Mafia devs Hangar 13 are going to make you an offer you can’t refuse. The first instalment in the crime sim series will be free on Steam for a limited time beginning on September 1st. The giveaway is to celebrate the Mafia series’ 20th anniversary, as the original game was released on August 29th 2002 in the US and September 6th in Europe. If the trilogy passed you by or you want to refresh your memory then publishers 2K have put together a 20th anniversary trailer, which you can watch below.
]]>For eighteen years, I've been unable to escape a stubborn earworm: the smooth jazz of Django Reinhardt's Cavalerie, from the car radio in Mafia. I had thought that I might be able to shake it loose by returning to the city of Lost Heaven in Mafia: Definitive Edition, the remake which launched this morning, but I've now read that song didn't make it in. If I play Def Ed without first exorcising Cavalerie, will I shut the door and have it stuck in my head forever? A serious concern for the remake of a pretty decent game.
]]>The Mafia: Definitive Edition remake is coming in September, but you can take a look at some of the remade missions ahead of time in a new video. Lost Heaven looks much shinier, of course, and its characters have gotten a glowup, but there have been some updates to how it plays as well, which Hangar 13 explain.
]]>Mafia: Definitive Edition looks a bit nice. The remake of the 2002 open world crime 'em up was announced with an extremely brief trailer a few weeks ago, but it was unclear exactly how remade it would be. A new trailer today makes clear that the answer is: a lot. It's a ground-up recreation, and the screenshot above gives a sense of the graphical upgrade.
]]>It was with raised eyebrows that I met the news of 2K's plans to re-release all three Mafia games. With the second and third already out, but neither game worth playing at all, it is the first that creates intrigue. This long-loved, but very long-in-the-tooth 2002 mob-me-do, seems like such a fascinating prospect to see given an overhaul. But might eighteen years since its release mean maybe it's already too late? I've been back to the original to see.
]]>A real pretty remake of Mafia is coming on August 28, 2K announced today. After accidentally blowing the surprise last week, they've now made Mafia: Definitive Edition official. As well as remaking the 2002 wiseguy 'em up, they've given the less-good 2010 sequel Mafia II a less-dramatic remastering, which is due to launch today as a free update. And Mafia III is getting its DLC thrown in for free. Together, they call this Mafia: Trilogy.
]]>Don't ya love a teaser trailer for an announcement that's also a trailer for a game that's coming out in three months? Classic. 2K have put up a new Mafia trailer today to announce that they'll make a real announcement next week. At least part of the reveal looks to be a remake of the original gangster 'em up Mafia game, according to a Microsoft Store page that's already floating around.
]]>Mafia is back online. Two years after its last post, longer still since the last piece of Mafia III DLC came and went, the open-world crime 'em up's Twitter account has poked the hornet's nest by tweeting out one word earlier today. Are they teasing a sequel? Lining up for a remaster? Or is this just a quiet love of familial bonds from an online brand? Right now, it's anyone's guess.
]]>After five years of not being sold for download anywhere (and long being out-of-print on disc), the first Mafia has returned to sale. GOG this week dredged the digital bay, hauled the crime 'em up out, and chipped off its concrete boots to re-release it DRM-free. This version has an edited soundtrack with the licensed music removed, mind. Presumably music licenses expiring is what got the game pulled from sale back in 2012. I've not played Mafia since ooh it was on CD, so I am tempted to see how it feels 15 years after it came out - and after two sequels of varying quality and direction.
]]>Bundle Stars is offering up some rather nice discounts on a big batch of 2K Games' finest wares this week, with up to 80% off some selected titles from the XCOM, Borderlands, Civilization and Bioshock series, among others.
]]>The other day I sat down to clear out an old bills basket and realised The Godfather trilogy was on the telly. "I'll stick it on in the background," I naively thought to myself and, needless to say, I didn't get as much done as I'd first planned. Until part 3. Because no matter how much I want to like it, it's garbage compared to its forerunners.
Luckily, third-person crime fest Mafia 3 [official site] doesn't appear to be suffering from the same tri-entry tedium if the latest trailer is anything to go by. Visiting its fictionalised slant on New Orleans, New Bordeaux's alligator infested swamp area, industrialised docklands, and jazz-touting wharf district suggest number 3 is shaping up rather nicely. Look, see:
]]>The Mafia 3 [official site] presentation at Gamescom felt very much like an attempt to hammer home several important changes to the series rather than an accurate representation of the minute-by-minute experience of playing. Given that this was the first public showing of the game, which probably won't see release until the second half of 2016, that's to be expected. The vertical slice shown had a lot to cover: a new city, a new time period, a new protagonist, and a new take on open world criminal conquest. Perhaps it's understandable that the “new” was hammered home with all the subtlety of a blow from Mjolnir, but it's fair to say that the road to New Orleans looks rather treacherous.
And that brings us to item number one...
]]>Aye, Mafia III was announced last week, but what good does that do you now? The game's not even due until 2016. However, you can today download and play a near-final version of Lost Heaven MP [official site], a mod adding multiplayer to the first Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven.
