- Game purchased on Steam and finished in about 2pm
- Tested in original English version
- I never made the original, only Mafia 2 which left an excellent memory: this test will therefore not compare with Mafia First name
- The most iconic weapon of the Prohibition and the main character of the game have a common point: will you know which one?
- Answer: their nickname pardi!
As Ségolène Royal said so well in the early 2000s, when she was responsible for French family policy in the Jospin government: « Whether mononuclear or mafia, what's more valuable than family? ». It's not Tommy Angelo, the main protagonist of this remake of the Mafia of 2002, which will contradict the former presidential suitor. After the release in 2016 of a Mafia 3 The studio Hangar 13 was forgotten and honored by the critics, and this time it opted for security with a return to sources. It is difficult to take less risk than with the overhaul of a safe value. Have American developers managed to overcome the many technical and playful flaws of the third opus? Verdict below as to the content of the restoration work accomplished. Oh, and if you doubt the authenticity of the quote above it's normal.
A time that people under the age of 100 cannot know
Mafia: Definitive Edition In the United States during the Great Depression, this period of history began with the stock market crash of 1929 and ended with World War II. This era is also marked by the Prohibition, which prohibits for questionable moral purposes any manufacture or sale of alcohol in the territory. These tumultuous times have seen unemployment and poverty explode. So in 1933 we talk about 25% of the American labour force that was unemployed and 2 million souls without a fixed home, just that. Let's go straight to the goal: it is surely in his ability to accurately transcribe this busy historical context that the game excels most. The murals of government propaganda that apologies for alcoholic abstinence, the trade unionist posters that call for a strike against the fall in wages, the pamphlets of newspapers and their alarmist headlines about the growing international tensions: everything helps us to immerse ourselves in this desperate economic and social context. Moreover, style architecture Art Deco inspired by the Chicago of the 20s/30s subjugates at every moment and you often find yourself directing the camera towards the sky to better enjoy the relief of the highest buildings.
The player plays Thomas Angelo, Italian-American taxi driver without any history or particularity if this is perhaps his disturbing resemblance and anything but fortuitous with Robert De Niro in The Free Traders. Driver in the fictitious city of Lost Heaven, the young thirty-year-old finds himself in the wrong place one evening at the wrong time and forced to help two unknown fugitives following a watch-pens. Once safe, the two larrons turn out to be the men of hands of Don Salieri, godfather of organized crime. The two criminals give Tommy a big envelope to thank him but mostly to buy his silence. Next you see it coming: the young man will succumb to the lure of gain and end up joining the Salieri family, for better and worse...
Playing with Tommy is never over.
The scenario is one of the strengths of the game and we quickly bind ourselves to our hero and his states of soul, or even to certain secondary characters more subtle than they seem at first. There is indeed a lot to bet that Paulie's dizzy voice or the imperceptible smiles around the corner of so serious Frank Colletti will make you warm in the heart. We regret, however, that an end is a little too quick and finally quite agreed. Without revealing more, we follow the events with involvement from beginning to end and the narrative, extended over several years via flashbacks, is very effective and effectively manages suspense. In addition, the game wisely dispenses its cinematic references without swinging them to the face and by abstinating with elegance from sinking into the monochrome catalogue of influences. Another good point.
This remake of the Mafia has fully assimilated the codes of collective gangster representation. As the professor of North American history explains at the Sorbonne Annick Foucrier in the summary a symposium entitled Organized Crime on the City and Screen in the United States, 1929-1951 : « [...] so few Americans personally know gangsters, they all have an artistic experience thanks to cinema. Clothes of an impermeable (susceptible to conceal a weapon) and a hat (which hides their features) in fashion of the 1920s, armed with machine guns, say Tommy guns, The gangsters of the films circulate in an urban environment confined, obscure, disturbing. ». This common imagination is here romanticized and represented with mastery, without wanting to be too realistic either, third person shooting game obliges with what it involves massacres in warehouses and miraculous care kits.
« You know Truman, people are as fake out there as in the world I built for you. »
If the game evokes at first contact an open world Rockstar way due to its progression structure similar to the GTA However, do not expect your exploration to result in the discovery of secondary points of interest. Indeed out of the question for Tommy to play a game of billiards by snuggling whiskey at the corner's underground bar before going to crush passers-by sneezing as would Trevor. Oh, no! There are only a few dozen secondary quests available in a fashion Free Ride separate from the main menu. This is more of a series of absurd and uninterested challenges than anything else, and the fact that you have deliberately put these challenges aside proves that Hangar 13 wanted to separate the grain from the tare and not tarnish the dramatic atmosphere of the main campaign with motorized pursuits of flying saucers and other incongruous booby who would have more place in a Saints Row 4.
The conductive wire in charge of ensuring progress is very clear. It will certainly make you cross Lost Heaven in all its latitudes but it will never encourage you to leave the circuit that is suggested to you with great reinforcement of yellow diamond (disabled in the display options). The reason is simple and one touches here on one of the first major weaknesses of this final edition: the fireworks reveal themselves when one looks at them more closely. In other words, the immersion takes a blow as soon as we get out of the marked trails and seek to venture behind the scenes. With all these bars, concert halls and barbershops, the disappointment is immense when one realizes sadly that there is no entrance door to access the buildings in question... It's all the more regrettable that the dark movie atmosphere is crumbling, especially at nightfall when it rains and the neon lights disintegrate on the surface of the wet macadam, on a jazz background on the radio.
