Skidding around a corner in the heat haze of New Bordeaux as Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix or The Rolling Stones blast out of the speakers feels incredible, but you’re only ever driving to and from repetitive missions. They all drive like American muscles, and they all feel like beasts that need taming. The cars are all angry, heavy things that swing around corners, fishtailing in wide arcs. I wasn’t informed of this until around the 15-hour mark, even after I’d been involved in a few of the rare car chases.ĭriving around New Bordeaux, thankfully, feels great. Then there are tooltips that you do need, like when you’re told how to shoot and ram while driving. You’re just killing dudes, but Mafia 3 seems intent on making it appear like there’s some depth hidden beneath the gore. 20 hours in, the game is still telling you how to dismantle criminal rackets, even though it’s all you’ve been doing for the last 15 hours. You only know about it because a tutorial tooltip informs you once you get your hands on the knife. The stealth is simple: one button causes Lincoln to crouch, and then it’s just a case of getting near someone and tapping melee, causing him to drive a knife through their eye, throw them to the floor and stamp his boot on their face, of one of many other vicious takedowns.īizarrely, there is also an option for non-lethal stealth animations, but it’s tucked away in the pause menu. Often I would find myself using stealth to try bypass shootouts and shift up the pace myself. The occasional molotov forcing you to move doesn’t sufficiently spice things up. Shotgunners just walk towards you to try and score a close-range shot, while other enemies duck behind cover, leaving the top of their heads exposed, taking potshots. The enemy AI lets combat down, however, thanks to simplistic behaviour. The guns all feel great, too, from rat-rat machine guns to devastating hand-cannons. Moving in and out of cover feels fluid, so you’re often pro-active on the battlefield, trying to close the range instead of sitting behind cover and popping heads from a distance. Each shot causes enemies to clutch a limb or reel from the force – upon death they tumble over boxes or slump over satisfyingly, thanks to a weighty physics model. Mafia 3’s gunplay feels punchy and brutal, with headshots accompanied by a satisfying pop and a crimson spray, soaking the walls and floor around your victim. Lincoln was at home in the bloodsoaked and napalm-scorched paddy fields of ‘Nam, and he feels just as comfortable dishing out street justice in New Bordeaux. I won’t spoil Lincoln’s motivations for revenge, but damn is he good at it. Mafia 3 instead wants you to tear the organisation to pieces and build your own empire in the ashes. It’s a Mafia game where you don’t play as a mafioso. In New Bordeaux, some places don’t allow black people entry at all, while others force them to enter through the establishment’s rear entrance. It’s distressing to hear racially-charged language in a videogame, but you should be taken aback, you should be shocked and you should feel uncomfortable – this was a very real part of our recent history and to pretend it wasn’t like this would be disrespectful to those who lived it. Seeing things from Lincoln’s perspective, as a black man in New Orleans during such a turbulent time, is one of the game’s biggest strengths. Related: Nintendo Switch vs PS4 and Xbox One Like Mafia 2’s protagonist, Vito Scaletta, Lincoln begins the game returning home after war, though his tour was in Vietnam. You learn about the game’s protagonist, Lincoln Clay, via documentary-style clips, told decades later by people affected, or through testimonies during a trial. For the first four hours, during its linear prologue, Mafia 3 is superb but, as soon as it embraces its open-world design, it yet again all falls apart. It’s just a shame that you’re forced to repeat the same tedious activities to see them. New Bordeaux is gorgeous, the period’s abhorrent racial tension is respectfully replicated, and Mafia 3’s revenge story is told via some of the most convincingly-acted out cutscenes I’ve seen. The game ditches its predecessor’s Brylcreem-loving Sicilians and the story takes place two decades later in New Bordeaux – a fictional analogue of New Orleans. Mafia 3 attempts to change this with an open-world full of activity markers. Instead of filling a map with icons and distractions, it pulled players along a tight story with little room for wider exploration. Mafia 2 was criticised for its approach to an open-world Empire Bay.
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