Warcraft 3: Reforged

How do you possibly mess up a classic game like Warcraft 3? It’s one thing to have multitudes of bugs, horrible multiplayer, an underwhelming UI, and an uneven graphics update. It’s quite another to claim ownership over all custom games with players not even getting credit. Or outright lying about remastered cutscenes and presentation. Or making it so that owners of the original had to update to Reforged, thus ruining their nostalgia as well. Or a dozen other things that make you wonder how Blizzard got to this point.

Dishonored: Definitive Edition

Arkane Studios’ Dishonored debuted in 2012 for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, and despite arriving near the end of their life-cycles, it made an impact. The stealth gameplay, multiple ways to approach missions, consequences that had far-reaching effects on the story and so on established it as an excellent game. And it was all the more impressive that Arkane could deliver such a great experience with anti-aliasing, screen space ambient occlusion and depth of field on essentially outdated hardware.

So you would think that Dishonored Definitive Edition, which launched in August 2015 for Xbox One and PS4, would be a decent step up. No one expected remade visuals or heavily revamped assets but 1080p resolution and 60 frames per second seemed a given. Unfortunately, despite launching two years after the initial game – which could hit 60 fps on more inferior PC hardware – Dishonored Definitive Edition was stuck at 30 frames per second. Image quality is better, for sure, but the large amount of FXAA blurred significant amounts of details. Texture streaming issues, the lack of anisotropic filtering and other missing visual flourishes from the PC version didn’t help.

It seems the word “definitive” no longer holds any meaning, especially in the video games industry. 2K Games recently released Definitive Editions of both Mafia 2 and Mafia 3, and both have problems of their own. Mafia 2: Definitive Edition just feels like a lazy texture pack disguised as a remaster, but Mafia 3 logically had things easier. It was not so much a remaster as it was a simple re-release compiling for base game with its post-launch content in one package- but it seems it still managed to mess things up.

As Eurogamer reports (and as discovered by users on Reddit), those who had the base game have found that it’s actually dropped some features after the 10 GB Definitive Edition patch installed. More specifically, the game has dropped support for PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. Whereas before it used to run at a resolution of 1440p and 1728p on the two consoles respectively, now it’s running at a flat 900p across all of them, seemingly dropping 4K support.

A 2K spokesperson told Eurogamer that they were aware of this issue, and were working on a fix for the same. “The development team supporting Mafia 3: Definitive Edition is aware of this issue and is working to restore support for Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro as soon as possible,” they said.

It’s a baffling error, especially in something that is essentially a straight re-release. Here’s hoping the Mafia 1 remake has better luck when it launches in August.

It’s the year of Mafia. Both the second and third game got Definitive Edition re-releases, and a remake of the first game will come later this year. With the third title, there wasn’t a lot of changes to the game being a current generation game after all, but its Definitive Edition seems to house what might have been an interesting easter egg to a canceled project.

YouTuber Sliderv2 went to datamining the game shortly after the update was released. In it he found a very interesting map that’s based on Berlin, Germany. Considering the setting of Mafia 3, there doesn’t seem to be any reason why this would be here. There’s speculation here that this could be a bit of an easter egg and this was part of a canceled project Hangar 13 was working on called Rhapsody. The game was a spy thriller about a Russian Jew who was recruited into a spy organization. That game was uncovered by Kotaku, and you can read more about it through here.

As you can see below, you can’t interact with the map to any degree, but you can walk around a little. It’s a pretty interesting thing to have hidden in the game if speculation is true. While Mafia: Definitive Edition is set to come out in August, we also know that Hangar 13 is hard at work on a new AAA title as well.

After having recently teased Mafia: Trilogy, 2K Games have fully lifted the lid on it, explaining properly what each of the three games included are going to be like. Consisting of Definitive Editions for each game in the series, each part of the package is different in nature.

Mafia 2: Definitive Edition is a remaster, while Mafia 3: Definitive Edition adds 4K visuals to the game, while also coming with all add-on content. Both games are available right now. Anyone who owns the original Mafia 2 on Steam gets a free upgrade to the Definitive Edition, while anyone who owns Mafia 3 on any platform also gets a free upgrade to its ow definitive edition.

The most exciting part of the package, however, is Mafia: Definitive Edition, a complete ground-up remake of the first game in the series (as leaked recently), made in the Mafia 3 engine by Hangar 13. It features a reworked script with new dialogue, new cutscenes, expanded backstories, new gameplay sequences, new mechanics, and more.

Unlike the other two games in the collection, the Mafia 1 remake is not out now- it will release for PS4, Xbox One, and PC on August 28. Mafia 2 and 3 Definitive Editions cost $30 each (if the free upgrades mentioned above don’t apply to you, that is), while Mafia: Definitive Edition can be purchased for $40.

You can, however, also purchase all three as a single package with Mafia: Trilogy, which costs the full $60, and which will also unlock Mafia 2 and 3 for you immediately. Finally, if you own a combination of any two of those three games, you can upgrade to the full collection for a reduced price.

You can check out trailers for all three games below.

https://youtu.be/ypPHHj5eDbA

https://youtu.be/X91PvcH307E

The Mafia series has always had issues to varying degrees with each of its entries, but each entry has also had its own fair share of fans. Now, it seems the last two Mafia games might be in line for re-releases. As spotted by Gematsu, Mafia 2: Definitive Edition (PS4, Xbox One, PC) and Mafia 3: Definitive Edition (PS4, Xbox One, PC) have both been rated by the Taiwanese ratings board.

Mafia 2 was developed by 2K Czech and first came out in 2010, with players taking on the role of Sicilian immigrant Vito Scaletta in the fictional American city of Empire Bay during the 1940s and 1950s. Meanwhile, 2016’s Mafia 3 saw players stepping into the shoes of Vietnam War veteran Lincoln Clay in the New Orleans-inspired fictional American city of New Bordeaux during the late 1960s. Both games were criticized for various open world failings, but both received nearly universal praise for their narratives and storytelling.

We’ll keep you updated as soon as an official announcement is made for both these releases, so stay tuned. Meanwhile, Mafia 3 developers Hangar 13 are working on another new open world IP, and we should be hearing about it in foreseeable future.