Mafia 3 – A repetitive mess

 

They called me the “N-Word”

Imagine yourself, walking into a store. The store says “No Colored’s Allowed”, but you decide to go in anyway. The store owner greets you with the threat of calling the police. You take his threat, and you decide to choke slam the white owner, but also every white person inside of the store. And you walk out, feeling as though they will remember the black man that choke slammed them all.

This was the experience that made me love Mafia 3.

THEN imagine you’re completing a mission taking out waves upon waves of incoming Italian mobsters. You’ve almost completed your objective, and you notice you have one left. You search for this “last man standing” (As you assume he’s weeping in the corner about his incoming doom). And instead you find that he has glitched himself into a building where you cannot hit him, nor can he die or hit you. You have to reload the game, and completely break your immersion.

This was the start of my decline into contempt for Mafia 3

Mafia 3 is an Open-World Sandbox game released on Friday October 7, 2016, to Xbox one, PC, and PlayStation 4. The game goes over the tale of a Lincoln Clay, a Vietnam War Special Ops vet, who is betrayed and loses everything to the Italian mob. Having survived after being left for dead, he decides to begin the war path to efficiently and brutally take over the grimy underworld of New Bordeaux (New Orleans) from Sal Marcano.

That’s about all the set-up you need, because that’s all the story you’re going to get. Mafia is a painfully by the numbers revenge plot, with nothing to keep itself fresh other than the interactions Lincoln has with the other characters. There are no real special twists, no turns, no sudden changes of heart, the plot is literally “Kill Sal Marcano”. And for some readers, and some players, that’s fine. It’s about the fun of the game play to get to that part.

Here’s where I stop you.

Firstly the positive: Mafia 3 has possibly the most expanded game play out of all the games so far.There are a multitude of weapons, grenades, and other ways to kill your targets as you take on another district underling’s goons. The Open world is massive, much larger than Empire Bay from Mafia 2. There are multiple missions, which you don’t have to do in any order. The driving has the arcade like mode, which is fun and unrealistic, but you can also initiate a more “realistic” driving mode if that peaks your fancy. Those are the goods.

“Cruisin down the street in my 6… What is this car again?”

Now here’s the bad:

This game is the most repetitive mess I’ve played in a while. While you have multiple missions that you can do in the game, there are almost no changes from the type of missions that you’ll be doing. Here’s the order of operations for missions:

• Meet Donovan, your handler.
  • He’ll tell you about 2-3 contacts in the district that will know about how to pull out the under-boss’ to the lieutenant or Capo in the area.
    • Meet those contacts
      • Be given 2-3 tasks that will be repeated in different locations, to do fiscal damage to the underling.
        • Complete those.
          • Find Under-boss, either kill or spare him.
            • Place district quarter into one of YOUR Under-boss’ hands.
              • After completing the whole district operation, you’ll take on or meet the ACTUAL Lieutenant.
                • Kill or persuade them to help you.
                  • Assign WHOLE district to one of your under-boss’
                    • Repeat in the next district.

You can only stealth kill a guy but so much before it gets boring…zzz

As previously stated, there are no changes, twists or turns in the plot. This fact is true for game play too. It stays this same course throughout the whole game. The gun play is OK, at first, but then after a while you start to want more from the game. Different play styles, different objectives to make your experience more refreshing. And the game fails to deliver on that front. Instead it just gives you more guns, more weapons, more grenades, and all without substance. It’s quite sad. This game was handled by a different developer from Mafia 2, but it still has the same issues as its predecessor with being unable to offer real game play changes.

Graphics are muddy and look like the game is still in a late alpha early beta stage. The game has no real weather effects, either the sun is too damn bright, or the rain looks like pixels falling on top of your head. Apparently there are the only 2 ways that New Bordeaux looks. Either rainy or too bright. Day-to-Night transitions are strange.

The sky doesn’t even move. Ocarina of time had done better in 1998

There is no in game clock to tell you the time, but they seem to randomly change through out. Textures look like they’re from an open world game that was in the early Xbox 360 days, and the game is so poorly optimized for PC, it’s barely playable. My laptop that I use is no beast, however it meets the specifications to a tee, and should at least be able to play the game without the game eating up all of the PC’s CPU. And I’m not an outlier, several cases have been noted in other reviews via steam user reviews and even YouTube reviews.

The sad truth is, that the PC version is a console port, through and through. The game was released with a 30 FPS cap that was patched out day 2 of release. The game is so improperly optimized it’s going on Batman: Arkham Knight levels of ridiculous. And the game uses controls that were not designed with a PC gamer in mind.

It’s sad that Mafia 3 is as mediocre as it is, as there is so much potential. After certain story beats that game has a black power radio station that plays, and he speaks about issues of the government, corruption, and black america. The parallels to the modern times, considering this game was set in 1968, are unsettling. When the police are called on you, in a minority area, the dispatcher will say “I guess you should go check this out”. The cops

Lincoln walks with the swagger his game’s lacking.

will take their sweet time making it to the scene, and the investigation will end within seconds of them finding nothing. When you’re in a white neighborhood however, the dispatcher will say that the police are needed with urgency, and the cops come out there DEEP. At least 4-6 cars, and the area of effect is greater (where you can’t go into it or alert the police to your presence), the investigation time is almost twice if not three times as long and the police are very quick to fire and question you later.

Mafia 3 is not a bad game. With the encouragement from the developer to continue to update the game post launch, and listen to community feedback, there is hope for the game to be better. However as of launch it is an OK game at its best, and downright mediocre at it’s worst. I bought the game for $50, with an Amazon Pre-Order, and I feel slightly jilted for my money. Until it is updated with its promised changes, I recommend no-one buy on PC, and beware on console. Definitely hold your dollars to buy DLC, until the game has been made into the game that we were all promised in those trailers and game play demo’s we watched over the last year.

I will give Mafia 3 a 5 out of 10.

Rating Scale:

1-2: DO NOT BUY; Waste of all money.

2-4: Below Average, maybe redeemable

5: Average, Good and Bad

6-7: Slightly Above Average. More good than bad

8-9: Above Average and A bit beyond, overall a quality product

10: Near Perfection, issues are negligible and the game is overall one of the best.