This guide for NBA 2K27 lists everything you can do to earn Virtual Currency (VC) as quickly and efficiently as possible, without dropping a dime.

Daily Challenges

While relatively low in VC payout, simply logging in every single day and dedicating a few minutes towards completing your Daily Challenges will net you 1,500 VC, which will undoubtedly add up over time to your benefit.

NBA 2K27 Mobile App Rewards

Another source of free stuff related to the game is the mobile app, and once again, simply logging in each day can net you a variety of rewards over the course of a week. In particular, Day 1 grants you 50 VC, and Day 5 an additional 500 VC.

MyCAREER Bonus VC

A specific choice during the MyCAREER story can net you a bonus of 20,000 VC early on. After starting ‘Fire & Concrete’, simply select the Beginnings milestone to skip ahead to entering the NBA proper. Upgrade your build and collect your 20K VC. 

Fast Game Modes

Street Kings and Open Court Athletics are relatively quick modes, wherein you can rack up leaderboard points fast for the Daily Rivals board. Ideally, you would aim for the first rank in your daily pool of 40 players, with its 10K VC prize and premium ticket to the million-VC lottery opportunity. However, even lower placements will net you scaled rewards ranging from 5K VC for second place to the low hundreds of VC for the bottom rungs.

If you are wondering, CPU matches do count, but naturally they will never quite yield the kind of points that someone else who is grinding out online matches would accumulate in the same time frame.

Crew Level VC Multipliers

Simply being part of a crew in NBA 2K27 and leveling up that membership can have a passive impact on your VC grinding, in the form of multipliers to earnings from any game mode:

• Crew Level 8: 5% VC bonus
• Crew Level 13: 10% VC bonus
• Crew Level 21: 25% VC bonus
• Crew Level 27: 50% VC bonus

That is everything you can do to grind for free Virtual Currency fast in NBA 2K27.

This NBA 2K27 guide is all about how you can shoot better without a shot meter, and what settings to tweak in order to do so effectively.

Optimized Settings

Before even setting foot on the courts, tweak your game settings:

• Turn Off the Shot Meter under Options/Quit > Customize HUD > Shot Meter Shots > Visibility for Shots
• Set Shot Timing Visual Cue to Push or Release under Options/Quit > Controller Settings
• Set Shot Feedback to All Shots for immediate textual feedback.
• Disable trigger vibration to eliminate unnecessary distractions, though some players find tactile feedback is actually a positive.

Button Versus Stick Shooting

Shooting with a single button as opposed to pushing the stick around has been a point of contention since the previous game, with regards to which is more effective, but it ultimately boils down to which one feels more natural to you as a player.

Button shooting remains a single input, while stick or rhythm shooting requires the double input of both pulling back on the stick and then pushing it forward with an eye for perfectly timing the latter.

This naturally makes button shooting much more reliable for accurately timing your shots.

Visual Cues For Release

If you’re trying to discern what to look out for, it depends on which of the shot timing visual cues you have selected:
For Push, release the input right when the player is pushing the ball away from their head.

With Release, let the input go at the very apex of the jump, right about when the ball breaks contact with the player’s hands.

Note that fatigue can have an impact on the speed of animations, so you will need to factor that in as well.

That is everything there is to know about successfully shooting without the shot meter for a greater advantage in NBA 2K27.

This year, with noticeable gameplay tweaks and some significant changes to MyCareer and MyTeam, virtually everything on and off the court has taken a step up, making it more interesting whether you’re a developing superstar or an aspirational owner. While lingering annual problems persist, I was more engaged with the minute-to-minute gameplay of 2K27 in a way I haven’t in some years, with one of the better all-around experiences the franchise has put together on every front.

"Player movement is enhanced overall with some new animations"

That starts on the court, where 2K27 feels markedly improved, particularly on defense. Defenders are more influential over the ball handlers, and you have more minute control over your defenders’ movements, which means that you have more of an ability to lock down your matchups as a user. You can more easily control your posture and arm position with just a push of the right stick, so it’s simple now to put your hands up to block a shot without fouling or get in the way of a pass.

Player movement is enhanced overall with some new animations, and the improvements really show themselves when you’re contacting someone else, whether you’re posting someone up on offense or closely guarding them on defense. On the offensive side of the ball, ball handling has gotten the most notable upgrade, as the more refined movement system translates to allowing a more dynamic feel, like how it now shows you with a highlight on the floor which direction your weight is leaning. That allows you to better use the left stick to either commit to dribbling one way or switch directions for a potential ankle breaker, which I felt were more common this year.

