Mafia III begins with a warning to the developers that they do not agree with the racist statements of some characters. This introduction puts you in the right mood: America in the sixties was an exotic place for the video game industry. And the chosen hero is unusual – a black veteran of the Vietnam War, who finds himself in the local equivalent of New Orleans after a murder Martin Luther King (Martin Luther King), in a year when mafia clans and groups were especially active.
Mafia showdowns
First few hours Mafia III easily one of the best intros of any open world game in recent years. It feels like you’re watching a movie Scorsese (Martin Scorsese) with stunning production, excellent cinematography and even acting – the animation of the characters in the videos is truly impressive. Sometimes the story is presented in the form of interviews with aged participants of those events, sometimes we are shown aged archival records, and all this is beautifully edited.
The theme of racism begins to emerge almost immediately – in one of the episodes, the main character’s colleague warns him that because of the color of his skin he will have to listen to several unpleasant phrases from others. But these are just flowers – in the open world, Lincoln Clay will literally face hostility from whites at every turn. As soon as you go into a cafe, for example, the bartender will politely hint that “there’s no place for people like that here,” and after a couple of warnings he’ll start getting angry.
The city is divided into several districts with different attitudes of their residents towards skin color. Somewhere no one cares about this, but somewhere whites consider themselves the superior race. The police reaction to a crime is also different – if a car is stolen in an area with a light-skinned population, the cops will react and arrive much faster, which can be understood from different messages from dispatchers.
Thanks to such little things, the game world seems well-developed and even alive, although in all other respects it loses to Los Santos from GTAV or even Hong Kong from Sleeping Dogs. Apart from story and side quests, there is absolutely nothing to do in it – you can’t take part in mini-games, you can’t sit in a bar, you can’t go shopping. No matter what anyone says, this problem existed in all parts of the series – the open world was needed only to drive us from one mission to another.
And if previously a new task https://casinomrq.co.uk/ began immediately after the previous one, then in the third part the formula changed a little. Now only the player decides where to go and which tasks to choose first. To some extent, this choice damaged the narrative, since instead of a direct division into main and side missions, the authors made almost all missions the main ones – something that is in modern games Ubisoft can be skipped completely (for example, the release of children in Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate), it is impossible to ignore here.
According to the plot, Lincoln is driven by a thirst for revenge – he wants to eliminate everyone who framed him, starting with people from the lowest level of the criminal hierarchy and ending with the bosses. To do this, he needs to capture more than a dozen districts, transferring control over them to one of his allies. Each leader obviously has his own business, and there is always an amount of damage that needs to be done. To do this, you have to interrogate the bandit’s colleagues, kill his henchmen, blow up cars, collect money scattered in the indicated territories, destroy boxes of weapons – in general, misbehave until the bastard gets scared.
After this, the player has a choice: kill the boss and end his business forever, or recruit him. There is no difference between these actions, except that income will increase by an additional thousand dollars. In addition, recruitment is impossible unless the switch located in the same area is hacked – without wiretapping, Lincoln instantly kills the gangster, without giving him any chance. There is no logic in this mechanics, but you have to put up with such conditions.
The reward for these actions are new story missions with excellent cutscenes and fascinating dialogues. But what happens during the seizure of areas is upsetting. Such tasks were added obviously in order to greatly extend the passage, but making them mandatory in such a quantity was not entirely correct. The only thing that saves the situation is that the player is free to choose what to do to cause damage – there is no need to do everything listed point by point. Often it’s enough to go to two henchmen and blow up a few boxes, then quickly get into the car and drive away to hell.
Great offers
Transferring rights to the business of a killed or hired boss entails certain consequences. The fact is that Lincoln has three allies (one of them is Vito Scaletta, a friend from the second part), each of whom offers different bonuses depending on the number of districts given to him. Someone will give a pistol with a silencer, someone can turn off telephone networks and thus prevent opponents from calling for help. Even the ending depends on who the player chose. The idea is interesting and forces you to think once again which bonuses are more important.
And the action here is done conscientiously. The artificial intelligence of opponents sometimes, of course, surprises with its stupidity, but both stealth and firefights look entertaining. In the best traditions of modern open-world games, Lincoln can whistle, which allows him to lure opponents to him and kill them from around the corner, and when he receives a pistol with a silencer, the hero almost becomes a ghost. If the player prefers active shooting, then he Mafia III won’t disappoint. Enemies react to hits to their limbs, weapons sound rich, and landing headshots is a pleasure.
But the chases look a little arcade-y. When fleeing from the police or gangsters, Lincoln can automatically aim his weapon at the wheels, engine or driver of the car pursuing him and hit the target precisely. On the one hand, this is too “casual” mechanics, but on the other hand, it’s not very easy to simultaneously keep an eye on the road and try to shoot somewhere, but here it’s possible.
The picture is also controversial – the game either gives very beautiful views, like sun-drenched streets, or turns into a terrible mess with unpleasant colors and an ugly sky. Looks like Mafia III “blurred” on both consoles and PC, but on computers players have the opportunity to remove this effect.
But I didn’t notice any critical bugs or minor shortcomings that YouTube users have been recording all week. Maybe I was just lucky. Although there is a really big problem with reflections here – despite the fact that you can always see what is happening in the rearview mirror, Lincoln cannot detect his own reflection in the restroom.
Well, there are no complaints about the musical selection at all – here you can hear compositions by The Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, and Johnny Cash (Johnny Cash), and James Brown (James Brown). Some are played on the radio, others are included during cutscenes, others make chases and shootouts more exciting. But this is again the merit of the people involved in the production – the fact that here it is kept at a very high level.
Mafia III could be a great open world action game that would rival the hits. Unusual setting, original themes for video games, amazing soundtrack, excellent animation in the cutscenes, good production… And the first two hours of the story really seem like something incredible. But the protracted nature and the need to perform routine actions for the sake of a new portion of story missions are tiring.
Pros: great story and production; impressive facial animation in in-engine cutscenes; one of the best soundtracks in recent years; the topic of racism is well explored; stealth, chases and shootouts are done well and are captivating.
Cons: what in other games are side and optional tasks is here necessary for the plot; technical implementation sometimes fails.