Mafia Definitive Edition attempts to replicate what Red Dead Redemption 2 did with its gameplay, storytelling, characters, dialogue and polish that the later perfected. Instead it comes up short in all those aspects and comes off as more of a cheap dated imitation. Personally I haven't played the original Mafia so I can't speak on how accurate and faithful of an adaptation the definitive edition is. For my playthrough I played the game on the hard difficulty setting, despite this there are some ludicrous difficulty spikes that can potentially lockout easily frustrated and less experienced players alike. The gameplay (more specifically the cover and shooting mechanics) are very mediocre compared to other contemporary third person shooters. Driving is weighty yet still arcadey and closer to most open world games than racing sims. The graphical presentation is definitely Mafia's strength, the time period accurate vehicles, collectibles, radio stations, news headlines and setting are very immersive although left me wishing for more exploration options and possibly side content outside the linear main story. The story and characters albeit a bit bland and cliche even as far as mob stories go can be entertaining and show glimpses of solid storytelling. This leads to some very cinematic missions throughout the story especially near the end of the game. Overall Mafia Definitive Edition feels like a semblance of a potentially great narrative driven 1930's mob action game but unfortunately doesn't excel at any gameplay or storytelling elements that some of the genre's best entires (that came before it) are known for. All that said I still found the game to be enjoyable for what it is rather than what it tries and fails to be.