The universal green or miss shot meter is back again this year, feeling like it requires more precision than ever. The meter feels even more closely tied to the shooter’s shooting motion, which means it’s widely variable from player to player and the timing required to get a perfect release changes constantly. The green part of the “green or miss” meter also grows and shrinks based on the shooter’s stats as well as how heavily they are covered and whether they’re standing still or on the run, and while this can make it frustrating when you’re struggling to pin down someone’s timing, it alternatively makes it that much sweeter when you’ve truly nailed a shooting motion and can start to hit virtually any shot on the floor.

What plays well into the refined movement and deeper control is the takeover system, which has been expanded from a single bar to incorporate each of the tools in a player’s arsenal: shooting, finishing, playmaking, rebounding, and defense.

Each attribute moves independently based on how a player is playing within the game, and when an attribute reaches its threshold, the takeover abilities more directly match the attribute that’s been activated, like the shooting meter improving accuracy and the defense meter improving your chances at a steal. I like this change because it allows takeovers to be more common and more directed at what a player is actually good at, rather than having to fit the mold of every player at the cost of more targeted boosts.

"The universal green or miss shot meter is back again this year, feeling like it requires more precision than ever."

Where the takeover abilities come into play most noticeably is in MyCareer, alongside the GOAT abilities that provide only your MyPlayer with a significant stat boost after reaching a certain in-game goal. This year’s MyCareer, which is now playable in both single player and co-op, puts a couple new spins on the formula. First, you can play MyCareer Eras, which lets you play in various decades that represent different eras of basketball, similar to MyNBA Eras.

Playing across eras is interesting, if a little anachronistic for how the actual game plays, but playing in any era except the Modern Era precludes you from playing Fire & Concrete, the story mode that represents MyCareer’s other big draw. You play, as you do every year, as MP, this year as a highly-recruited high school prospect whose college prospects are dashed when he gets severely injured in a car accident. The journey through Fire & Concrete, then, shows MP two years later, rehabilitated and playing basketball at a high level again, making his way through a G League season to try and reclaim his spot atop the prospect rankings and become the number one overall pick in the draft, above real-life top pick AJ Dybantsa.

Fire & Concrete is longer than most MyCareer stories in the past, totaling 11 chapters that span both your season in the G League and your first season in the NBA itself. For the most part, it’s a run of the mill story of this type, and throughout the early G League portion I was a little bored by how predictable and repetitive the story became, especially because it didn’t seem to matter how I performed on the court as long as I could fulfill some arbitrary story-based goal, like getting a teammate a certain number of points. But as the story progressed, it ultimately won me over.

Seeing MP get back to the top of the draft board and have the opportunity to continue building his legacy as the top pick was never overly emotional, but I found myself rooting for MP and the people around him, as well as rooting against the flat but very dislikable antagonists he faces.

One of those people around MP is his so-called Running Mate, Trace Miller. Trace and MP meet early in the story as teammates and become fast friends, and Trace plays a major part in Fire & Concrete both on and off the court. He is a major character and the most well-written and well-acted part of the story, showing a real personality and motivation for both he and MP to make it in the NBA. MP and Trace are best friends on the court, too, and the new Running Mate meter allows you to activate a skill that affects both of you in-game, in the same way that the GOAT skills activate. These can be activated after achieving certain combined goals, like having a total of 10 shots made or 20 points and rebounds, and the abilities boost attributes that allow you both to improve your game.

Of course, you have direct control over MP’s progression, which continues to have a pay-to-win structure, but this year you also have control over Trace’s progression and build, which allows you to mold him into whatever type of player you most want to play with. I made Trace the Nikola Jokic to my Jamal Murray in the pick-and-roll, but it’s also possible to create two big men that own the paint or two shooters that mimic the Splash Brothers. While I wasn’t always engaged with the story in Fire & Concrete, I found the relationship between MP and Trace, as well as how that played out on the court, to make it a legitimately different experience, and it became one of the highlights of 2K27 overall.

"Trace and MP meet early in the story as teammates and become fast friends, and Trace plays a major part in Fire & Concrete both on and off the court."

Of course, MyCareer also blends with The City, where MP can again explore to play in PvP or PvE games that mostly live in the realm of street ball and pickup. These include the traditional modes like Street Kings and the 3v3 pickup games you can play almost anywhere, but new this year is the more developmental mode Casual Corner, which gives players a PvE experience meant to ease you into PvP with a similar style but easier opponents. It’s not particularly substantial, but it adds to the feeling in The City that you can play virtually any type of street ball you can imagine, and I found myself bouncing around different game modes to match my mood, or just riding around the square on my hoverboard, more so than in recent years.