This is your brain... This is your brain on drugs
In a similar register the erratic behaviour of the civilian population blows the cold and makes us suspect an early consumption of moonshine in babies Lost-Heavenois. Sometimes it is a paranormal presence that seems to help them! How many times in a race-continuation have I « by mistake » hit a passerby at 100 km/h to see it suddenly be as if fired by invisible cables then resume its march as if nothing was happening? Otherwise try to see a mandal stick to someone at random in the street, everyone lets themselves be done except the police! Let's also talk about the law enforcement agencies that sometimes pass by Carl Winslow to Robocop according to the vigilance setting chosen in the options.
All this brings us to artificial intelligence, close to disaster. The enemies will never cease to surprise you by their stupidity during the shootings a little mullassonnes, not to say often a little longs with the syndrome of the corridor of too much that makes yawn. To cite only a few situations I regularly had the right to enemies who no longer knew how to cover themselves, from small strikes to pathfinding dubious who came to block themselves in palisades or, top of the coconut tree, an individual in raincoat out of nowhere who was foolishly trotting in a chic hotel, his fists raised and his air even more hebate than a charolaise in an Iserois field. I admit this bug made me laugh. Let's not even talk about infiltration that under these conditions is as uninterested as an empty mayonnaise pot abandoned in the sun. It is therefore a strong fragrance of Truman Show and Westworld which emerges from the disembodied arteries of the city, crossed by clusters of robotic models that do not interact with each other.
What the fuck? What's wrong with her?
Graphically the game is beautiful without fioritures. The exceptional scoping of cutscenes which enhances the interaction between the characters, conveying more skillfully the emotion by strengthening the cinematic aspect. However, there will be a malaise due to theUncanny Valley, from time to time palpable through a somewhat empty look. In addition to the collision concerns mentioned above, it is also a few bad visual artifacts as well as rigid animations that sometimes tarnish the experience. For example, Tommy's lack of a consistent movement when he fires at the wheel of his car: that he shoots forward, on the sides or backwards, animation does not change.
Let us finally mention Jesse Harlin's unheard of composition and his echoes to the work of Nino Rota, the man behind this cult theme. Toute en subtilité, la bande originale nous renvoie avec maestria à certaines obsessions tragiques du film noir comme la fatalité et la trahison. Les doublages ne sont pas en reste et font preuve d’une justesse de tous les instants, jusqu’à nous faire ressentir les tremolos dans les voix. Chapeau aux doubleurs pour leur interprétation. Enfin impossible de ne pas mentionner les magnifiques magazines pulp à ramasser et qui remplacent audacieusement les fameux Playboy vintage of the Mafia 2. Si la plupart sont des véritables scans de comics des années 20/30/40, les autres ont été créés spécialement pour l’occasion et je ne résiste pas à l’envie de clôturer ce test avec une poignée de mes artworks favoris.
Verdict
Avec son contexte historique passionnant et sa représentation visuelle crédible d'une ville américaine des années 30 rongée par le crime organisé, nul doute que ce remake de Mafia sait en mettre plein les mirettes. On ressort ainsi transcendé par son atmosphère pesante de film noir et par sa bande originale aux impulsions mélancoliques et fatalistes, teintées d'une angoisse existentielle latente. Cette refonte moderne jouit en outre d'une mise en scène aux petits oignons. Cette dernière sublime les rapports entre des personnages monstrueux de par leurs actes, mais pour la plupart très attachants car déchirés par des dilemmes intrinsèquement humains. Malheureusement cette réinterprétation de l'œuvre de 2002 n'est pas exempte de travers, la faute à un embryon de gameplay TPS lambda enraciné au début du nouveau millénaire, à quelques errances techniques et à une IA qui frôle de peu le précipice. La plus grosse déception vient toutefois paradoxalement de Lost Heaven elle-même, encensée quelques lignes plus haut, mais qui révèle au grand jour sa désincarnation dès lors qu'on s'affranchit du sentier balisé par le studio. Cela étant dit, aucun de ces défauts ne parvient à éclipser la réussite totale de la narration tant celle-ci nous happe dès les premières minutes de l'aventure, pour ne jamais nous lâcher jusqu'au dénouement. Avec Mafia: Definitive Edition, les développeurs de Hangar 13 nous prouvent qu'ils sont parvenus à quitter les sentiers de la perdition et c'est bien là l'essentiel.For
- Le contexte historique de la Grande Dépression rendu dans les moindres détails
- Le rendu visuel bluffant de l'Amérique urbaine des années 30
- L'ambiance palpable de film noir
- La superbe bande originale inédite
- Les doublages anglais de haute volée
- Des personnages crédibles et attachants
- Les sublimes illustrations des magazines optionnels à ramasser
Against
- Un gameplay TPS profondément ancré en 2002
- Une structure de monde ouvert sans les activités qui vont avec
- La ville de Lost Heaven et son ''effet Truman Show'' dès qu'on plisse les yeux
- Le malaise de l'Uncanny Valley dans certaines expressions de visage
- Les réactions des passants : complètement déconnectées de la réalité
- Les animations en retrait
- Les fusillades un peu molles et convenues
- L'IA complètement aux fraises
- Quelques soucis techniques (collisions, artefacts visuels)
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