Mafia III (2016)

A good game despite some questionable open world design and some bugs.

This game is a mix of good and bad. Mafia games have always had a good mob story behind it - this time is no different. The story missions, voice acting, characters and cut scenes are the strongest part of this game. The bad goes down to the open world design that just gets in the way of the good stuff.

So there were alway complaints regarding the previous parts of the game that although the world is open - there is nothing to do in it. Mafia 3 decided to fix it by taking example from ubisoft open worlds - at least this is how I felt about it. This results in repetitive missions, a lot of collectibles scattered across the city and unlocking towers - or bugging some switch boxes to unlock a view of certain area... definitely not the way to go.

I'll start with the good stuff. Soundtrack is amazing, voice acting as well. The city is pretty, well designed and the atmosphere is spot on. Feels like America of the 70's.

Driving is also fun - bit arcady - but with the array of cars available at quick call it's just pure fun. Shooting and sneaking is pretty well done. You can approach the missions either stealthy or guns blazing - either way is fun. The choice of guns is quite satisfactory. So although you'll be doing a lot of the same at least it's sort of fun.

And now to the bad stuff. First off - this really grinds my gears - although the story is good the certain story assumption is just pure madness. So you want to take out the big boss - that's fine - but the plan is to take out every lieutenant, under-boss or lackey before just for the boss to see it all go to hell. What? The plan is to kill of everyone under him before getting at the boss - that is the most stupid plan they could have come up with. And it's all because of how the game is structured.

In short - there is a number of districts you need to take over before going after the boss. Each district has it's own story mission when you take it over. To take it over there are two under-bosses you need to kill. To get to each under-boss you need to do 5-7 sub-missions. And since there are around 5 sub-mission types - you will be doing the same thing over and over. Most of them are just - go here - kill these 5 guys or go there kill those 5 guys and destroy some boxes or go here and kill these 5 guys but you need to question this one guy who can't be killed until you question him. After that take the under-boss - which means go to one of the locations you've already been and kill the under-boss guarded by 10 lackeys. After the two you get your reward - a story mission.

You also get 3 under-bosses of your own - to which you can assign districts in order to gain some in-game bonuses. While it's a neat idea - the whole sit downs felt cool at first where they tried to convince you to give them control of certain districts and got mad when they didn't got what they wanted. But it's a bit superficial - it does not matter. They will get really mad but will fall in line in a second even if you don't give them anything. Was hoping for a bit more in order to keep all of them happy.

The game is buggy as well. Even with some patches - saw dancing chairs, cars being sucked underground or NPCs stuck behind a door when they should be coming with me. It didn't bother me that much as it's pretty much playable but worth mentioning.

Overall I enjoyed the game although feeling a bit board at times doing the same thing. But it was worth it for the story missions and the games final conclusion.

6.5/10

What a disappointment. I had never played a Mafia, despite an interest in anything Mafioso, so I decided to take the plunge.

The Good:

- The soundtrack is awesome, which leads to some great moments, like driving to the classic road song "Bad Moon Rising" or your entire squad getting murdered to "Paint It Black."

- The story is great, with interesting characters. It's a revenge tale but it's done well, with the story elements being a clear highlight.

- The fact that it doesn't shy away from racism. Seriously, if you're one of those people who think it's a terrible thing that the game says nigger: get your shit together. We can murder people, get blown by prostitutes in cars, etc, and yet we can't accurately depict racism in the USA?

- Little touches like the police not giving a shit if you're in a poor, black neighbourhood, but rushing to your aid if you're in a white part of town. I loved hearing the police dispatcher say, "Go check it out if you got a minute" or whatever.

The Bad:

- The game is boring. Seriously, who thought up this mission design? It reeks of base game Destiny hogwash where the developers didn't even give us the illusion that we were doing something different each time. You talk to someone, go destroy a bunch of stuff, draw out an underboss, kill him, then do the same thing to eventually bring out the bigger guy. I went from playing the game for hours at a time, to playing until I killed at least one guy, to not even being able to get through one entire mission in one setting. That's bad.

- Technical glitches; lighting, gunshots not registering, etc.

- No you know what? The main issue here is that the game gets incredibly boring.

I don't hate Mafia 3, but man is there a lot of crap to crawl through to get to the good game. It's a shame because the story is very cool.