Mafia 3, yes, this is apparently a Mafia game... Set in 1968, around twenty years after the events of Mafia 2, we are taken to New Bordeaux, heavily based on New Orleans. We take control of Lincoln Clay, a Vietnam veteran returning home after the war, very similar to Mafia 2s intro. The game is also set in the present during some cutscenes, they're shown as a documentary style about the things Clay had done, this was really cool and set the tone for the things that would occur. When the main menu shows and All Along the Watchtower plays, you're fooled into thinking "This is going to be amazing", from the start, you're built up for disappointment.
Clay is part of the Black Mob, after a tragedy occurs early on, he sets out for revenge on the Mafia after being saved by his friend, Father James and has help from John Donovan, a CIA handler, in tracking the mafia. During Clay's pursuit, he makes three friends, well, they're more acquaintances, they are underbosses who you can hand out districts to when you take over a territory. One of whom, is our old friend Vito Scaletta from Mafia 2. I was duped into thinking this was creating and building your own mafia, all we got is three uninteresting characters whining and bitching about how they want the territory. Your "mafia" is effectively three separate gangs temporarily working together to take over the city, Godfather 2 made you feel like you were building your own mafia, this didn't feel like a mob at all and it was so annoying listening to the gangs leaders moaning constantly.
The graphics are outstanding, the emotion in the cutscenes is perfect and the lip syncing is incredible. As well as the cutscenes being the best thing in the game, was the music, all you have to do is listen and you'll agree. The lighting looks really nice and the nights are pitch black and often difficult to see, but it looks realistic. However, sometimes the weather and lighting was off key, I could literally drive back and forth at one point and literally watch it change from day and night. A cool thing when driving, was there was a rear view mirror at the top, so you could always see behind even when driving forward. Unfortunately here, the view in the mirror looked awful, everything looked unrendered as you drove past, making the game look poor.
The gameplay was great, shooting, grenade throwing and switching cover all worked smoothly. The new stealth and takedowns were brilliant, you could play through the majority of the game in stealth if you chose to, but that was also a bad thing, it's a Mafia game so it shouldn't really have focused so much on the stealth, as good as it was. There was also the focus ability that let you see points of interest and enemies through walls, this was so useful and great to use, but again felt out of place in this game. Shooting from vehicles was a nice new feature that was missing from the previous game. The hard difficulty wasn't really challenging because the stealth was so good, I never really got in to many gun fights. I only died when I didn't play smart, not using cover and running out in the open.
There were side missions but they were boring and repetitive, but if you do a fair amount, you can find out what happened to Joe Barbaro from Mafia 2, a question that's been on all of our minds these past six years. You can feed bodies to crocodiles if they're near, this is a unique way of hiding bodies. Even the radio signal would get distorted in tunnels, the combat was different and easier than the brawls in the previous game. You get some decent perks from the underbosses, you can get an arms dealer, a car delivery and even a hit squad to help you out. The best moments of the game would be when a well known song would kick in during the story missions, they made the game feel alive and excited to play the upcoming mission. There's also a choice ending, but I won't say much more other than it's kind of got some replayability.
This may be a harsh section as I played it on release, but there were so many bugs. Most games have lots of bugs when they first release but I had so many, some were funny though. A car drove past with both front doors open, two police cars blew up and flew up really high, some cutscenes featured the same character twice, one was talking and moving and the other was still as a rock. I tried to take over a car and crashed into an invisible wall, it turns out it was just a lamppost that hadn't loaded yet. Waypoints wouldn't set, my brand new car wouldn't start and the game randomly shut down, but that was only once. Bugs for a brand new release however are inevitable, but I gotta mention them.
The game starts off so well but quickly deflates. It becomes repetitive as you do the same thing over and over before you get to do a story mission. The game was only interesting during the story, but we had to do repetitive tasks just to unlock more of the story. An issue I had with the story was you were given a name of a person to kill and why so you did. No character really had a part in the story until it was time to kill them, I felt like I was being told to kill instead of Clay wanting to for revenge. There was a police awareness bar that was practically pointless, I never once paid attention to it. During the whole game you don't get to change your clothes, once you see Clay, he wears the same outfit throughout. When I did a stealth takedown on a cop, it alerted all the cops despite me not being in their site. The hit squad was good but a lot of the time they would just show up and if I weren't already in combat, they would just leave without attacking anyone. The music was great but the radio would often repeat so I wouldn't get to hear the rest of the great songs on the soundtrack. The developers went the wrong way on this game, it's not a bad game, but it's not a Mafia game, it's a GTA clone. It suffered because of that, it should've been released under a different title because it didn't feel like a Mafia game in the slightest.
I loved Mafia 2, when 3 was announced I was so hyped and looking forward to it so much. It looks and plays great, but it's not a Mafia game. If that's the best they can do in six years, I'm disappointed. There was so much potential here and it shows, they just went the wrong way about executing it. I was under the impression I got to lead my own mafia, but what I got was three giant babies crying for their juice. This could have potentially been 9/10 had they not made a GTA clone, I'd love a Mafia 4 done right.
7.5/10
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