The other major updates live in MyTeam, though these are more superficial. MyTeam menus have been overhauled to make it easier to jump into online matches or offline challenges more easily, and the card shop, while still predatory in its implementation of microtransactions, is at least more navigable. What’s more interesting this year is the opportunities with the cards you don’t need anymore.

There’s been a major update to The Exchange, which lets you have more opportunities to trade in your cards in on a weekly or seasonal basis in ways that don’t require a ton of cards to trade in or a specific matching set. There’s also an ability to send your cards on asynchronous missions to develop, where they won’t be available to play on your team for a certain amount of real time.

The actual gameplay in MyTeam follows a largely similar track as it always has, forcing you to play game after game to level up and earn card packs that you hope will improve your team. But the modes themselves feel somewhat improved, particularly in single player.

Gauntlet and Breakout have both been expanded significantly to allow you more variety in how you play each bite-size game, and they complement the more comprehensive Domination that forces you to beat every NBA team. The overall MyTeam experience still feels as deflating as always when the weight of the microtransactions becomes apparent, but the highlights are a little bit brighter this year and made me a bit more interested in continuing to organically improve my team.

I wasn’t blown away by NBA 2K27, if that’s even possible anymore, but the expected marginal improvements this year feel somewhat meatier and more meaningful than normal. The streamlining of MyTeam makes it somewhat more enjoyable, but the improvements to MyCareer, in both the addition of eras and the Fire & Concrete mode, make the experience really come together.

What starts as a milquetoast experience ends up housing one of the better create-a-player modes in a 2K game in some time, with largely differentiated gameplay and a surprisingly unique set of characters. This all complements noticeable gameplay tweaks that make you want to continue finding a way onto the court, however that may happen.

This game was reviewed on PlayStation 5.

I remember jumping into the Definitive Edition on my PS4, the original being one that I was too young for at the time of its release. Tommy Angelo’s story and the way his relationship with the Salieri family turns out is the obvious draw here, and I’m going to assume that if you’re here, it’s either out of nostalgia or interest in a chapter of the franchise you might not have gotten around to yet.

If it’s the latter, I must say that replaying the adventure on my PS5 came with the knowledge of how things turn out in the latter half of the story. While you might think that it made things boring, it was even more interesting to see how the story plants the seeds of future events, the threads leading Tommy and his cohorts down paths they can’t avoid. There’s a melancholy that underlies the relationships Tommy builds as he rises through Salieri’s ranks, and while the blind euphoria of living as a kept man shines through in the moment-to-moment gameplay, there’s enough emotional depth to make this a mature take on life in the Mafia.

But with so many additions to the franchise that have followed it, is this a story that’s still worth diving into if you haven’t experienced it? That’s a resounding yes, as it is written, paced and executed so well that you can’t help but feel for Tommy, Sam, and Paulie in the moments where the tension unfolds, even as you’ve witnessed their friendship evolve from a chance encounter and a wealth of shared memories between them.

"While the blind euphoria of living as a kept man shines through in the moment-to-moment gameplay, there’s enough emotional depth to make this a mature take on life in the Mafia."

It helps that the campaign is broken down into neat little chapters, each of which gives you enough of the game’s mechanics in short bursts before some great cinematic cutscenes take over to let the story unfold. The city of Lost Heaven works as a sort of open-world stage where the objectives let you wander and find your own way to markers, but there isn’t really much to do unless you accidentally collide with other vehicles and end up in a police chase.

Even the many collectibles strewn about aren’t enough of a reason to go out of your way, as they don’t really add to the lore or story. There are a few notes and letters around when you’re in a mission that help lend context to everything but they’re only little snippets to flesh things out rather than a storytelling device that the game leans on. The art direction is incredible, though, with distinct vibes for different parts of the town that the game goes out of its way to show off when you first roll in. Chinatown’s a great example.

With a very impressive stage and a cast of characters that capture you right off the bat, you’d hope that the gameplay is then good enough to bring them together. The answer to that is a mixed bag considering how easy things are once you get the hang of it. In a scrap, Tommy’s fists, knives, or baseball bats are more than enough to overcome single opponents with deadly force. However, there’s little nuance to the whole thing, as waiting out an attack, countering it with Triangle, and then launching into a combo of your own is all you need

It’s repetitive pretty quickly, which is probably a good reason to whip out your guns and go all out thanks to the gunplay being a whole lot better. Great cover and aiming mechanics across the available roster of weapons coupled with the boost to performance makes this one shine as an interactive gangster movie on the PS5. Those shootouts feel ever so satisfying even when the enemy AI often felt like it was designed to eat our bullets and make Tommy feel like a mafioso who belongs in legends.

