Giant Bomb gave it a 4 out of 5 stars for the PS4 version? Damn... Least everybody agreed with TGN's reasoning. Ignoring the scores, the wording is very similar from everyone. I wonder if Hangar 13 will be given the greenlight to continue support. And more importantly, are they willing to continue support? I mean, the chat we had on your livestream regarding features previous games had really opened my eyes. I never knew older Mafia games had vehicular body damage that changes the actual model's shape simply by bashing it. That's awesome! And GTA 4 style city interactions like eating a hot dog, while adding nothing special to the overall gameplay, it adds to how well the environment responds to the player. Now this game feels like a noticeably more dead city with the environment mostly ignoring the player. Hangar 13 simply didn't have time to put in any of the little things. It seems to be more about getting the look of late 60s New Orleans right. I mean Mardi Gras looked nice and all, but holy crap there wasn't much to do in it aside from carrying an injured body. So basically once they got the city looking perfect, they relied on great voice acting and story, and then that was it. Gameplay wasn't as high of a priority. Shame really, this could've been a decent straight to DVD CG movie if their focus was like this. As a game? Not so much.

It's a similar reason why I prefer the Midnight Club and Midtown Madness series when it comes to street racing games. The city is alive with pedestrians, attractions, construction, and shopping malls, without relying on arrow signs telling you where to turn and acting as obstacles so you don't drive off into the sunset. Need For Speed and Burnout series? Ghost town. Because you need all the room you can get to street race without any of the real danger of street racing other than having mindless drones posing as traffic (and God forbid you having the desire to run over pedestrians and bringing this to a higher age rating). I've even seen the Underground series use scripting to deliberately put a single car driving on the wrong side of the road, just so I can smash into it when taking on a blind turn. Midnight Club? If I smash into it, I KNOW it's my fault, because it's the same traffic AI as it was BEFORE THE RACE EVEN STARTED DURING FREE ROAM. Same freaking city, nothing new to generate other than waypoints. That's a world that acknowledges the player's presence. And it's something I want in open world games.

Heck Job Simulator is fun and it's not even open-world, and that's because the environment is designed to respond to the player's presence and actions. When the world responds to the player, the world/game will have a higher chance of being more fun to stay in. Not always the case, but usually it helps.

Mafia 1 was a hell of a game!