Complete List
Mafia III
Platform: PS4
Time: 35:00
Date: 11.30
Score: (3/5)
It's hard to nail down a score or a description of how I feel about Mafia III. There's almost as much I dislike about the game as I like about it, which really sucks because the game does a lot of cool things.
First, you have the setting. The setting is amazing and refreshing, which is pretty hard to do in a genre that's as popular as this one. More than just nailing the small town feel, the mid-sized city feel, and the rural countryside feel, the game also makes great use of the time period. These locations feel new, because they are so old. The radio selection is also top notch, and I found myself enjoying nearly all of the 100ish tracks the game has to offer.
The rampant racism used throughout the game also helps the player to understand and sympathize with Lincoln Clay. As a white guy born in the 80s, I would never presume to know what shit was like back then for a black person, but I have to commend this game for lending a small amount of understanding to what is otherwise a pretty foreign concept.
Beyond just dropping "the n-word," I have to commend Mafia III for its overall use of language. Swearing was varied and felt authentic. Pretty much every character who was important enough to be featured in a cutscene felt like a real person, in no small part to the dialog.
Last on my list of positives is the way the game presents the story. The interview-style cutscenes were an awesome way to drive the story. Not only that, but it makes it feel like the actions of Lincoln Clay were significant enough to have people still talking 40 years later. It lets the game add exposition wherever it likes in an extremely natural and effective way.
But on the opposite side of this excellent story telling, we have the misuse of characters. Mafia III does a good job of introducing 9 or so characters: Lincoln, Sammy, Ellis, Giorgi, Sal, the Priest, the blonde Spec Op guy, and two of the three people you recruit to help you run the city (Irish Dad and Hatian Lady). Almost all of Sal's gang feel like disposable paper dolls. The Italian guy you recruit as your third has zero personality. Every single person you have to meet with to talk about the next racket you're going to target, where you just stand there awkwardly and exchange dialog, might as well not even exist. The game adds a lot of characters to extend its length to a reasonable amount, but so many of these people didn't matter. For the longest time I felt like I was doing nothing of importance. All of this was a huge let down because the first few hours of the game are incredible and after the betrayal, I was seriously ready to fuck these people up.
There's also the open world issue. I am of the opinion that a game should not be open world if it doesn't do something cool with that openess. Usually this means some cool means of traversal but there are certainly other elements that could work. Mafia III didn't have any of them. Driving is fine and all, but I was tired of driving across the city in no time. Mafia III also falls into the same open-world BS as most other open-world games, with so many missions just being copy/pasted all over the place. Rolling up on a group of guys and killing them all is not fun after a few go arounds. Sneaking into a building and killing a bunch of guys is not fun after a few go arounds. Hunting down and destroying various types of contraband is not fun after a few go arounds. And yet these are things I did for hours upon hours upon hours.
So in the end, I'm left with a very mixed bag. I want to like this game more than I do for all the cool shit it does, but it falls into too many old pitfalls. What remains is a pile of missed opportunities and unrealized potential. The ending and beginning are great, but the middle 90% of the game is not very good.