Of course, the former cab driver is also the best wheelman Salieri’s got, and you’re going to be driving between your objectives more often than not. The driving mechanics are excellent for the most part, with different cars coming with a distinct feel to them. Varying top speeds, ease of handling, and other factors such as rain on the roads make driving feel quite involved, although I would have appreciated some more tuning on turns with most cars spinning out of control way too easily for my liking.

"The PS5 upgrade definitely feels worthwhile thanks to how the improved resolutions help reflections, lighting, and shadows feel all the more authentic."

That was especially true during chases where you can’t really be sure of the car you’re getting, or in that race where it took me a whole lap to get used to the sudden change in responsiveness from the race car I was driving. I placed first, of course, but that shift was jarring even after I was driving a beast of a car around in the preceding objective. That shift from the street to a track is something to watch out for when it’s your turn to win the Salieris a bucket of money.

The PS5 upgrade definitely feels worthwhile thanks to how the improved resolutions help reflections, lighting, and shadows feel all the more authentic. Along with the improved framerates, that makes Lost Heaven look incredibly immersive and realistic, and it’s a city that pulls you in thanks to how well it mimics the vibe of the time period it’s based in. It all works so well with the presentation, a very catchy soundtrack that’s well implemented into every scene, and a detailed rendition of the Prohibition era.

With blazing fast load times, excellent 60 fps performance that manages to hold even during intense chases or gunfights, and cinematics that also run at that frame rate other than a few exceptions, this is the definitive way to experience the game that started it all. Of course, the remake was itself a very good looking title, but its textures and facial models now look a tad outdated in the wake of modern remakes that have vastly improved things on current-gen hardware.

Its stunning visuals clashed with textures and faces that felt too stiff to be current-gen. This one shows its age on the PS5 but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s already such a polished experience that it’s easy to live with those flaws. However, the same dated approach to its gameplay makes even the clever mission design unable to hide the fact that fighting and driving are just there to service the story rather than being deep and fleshed-out.

"The underlying art direction in Mafia helps it manage to stay relevant and justify its existence on current-gen, but that’s sadly not the case with its gameplay systems."

It’s also interesting that while this one’s a free upgrade for owners of the PS4 version of the remake, the fact that your save files and trophy progress aren’t transferable is an annoyance I’d rather not have. It’s also disappointing to see no use for the DualSense’s haptics or adaptive triggers, something that could have helped this version of the game stand out. I’d say that the underlying art direction in Mafia helps it manage to stay relevant and justify its existence on current-gen, but that’s sadly not the case with its gameplay systems.

They’re serviceable, sure, but we’ve all seen better in the years since this one took the world by storm. It’s limited in what it aims to achieve on the gameplay front, a facet of the experience sacrificed on the altar of a controlled, cinematic experience that brings fairly limited replay value outside of the Free Ride mode that unlocks right after you’re done with the story’s first chapter. Minor bugs such as enemies getting stuck in animations around corners are also present although, they’re rare enough to not be too much of an issue.

If you’re a new player wanting to experience the iconic first chapter in a franchise that has managed to stay great over the years, this is the version of Mafia to get. It’s the console version of a crime story that continues to be among the best of a whole generation. But if you’re coming to this from the PS4 version, or have perhaps played the original, it all depends on how enjoyable you found it all the first time around.

If you don’t mind replaying a linear story just to experience it all again, perhaps with a new perspective thanks to the remake’s improvements, I’d recommend picking this one up on sale as it’s good, but isn’t going to justify paying full price for it. It has been fun, though, and for that I’ve been rather happy to start things over from scratch. It’s been great to see Tommy again, even with the knowledge of the highs and lows of his life. And that’s Mafia: Definitive Edition’s biggest strength.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

FL4K and the Last Resort will take place in a tropical resort that is turning into a warzone. Players will get to team up with FL4K – the Beastmaster from Borderlands 3 – and help them save their loyal skag companion Mr. Chew. Along the way, players will also get to face off against the forces of the Tediore corporation.

The story pack will take place on the remote island of Providence, which once served as a luxurious resort surrounded by lush wilderness. Tediore has decided that the island, which also has an active volcano, is better off as a source of Ordonite, leading the gun manufacturer to send out an expeditionary group led by five elite managers, all working under the ruthless Lieutenant Harmony.

