series including Mafia 1 remake on August 28th

There is nothing good about Mafia 1's combat. It's pure shit.

What makes the game memorable is indeed that they went for it when it came to the setting. And other little small things like a law enforcement system where you could commit minor offences like going against a red light and then paying the ticket. Those little things are what makes the game memorable.
The combat? No. Some of the missions are fucking horrendous.

It's such a unique game but I have no idea whatsoever how anyone could call it a masterpiece.

Of course, the remake will likely "smooth the edges out" but also take away the little things that made the game memorable in the first place.

 

New voice cast will ruin it. Not even joking, a lot of the fun in Mafia is how silly and tame it all is - it's only a little bit edgier than a movie from the 1940s. If they make everyone say "fuck" every 5 seconds and have blood and gore flying everywhere it'll lose a big part of what makes Mafia fun. They might not do that, of course, but I bet they will.

I like Mafia 1 combat. It totally shits itself in a few parts, especially if the camera spazzes out, but missions like Election Campaign and The Death of Art feature some outstanding combat segments. Bullets feel deadly and Tommy feels clunky (like a real person rather than an action hero). Cover shooters with recharging health just don't have the same feeling, they're all boring. Combat in Mafia 2 doesn't have any "weight" behind it, for lack of a better term.

 

The combat in the first game was often frustrating, but it was actually challenging and tense, you had to react quickly, handle the recoil well, and could often feel rather helpless. The game didn't feel trivial. Mafia II on the other hand felt like an utterly formulaic cover-based shooter, just with a gangster film theme. The story didn't seem that good either; I only recall the ending taking a nice dramatic turn.

 

It was a quick save-reload fest. No it wasn't fun.. I mean it was occasionally fun but, it was the story and the presentation that held me.

 

Every combat section in Mafia is a goddamn highlight. It's the saving grace of the gameplay, with the driving sections being dull "from A to B at 40 mph" affairs except for some decent car chases (and the race, of course). Okay, there are some camera issues in close quarters, and a couple of guns are ridiculously underpowered, but I just love the combat overall. The gunfights are set up incredibly well, have great atmosphere and keep you on your toes at all times, with a single shotgun blast or a short burst from a Tommy Gun being lethal. The controls are precise, the pacing is tight, the levels are all clearly different from one another, and the shotgun sound is outright murderous. What's not to like?

Mafia 2 was such a fucking disappointment with its cover system and health regen, the same shit we've got in every third-person shooter for the last 15 years or so. You can gun down mooks all day from behind a box with zero tension and slaughter entire nations' worth of people without breaking a sweat. I cannot understand how a living human being can find enjoyment in that.

Yeah, the gritty voice from the teaser doesn't seem to fit the tone of the game at all.

There was no quick save.

 

Would be stunned if a remaster of Mafia 1 contained even a tenth of the detail. Realistic car damage physics, police stops that differ in severity, rideable trams, etc.

 

It's the ultimate immersion over gameplay experience, basically.

 

Fine checkpoint reload shit. All I remember is that one sequence where he drives the car into somewhere, get's out and uses it as cover and I kept dying due to snipers, had to figure out the exact order of taking out the enemies to proceed, wasn't skill. It was trial and error.

 

You are in for a treat.

 

You mean you somehow missed those 100-feet tall cranes? The cutscene even shows Morello ordering his guys up there.

There's actually very little bullshit in Mafia's combat. It just punishes you for sucking.

 

You die quite easily iirc, and there were many moments where you'd creep through a door and get wasted before you even know where the bullets were coming from. With shitty checkpoints and no quicksave, it was absolutely annoying as fuck for a PC gamer used to those features.

 

I find Mafia one of those games where checkpoints really are the way to go, as none of the combat sections are particularly long anyway. Doorways can be "scouted" by approaching them from a distance, rolling is very useful for avoiding getting hit when leaving cover, and you have third-person camera for cheating peeking. Sure, there's always a chance of getting one-shotted by a shotgun guy appearing from around the corner, but hey, you should be alert and ready. First and foremost the game forces you to be careful and not rush into a hail of bullets like a moron.

This whole discussion just seems weird to me.

 

The people who enjoy repeating stuff they already did as a death penalty and the people who hate it never seem to understand each other, so it is what it is. Even with checkpoints though, they can be done well or done poorly. I remember Mafia's being done poorly.

 

Mafia 1 is one of my favorite games. I really doubt they'll be able to pull off all its gameplay elements that made it such a memorable game, ie the recoil system and impressive sound.

 

Regarding the combat, it really depends on the specific mission. There are a few that showcase everything wrong with Mafia combat (the harbour battle at the end of You Lucky Bastard isn't great, especially the boss room with the maze of shotgun guys who can one-hit you, and A Trip To The Country sort of sucks when the camera craps out every time you enter a barn or have to go up stairs), and there are a few that showcase everything great about Mafia combat (Death of Art, The Priest, Election Campaign, The Whore up until the shit rooftop battle, most of Great Deal).

The combat is mostly pretty great though. It's definitely one of those games where the penalty for failure is repeating what you already did, but doing better this time around, conserving more health and ammo.

 

In mafia 1, I recall some situations in which I had to repeat a lot of times in order to finally finish it. One is the race. That damn race, that required a lot of trial and error and a high dose of luck (in extreme difficulty, of course). Another situation was the chapter set in a church and one in a farm. But one that really pissed me off was the final level, inside a big classy building, a bank IIRC. It pissed me off because I would get to the end of the level and get killed by a mobster after repeating it for the 10th time. Also, to be honest, I recall having to repeat a lot of missions in this game due to making mistakes on parts that I had already mastered but overconfidence would destroy that try. Like forgetting to keep the speed below the limit and attracting the police, making and easy part a chore because I couldn't damage my car but had to dodge and escape the police. But I enjoyed most of it and had a lot of fun.

Mafia 2 was somewhat bland. Beatiful game, the story was ok, but it didn't had the same weight the 1st had on me. The first had a Coppolla/Scorcese vibe, the second was a bit souless.

The 3rd is one of the worst games ever: big city with repetitive gameplay, a boring just cause 2, which was already boring. Which makes me think what will be made to make a definitive edition of Mafia 3... they would have to remake the whole game.

 

Even if they do Mafia 1 storyline with Mafia 3 combat it would be great honestly.

 

For me the most annoying parts in Mafia 1 were the ones where I had to babysit other characters because those retards are so eager to get themselves killed. When they're not running into enemy fire they are running into mine. Rest of the stuff is not hard for me, though I never bothered trying racing mission on hardest difficulty.

 

Will pirate/10

 

I don't understand, that looks like a full blown UE4 remake. There's no way they could conjure up something like this by polishing up the 20 year old engine.

Uh...that doesn't make sense tbh. Has the notoriously jewy 2K decided to pour dozens of millions of dorra to basically rebuild a 20 year old game from the ground up? Do they expect to sell 5 million copies of this game or what?

 

It's not even gonna be the same game most likely, just a modern game loosely based on the original. It seems they're even changing voice actors, which also probably means they are rewriting dialogue to include "fuck" in almost every sentence, because muh gangsta omg.

Would love to be proven wrong of course.

Yeah that "much more" part does not sound appealing.

 

Yeah, Vavra posted today on his FB page he heard about some rewrites. Unfortunately he's not involved with 2K anymore and he doesn't know anything more about this remake.

 

Pretty much. Looking at the writing scene in modern games, I won't keep my hopes up.

 

You know what actual incline looks like - LA Noire remastered with modern graphics, and with at least some of the missing functioanlity added.

 

LA Noire managed to be utterly amazing and brain-ossifyingly boring at the same time. A strange game.