This is one of the first things you see before the campaign of Mafia 3 begins. Right from the get-go, Hangar 13 want you to know that they aren’t holding back when it comes to representing the inglorious late 60’s of America. A time when rock & roll was finding its place in history; a time when cars had a certain aesthetic about them that made your head turn; a time when global warming wasn’t at alarming rates. But most importantly, it was a time of racism, bigotry, segregation, and hate. And when I read that message I knew that Mafia 3 would teleport me into a world that emulated the latter with such impeccable skill; a world in which it wasn’t a game anymore but a subtext of social commentary.
I was ready to embrace that realism; to be perturbed and moved all at once. But there was one thing that the image above would not prepare me for: it did not prepare me for a subpar game.
The story of Mafia 3 follows the path of the protagonist, Lincoln Clay. We see him return home, after serving in the Vietnam war, to his adopted family whom also happen to be the black mob. It is a momentary tale of happiness as he celebrates and reintegrates into civilian life. Of course, that doesn’t mean he still doesn’t help around with any ‘errands’ that is tasked to him by his family. You see the internal struggle that Lincoln faces, him having to choose to go legit but at the same time commit to his crime familial loyalties.
All of what I just mentioned is just the tutorial. The main story takes places after the black mob (his family) is betrayed and brutally murdered by the family’s friend and fellow crime boss, Sal Marcano. And thus begins, the systematic deconstruction of the Marcano family at the hands of one pissed off Vietnam veteran. The direction style of the story is nothing less than astounding. The story is presented in the form of a documentary that is made up of interviews and news clips all referring to the events that take place in the story.
The cutscenes play out better than most crime-drama films, and that seems to be the game’s intention. It not only tells a riveting story of revenge and salvation but it tells it in a manner that draws you in like a Scorsese films draws in a movie-goer.
So how does a war-bred veteran like Lincoln Clay take out the mob? By methodically tearing down Marcano’s empire and doing it in the most violently garish manner possible. For the former, the aim of the game is to take down the various businesses and rackets which in turn let you get your hands on the lieutenants and capos under Marcano, and for the latter, you just need a whole lot of guns, explosives, and creativity.
The game does employ light stealth mechanics and it’s oddly satisfying. With a simple whistle, while you’re ducked around a corner, you can lure enemies closer and just as they take the turn, you can proceed to catch them by the collar and give them a free prison-style lobotomy with your trusty army blade. And as morbidly gratifying it is to see those animations, the stealth combat ends up taking away a lot from the game. You end up using stealth for the majority of the game because it’s the easier thing to do. For the larger part of the time when you enter areas filled with enemies, there are sentries that can call in for back up. Logically you would stealthily take out the sentry first and then go on a killing spree, right? The thing is that on the way to kill the sentry, you end up taking out the majority of enemies in the area, so you might as well end up stealthily killing the rest.
Also, it seems as though Lincoln Clay might have crossed paths with Bruce Wayne because Lincoln has the discount version of Batman’s Detective mode; Mafia 3 calls it ‘Intel View’. Initially, it seemed truly useful because when sneaking through an area you can use it to scan for the locations for enemies that are closest to your vicinity. Added to that is a limiter in which you can only use it when standing still otherwise it is easily open to misuse.
However, Intel View is probably one of the buggiest features in the game. At times it wouldn’t even detect enemies that were around corners 8 feets away from me.
The bright side of a faulty Intel View is that the combat it indirectly pushes you into is quite exhilarating. Everything from the blast of a revolver to an enemy’s body flailing through the air after getting a chest full of shotgun bullets, all it feels intense. Even your ammo capacity is not that high (you can’t go around carrying 80 shotgun rounds) and this only pushes you to be cautious in battle and make every shot count. The variety of weapons is moderately varied, ranging from pistols to the more crowd control weapons such as bazookas.
As much as variety there is in terms weaponry, there wasn’t much difference in terms of how each type of weapon varies within its subclass. For the majority of the game, I ended up sticking to a particular revolver and shotgun that I purchased early on in the game. Sure, there were other types of revolvers and shotguns but their differentiations were so minute or invalid that I really never felt the urge to change up. Even, the combination of my weapons ended up being the same throughout the game because the game never put me in those situations in which I had to rethink the type of arsenal I brought with me into every battle.