Providence has been designed to be quite distinct from the main setting of Borderlands 4 – Kairos. Players will get to explore a dense jungle and find its many mysteries. The zone is also the perfect place for FL4K to continue The Hunt. Verticality is said to play a key role in the design of Providence, with many ziplines being made available to make traversal less complicated.

Among the enemies players will have to fight against are a variety of Tediore troops, ranging from soldiers in bulky precursor exo-suits to high-end Deadframe exo-suits. Players will also quickly learn that simply killing the pilots of these exo-suits isn’t enough.

Clearing Story Pack 2: FL4K and the Last Resort will reward players with plenty of items from a new pool that consists of 2 Pearlescent-tier weapons and 18 pieces of Legendary gear.

Bounty Pack 5: Amara and the Vile Shadows revolves around the corruption spread by Shards of Ordonite and things getting worse due to the recent appearance of unstable Phase rifts. Players will team up with Amara to take out a potential source of the instability – an old laboratory that once belonged to Vile Lictor.

Rewards from clearing the repeatable missions in Bounty Pack 5 include a Pearlescent weapon – AeroDramatic (Torgue Shotgun) and six new pieces of Legendary-tier gear, that in cludes the Triplicate Vladof Assault Rifle, the Wind Skimmer Jakobs Sniper Rifle, and the Outburst Torgue Repkit.

A new Vault Hunter is also making its way to Borderlands 4 through the release of Story Pack 2 and – Loveless the Hacker. While no details about the new Vault Hunter have been revealed yet, Gearbox will be showcasing her gameplay on September 3rd.

Borderlands 4 is available on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. The most recent bit of content it got came just last month – Bounty Pack 4: Murders and Acquisitions. In the meantime, Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick has said that the company plans to continue its support for the looter shooter.

“I think that genuinely, at the studio, we’ve got our own path,” he said about the comparisons between GTA and Mafia. As for whether there is any merit to these comparisons or not, however, Baynes believes that “it’s an Internet thing” and not something that Hangar 13 itself really looks at.

“It genuinely never ever comes up in conversation as a touchpoint or steering our strategy or anything like that. I think obviously there’s a lot of stories about that game out there right now because something’s coming out later this year! But yeah, genuinely, I think it’s an internet thing. It’s not something the studio looks at. So, I think I’m afraid there’s not a rich vein of answers to give you for that.”

Interestingly, IGN also noted that Baynes was “keen” to not really discuss comparisons between Mafia and Grand Theft Auto, and would even go as far as to not mention the name of Rockstar’s upcoming release, Grand Theft Auto 6.

However, these comparisons can be quite strange at times, since Mafia as a franchise has always revolved more around its stories, while the GTA franchise is more well-known for the gameplay sandbox the various titles offer. The Mafia games have also focused on telling more serious stories about life in the mob, while Grand Theft Auto games tend to include elements of parody throughout their worlds and characters.

Hangar 13 is fresh off the release of the Man of Honor DLC for Mafia: The Old Country. The expansion takes place in the winter of 1905 in Sicily, after Enzo Favara has gained the confidence and trust of the Torrisi crime family. The story revolves around a delicate assignment given to Enzo – to help Ennio Salieri after his recent release from prison. This leads Enzo deeper into the Valle Dorata’s underworld.

In our review, we gave Man of Honor a score of 7 out of 10 thanks to its excellent cutscenes and voice acting, and worthwhile Free Ride content. Our major complaints revolved around the predictability of the story and the DLC’s instant-fail stealth segments.

Mafia: The Old Country was released on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S back in August 2025. Rather than following up on the events of Mafia 3, it instead goes back in time to 1900s Sicily, focusing on the birth of organized crime in the region. Enzo has lived a difficult and brutal life full of forced labor during his childhood. Now, with the goal of creating a better life for himself at all costs, he has decided to join the Torrisi crime family and become a man of honor.

For more details, check out our review.

A year later, Hangar 13 has returned to the game with a new DLC, Man of Honor, which adds two more chapters to Enzo’s journey alongside additional content for Free Ride mode. There’s quite a bit here that fans of the original will appreciate, but let’s start with the elephant in the room: the story expansion.

Man of Honor takes place after Enzo Favara has earned his place within the Torrisi crime family. Rather than going further back into Enzo’s past, it fills in an earlier period of his time as a soldato while introducing Ennio Salieri, a character who will be instantly familiar to anyone who has played the first Mafia. Don Torrisi and Salieri have some history, and when the latter comes to him looking to settle a personal matter, the Don gives his approval and ropes Enzo and Cesare into helping him. Salieri’s ultimate goal is simple: earn enough money to leave Sicily behind and start a new life in America.