You and your pals could this very day be zipping around Lost Heaven, chasing each other, and acting like big crimekids in a crimeplayground. That beats teaser trailers and b-roll footage. But, as always with the mob, there are a few complications.
]]>Last month a NeoGAF poster found that publisher 2K Games had pointed four domains at their own server: mafia3thegame.com, mafiaiiithegame.com, mafiathree.com, and mafiathreethegame.com. It was a baffling mystery that set alight the minds' of the world's greatest detectives and the games press. The clues were right in front of us all but what did they mean? Now we've discovered a second sign (via the Mafia Twitter account): Mafia 3's first trailer will be released next Wednesday, August 5th at 1pm BST.
The plot thickens.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game recommendations. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Gosh, I don't like to think that you might not have played Mafia. Oh no, what if you played the horrible Mafia II, and not the first one? Oh gosh, dear me, no.
]]>He is a funny one, that Ian Video Games. I tell you, he spends all his time on The Internet doing the strangest things. No, not like that you cheeky madam. Ian - you'll love this - he's working on a sort of a phone book for the Internet, so people can look up any website. He spends all day searching for new sites, and notes every single name he finds in his notebooks. He's filled hundreds of them! Says he's taking the idea to Dragon's Den.
And you'll never guess what - Ian says in his research (his "research", lawd!) he came across signs that we might hear about a new Mafia game from 2K soon.
]]>Kingdom Come: Deliverance didn't quite win me over during a recent demo, but it certainly got me galloping toward its corner. Evidently, I'm not the only one, given that it's already made enough money to buy its own kingdom. It's preposterous with a capital Osterous, and I doubt it'll be slowing down any time soon. But maybe you're still on the fence. And that's fine. I respect your most-annoying-person-in-the-ice-cream-line-like discernment. But I must say, Warhorse sure seems to be on the right track, and its approach to modding is no different.
]]>Nathan's excitement over Kingdom Come: Deliverance, a realistic open-world medieval RPG, has translated to Kickstarter success. The project is now funded, defeating the dragon (£300,000 funding target) with a swinging blow after only three days. With 27 days still remaining, they might be able to buy their own castle.
]]>Kingdom Come: Deliverance has kind of a silly name, but it's one heck of an intriguing prospect. The hyper-detailed historical RPG heralds from a small army of developers who once steered the creation of Mafia and Arma, among many others. Despite coming from a relatively small team by triple-A standards, the game's production values are through the roof, and the dev team really wants it all: Skyrim-like exploration, a Mount and Blade-style world, entirely procedural combat, and choice reactivity inspired by The Witcher. Can Warhorse pull it off? I checked out an early build of the game and talked extensively with project director Daniel Vávra to find out if they're on the right track.
]]>They might call it a "restructuring", but whatever word one applies to it, it's bad news for a venerable studio with a rich heritage. In this partial death, let them once again assume their true mantle. 2K Czech were and always shall be Illusion Softworks, creators of Hidden & Dangerous, Mafia and not enough else. Subsumed into the 2K mass in 2007 and renamed in 2008, sadly it did not reach the dizzy heights of contemporaneous acquiree Irrational, as its expensive sequel to Mafia proved disappointing (though it does have its passionate fans). Tennis sequel Top Spin 4 was its sole release subsequent to that, and as of today's revelation that the studio's Prague-based headquarters has been closed down by 2K, perhaps we shall never know if Illusion Softworks might have one day reclaimed their reputation for ambitious, complex and atmospheric historical action games.
Although reports today (including this one) have something of the eulogy to them, this is not in fact a full closure.
]]>A hyper-detailed historical RPG from the main folks behind Mafia? Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.
Ahem. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a nonlinear role-player set in the dying days of the Holy Roman Empire, and it features precisely zero monsters, magic, or mythical overtones. Instead, the focus is on accuracy, and who better to head up that effort than the former director of Mafia and Mafia II? Developer Warhorse is made up of vets from 2K Czech and Arma powerhouse Bohemia, so expect obsessive attention to detail. Sadly (and somewhat paradoxically) insubstantial teaser trailer below.
]]>With Mafia II news due to break any moment, this week seemed a sensible time to go back and play the 2002 original. Which is what I did, and is now up to read on Eurogamer.
]]>News reaches us that Take Two have been reaching into their bag of many dollars to add another studio to their collection, buying the Czech Republic's largest developer, Illusion Softworks, creators of Hidden and Dangerous and Mafia. After the undisclosed sum was paid, all 200 of Illusion Softworks employees will be working in the cleverly named "2K Czech". Now, we wanted to write a serious piece of analysis, comparing the purchase of Irrational while developing future 2K heavyweight Bioshock (and profiting from the closer relationship i.e. Money) to the purchase of Illusion Softworks while developing hypothetical future 2K heavyweight Mafia 2, but we started worrying about what pun to call the article.
]]>If you're the sort of person who goes on excitedly about how brilliant the end of Mafia was, and how it was the most mature take on the GTA-style game the world has ever seen, then you have a reason to celebrate. Its creators, Illusion Softworks, are working on a sequel, called, in a flash of inspiration, Mafia 2.
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