It needs to be noted that the cover system feels oddly heavy and broken at times; you will feel this mostly when running from cover to cover as you see Lincoln clumsily stick to the side of the barricade that directly faces a hail of enemy bullets.
The Mafia franchise has always been known for its great crime-drama story lines, juxtapose to this is the franchise’s infamous linear open worlds. As vast as the environments from the previous iterations felt, it still felt like you were trapped within invisible walls leading you down an invisible corridor.
This time around, Hangar 13 did away with those invisible walls and corridors, and instead upgraded to an invisible manison.
From the alligator-infested bayou to the bright lights of downtown, 1960’s New Orleans is nothing less than expansive. Sadly, that vast expanse never feels alive. Sure, Mafia 3 makes it a point to feel realistic, such as the fact that entering certain is against the law because of racial segregation or that the radios blare racial propaganda, but in the end, the in-game world feels plastic. With very little to interact with or even the environments at times feeling inorganic, New Orleans can lose its charm very fast.
I mentioned earlier how the core of the Mafia franchise was its story, and coupled with that story was an intuitive game design. The earlier Mafia games’ missions felt wholesome and they all did something to drive the narrative forward. Sadly, Mafia 3 seems to have fallen into a rut. A rut of monotony.
After putting in a few hours into the game, you will realize that the main aim of Lincoln’s story is to systematically take part Marcano’s empire. And as I mentioned earlier, to do that you would need to take over his rackets and businesses. One would think this would actually open up the game for some great set pieces and moments of gameplay, and it does! However, to get to those moments is where it gets muddy. The game employs this repetitive set of tasks when it comes to taking down the rackets. These tasks generally fall under these –
- Break a bunch of stuff that is important to the racket.
- Kill a bunch of enforcers.
- Kill a bunch of people who have some investment in the rackets.
- Destroy vehicles containing stuff related to the racket, that you could have broken any other time but instead, you do it this way because lazy game design is a thing.
I may have missed a couple but the tasks generally fall under these. After completing those tasks the ones running the racket show up and then it is up to you if you want to kill them or not. And after the rackets in a certain district are taken over, the underboss in charge of that area shows up so that he can get brutally stabbed in the face by yours truly. Now imagine doing this 12 times.
Look, truth be told, taking out the Marcano’s underbosses makes for some truly great set pieces but everything before that is a CHORE.
The game employs some light strategy in terms of dividing the wealth amongst your underbosses. Anytime you take over a racket or district, you need to assign it to an underboss, and doing so unlocks each of their perks. Of course, there is the slight issue of unevenly distributing the wealth can cause one of the underbosses you turn against you. Oddly enough, that was easy to avoid because all you have to do is divide the districts evenly amongst them. That is how easily avoidable that scenario is, the game actually never makes it a real struggle.
Even all the perks the underbosses give to you aren’t that useful. After you’ve unlocked a quarter or even half the perks for each of them, you’re playing the game on Easy street. Literally, one the perks is to call off the cops at any given time. That is a cheat turned into an in-game feature. And some perks feel redundant, such as the ability to stealthily steal cars is completely useless because before that you end up earning the perk to call in a vehicle, of your choosing, at any time.
Most of the perks end up taking away any sort of danger you could feel and replace that with a god complex of sorts.
There are a lot of minor issues that plague the game, such as terrible lighting problems that are an eyesore or that the game is filled with bugs that can ruin the cohesiveness of the game (one such bug literally made the ground eat my car). I’ll be honest, I don’t know if the patch fixed most of the bugs or if I got so used to them that I stopped consciously becoming aware of them.
For all the hype that came behind Mafia 3 before launch, the actual product is the furthest thing from any of it. It’s a game that has so much potential but is buried under poor game design and bugs. You will find yourself engrossed in the first few hours of the game but once the main body of the game commences, that is where you will find yourself unwillingly dragging yourself to the game because it is one of the worst things when a game makes you feel as though it is nothing more than an errand.
Imagine speeding through underground canals in a jetboat from the police while ‘Born to be wild’ blares in the background or blazing through a 15+ storied building that is filled with henchmen armed to the tooth, the game makes for some truly cinematic moments and it does so in full stride.
And when it is at its highest, it has a tendency to come crashing down all because your getaway car that you were going to use to escape from the police is eaten up by the very ground you stand upon.
This game was reviewed using a PS4 copy provided by the distributor, Red Entertainment.