"There’s quite a bit here that fans of the original will appreciate"

As a result, Man of Honor places much more emphasis on Salieri than Enzo, with the latter essentially serving as the vehicle through which the expansion sets up Salieri’s future. The voice acting and cutscene direction are, as you would expect from a Mafia game, solid throughout. Salieri comes across as sharp, selfish and quick-witted, someone more than willing to use others to get what he wants, and that side of his personality is reflected throughout the expansion.

I won’t go too deeply into the story beyond saying that it’s a decent, if ultimately straightforward, tale built around one of the Mafia’s most fundamental rules: you don’t cross the Don. It wraps up rather quickly and respects your time, with a conclusion that is largely satisfying, even if much of what happens is fairly easy to see coming.

Lasting around two hours, Man of Honor feels, from a gameplay perspective, like a direct continuation of the base game. It delivers some excellent set pieces, including a chase sequence, several stealth sections, and action-heavy moments that eventually erupt into outright combat. If what you wanted was simply more Mafia: The Old Country, then Man of Honor provides exactly that, which also means it carries over both the strengths and shortcomings of the base experience.

Combat remains effective, though relatively simple and straightforward, while stealth once again follows the “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” approach. Even traversal remains familiar, whether you’re travelling on horseback or driving classic vehicles. Coincidentally, these are all things I enjoyed about the base game, so returning to them a year later was surprisingly satisfying. That said, if you didn’t enjoy The Old Country the first time around, there’s little here that will change your mind. This is an expansion rather than a major reworking of its mechanics. But for players who loved the base game, it provides an engaging afternoon’s worth of familiar Mafia gameplay without overstaying its welcome or pretending to be something radically different.

That is, until the compulsory instant-fail stealth sections come into play. There’s one particular set piece during the concluding events of Man of Honor where you simply cannot be detected, because the moment an enemy spots you, it’s an instant game over. Look, I get it, sometimes a game needs to impose a strict no-detection requirement, but the systems built around such a restriction also need to be engaging enough to justify it.

Take Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, for example, where the mechanics support those restrictions by giving you plenty of tools and gadgets to experiment with and work around different situations. In a game like Mafia, however, a section like this feels forced because the stealth mechanics simply aren’t deep enough to make that kind of limitation particularly enjoyable, and it ultimately pulled me out of the experience. Fortunately, this specific sequence only lasts for several minutes, but in an expansion this short, I still think it’s worth pointing out.

I also came across a few minor bugs here and there, including one during a chase sequence where Enzo’s animations suddenly went haywire and became stuck. It wasn’t anything game-breaking, but it did stand out, especially since I don’t recall encountering similar issues during my time with the base game.

Once you’re done with the story, Man of Honor also expands the game’s Free Ride mode with a number of Salieri-related missions, where he essentially acts as a quest giver to Enzo from his warehouse. To be transparent, I hadn’t experienced Free Ride before this since it was added after the game’s original release, but Salieri’s side tasks give the mode a little more narrative weight, especially since they provide additional background on his motivations and just how desperately he wants to make his way to America.

"Lasting around two hours, Man of Honor feels, from a gameplay perspective, like a direct continuation of the base game."

Again, these tasks largely follow the structure of missions from the base game, whether that means stealth-based infiltration, procuring valuable items, stealing vehicles, or completing the kinds of objectives you’ve already encountered throughout the campaign. The expansion also adds more weapons, knives, clothing options, and various items with effects that can influence combat encounters out in the field.

I like what Hangar 13 has done with Free Ride here, because it makes the world feel more worthwhile to explore by giving you more reasons to engage with it. My only question is whether some of this content could have been integrated more naturally into the story itself, which would have made the overall experience feel more connected. Regardless, Man of Honor improves Free Ride by making its existing world denser with engaging activities rather than simply increasing the size of the map.

For what it’s worth, Mafia: The Old Country – Man of Honor costs $9.99, which I think is a fair price for the experience it offers. There’s a reasonable argument that the expansion could have focused more on Enzo’s backstory rather than inserting a side story into the base game’s narrative, but I do feel that Hangar 13 is making an effort to connect The Old Country to the larger Mafia timeline, and so far, that approach is working well.

I appreciated Enzo’s characterization in the base game and would still love to see more added to his story if Hangar 13 has further content planned. As it stands, though, Man of Honor is a reasonable expansion of the base-game experience, sticking closely to what already worked rather than trying to reinvent it, and for an add-on of this size and price, that’s all it needs to do.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Lest you think this is a continuation of The Old Country’s story, Man of Honor is more of a side path. Protagonist Enzo Favara has been assigned perhaps his most important mission yet – working for Ennio Salieri, the infamous Don from Mafia 1.

Little is known about his goals or how they ultimately connect to his reign in the City of Lost Heaven, but in two new chapters, you’ll take on various Jobs and Challenges. Both are available in Free Ride Mode and include races, assassinations, and whatnot.

Perform well enough, and you can unlock five new Charms, three guns, and three knives (including one that bounces off one poor fool’s head into another). And if that wasn’t enough, you get three new vehicles, two new horses, three outfits and five hats, further proving that crime in Valle Dorata pays well.

Head here for all the details on what Man of Honor adds. If you’re interested in the larger franchise, check out The Omertà Collection. Available for $49.99 (limited time, of course), it includes the entire franchise in one bundle.

It Fills In An Earlier Chapter Of Enzo’s Rise

Throughout Mafia: The Old Country you watch as Enzo Favara slowly earns his place among the Torrisi crime family, rising from powerless labourer to an authority within the syndicate. He proves himself through difficult choices and unwavering loyalty, and by the end of the campaign you experience the consequences of those decisions. Man of Honor takes a different approach to The Old Country’s central narrative by visiting an earlier point in Enzo’s journey. Its new story chapters slot right into the aftermath of Enzo’s initiation, fleshing out a timeline the original game only alluded to. Winding back to an earlier stage of Enzo’s career has potential to give greater context to his eventual evolution, adding weight to the events, relationships, and compromises you know from the base game.

Salieri Expands The Base Game’s Mafia Legacy

The Old Country establishes the Torrisi family as one of Sicily’s dominant criminal organisations, operating through strict hierarchical honour and loyalty to maintain influence over the local rackets. Man of Honor brings a familiar figure into the fold: a young Ennio Salieri, operating, like Enzo, through the same criminal system. Again, like Enzo, he’s carving his own reputation, long before building his own empire in America. During Man of Honor’s timeline, Don Torrisi sits comfortably at the top of the family, with the ambitious Salieri gradually rising to replicate the Don’s power overseas. Salieri’s is an important arc, reinforcing how interconnected the series’ wider history is without leaning simply on nostalgic fan service.

Free Ride Is Becoming More Than a Post-Campaign Distraction

Free Ride, the post-release expansion which replaced Explore mode, already gives you the opportunity to explore Valle Dorata outside of the main campaign. Its optional combat encounters, stealth missions, and racing events serve as welcome deviations from the main story’s linear structure, but before Man of Honor’s changes it largely functioned as a collection of disparate activities. Now, Free Ride appears to deliver a stronger purpose, with Salieri’s warehouse effectively becoming a new hub where you can collect a range of assignments, accept additional challenges, and earn rewards through a more structured progression loop. The mode’s tighter direction alongside stronger incentives should make The Old Country’s extra-curricular story activities significantly more meaningful. No longer are these lightweight diversions but genuine reasons to keep returning.

The New Challenges Expect You to Have Mastered the Base Game

Through limited ammunition, an emphasis on stealth and silent approaches, and higher likelihood for mission success if you balance careful planning with quick reactions, Mafia: The Old Country rarely lets you brute-force your way through encounters. In charting Enzo’s rise, you learn how to adapt alongside managing the game’s combat systems for maximum efficiency. Now, Man of Honor isn’t interested in replacing that formula, instead bringing more difficult challenges to test the mechanics you already understand. Sure, you’ll lock into familiar scenarios – tense infiltration, brutal firefights, white-knuckle car chases – but the DLC makes them all the more punishing. However, this isn’t an arbitrary difficulty spike. No, the expansion aims to reward your experience by imploring you to apply everything you’ve already learned into more demanding situations.

Jobs Give Existing Traversal Mechanics New Uses

Throughout The Old Country’s campaign, Enzo regularly swaps between automobiles, horseback travel, and on-foot exploration as missions take him through Valle Dorata’s rustic towns, countryside, and winding foothills. However, those traversal mechanics largely exist to support the game’s carefully scripted objectives; nothing more. Now, Man of Honor is poised to broaden the purpose of traversal through a suite of new jobs handed to you by Salieri. Rather than driving from point A to point B, you’ll use familiar vehicles – and a handful of new ones – to uncover hidden caches, discover hidden routes, transport cargo, and tow valuable automobiles, all while dealing with any rival gangs that attempt to halt your progress. As a result, what the expansion appears to be doing is broadening the utility of existing traversal systems without reinventing the wheel. And, what’s more, it gives you more ways to engage with Sicily beyond what the main campaign can offer.

New Weapons Push Beyond the Base Game’s Grounded Combat

Combat in The Old Country was grounded by its restraint, with ammunition that couldn’t be wasted, stealth that oftentimes proved reliable, and the Sicilian Mafia’s iconic knives functioning as practical tools rather than extravagant power weapons. That’s all set to change in Man of Honor, with a collection of new weapons and charms designed to empower you in battle. The standout addition is the Rimbalzu throwing knife which can ricochet between enemies, allowing you to execute multiple silent takendowns from a single throw. This shift makes sense tonally; the base game introduces Enzo as a vulnerable, resource-conscious fighter, thus the expansion adds more capable and inventive tools to your arsenal. Still, despite all the extras, Man of Honor doesn’t appear to be abandoning its stealth-focused foundation. It just gives you fresh ways to overcome familiar hurdles.

The Reward System Extends Existing Customisation

Character progression in The Old Country means unlocking new weapons, knives, charms, clothing, vehicles, and horses, giving tangible benefit during combat and traversal as well as personalising Enzo himself. In a way, those rewards reflect Enzo’s growing status within the Torrisi family. So, instead of introducing entirely separate paths for growth, Man of Honor embellishes the progression systems which already exist. Completing Salieri’s jobs and challenges, for instance, earns Dinari that can be exchanged for exclusive outfits, weapons, mounts, and more. Crucially, these rewards aren’t purely cosmetic, but can introduce game-changing perks. For example, new charms – such as the Dolce Morte which makes defeated enemies occasionally drop status-effecting fruit – will encourage different approaches to combat and stealth.

Valle Dorata is Being Used More Fully

Valle Dorata is undoubtedly one of The Old Country’s greatest strengths, but despite its richness it remained underutilised. See, the campaign’s linear structure meant many of its picturesque locations became a backdrop merely to pass through. Despite its impressive detail, atmosphere, and authenticity, predetermined missions left large swathes of the landscape ignored. To rectify this, Man of Honor aims to fill the existing map with additional activities and points of interest. Wanted posters, stunt jumps, sulfur truck objectives, hidden collectibles, and entirely new locations all encourage you to revisit areas you may have previously driven straight through, or to venture off the beaten path entirely. Rather than expand the map’s overall size, the expansion makes use of the existing real estate, ensuring Valle Dorata feels more interactive as a result.

McHardy has worked in the games industry for 21 years, and before joining 2K, had worked as an executive producer at Electronic Arts Vancouver on projects like Madden, College Football, and FIFA – now known as EA Sports FC. Paterson has a similar track record. He’s a 22-year veteran who’s worked on a wide range of sports titles including FIFA Manager, FIFA Street, and NBA Live during his time at EA. He has also worked on the Need for Speed franchise as studio design director at Criterion Games.

Pan, having spent 20 years in the industry, has worked on games like UEFA Champions League, SSX, Tennis, NHL, UFC, and FIFA during his time at EA. Thompson has worked as technical director on NHL and UFC, running advanced technology teams during his EA tenure.

Small Axe Studios has also hired Brent Breedveld as animation director, Karl Gryc as art director, and John Cruz as technical art director. The team as a whole is handled by head of HR Trisha MacWan, who has previously held HR leadership roles at Phoenix Labs and Glu Mobile.

Breedveld has one of the most varied catalogues in terms of games he has worked on. During his 14-year tenure at Relic Entertainment as principal animator and animation director, he had a hand in shipping critically acclaimed strategy games like Age of Empires 4 and Company of Heroes. He has also worked on the original Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Going further back, Breedveld has a history in the film industry, having worked at Prime Focus World with film credits that include Watchmen and Superman Returns.

Gryc – a 22-year veteran – has worked on several classic critically-acclaimed games like Company of Heroes, Dawn of War, Turok, Academy of Champions, Pure Futbol, Deserts of Kharak, and Sleeping Dogs. His most recent contributions can be seen in Homeworld 3 and Crossfire Legion – projects on which he served as art director.

Currently, Small Axe Studios is looking to grow its teams and has posted job listings on its website for a variety of roles, ranging from lighting artist and senior gameplay online engineer to producer and even a gameplay systems software engineer. While the studio’s first project hasn’t yet been announced, Small Axe Studios has said that it is “built on a fiercely protected, ego-free culture” that prioritizes “coaching over criticism.”

As the wealth of experience across the studio’s teams would indicate, Small Axe Studios is building “2K’s next blockbuster sports franchise”. Which sport will be tackled remains to be seen, though 2K might be looking to develop games across hockey, soccer, and American football to capitalize on the success of the NBA 2K series.