In Retrospect: Mafia III

Hey Guys, it's been a full year since the release of Mafia III! It feels like yesterday since this game first game out. I remember being hyped up for this game as I was a fan of the previous game in the series. I didn't get a chance to play the game until March of this year, so I won't be complaining about the bugs and glitches that occurred within the first month the game released.

Just so you know, I'm playing on the Xbox One version of the game. It may look good from the screenshot, but until you see the game from a TV you'll notice it's not exactly the best to look at.

Most of you might not agree with my opinion of the game, but I'm just going to say it. I don't think Mafia III is a great game. Why? I have just two major complaints on the game and I'll go into detail on them.

The gameplay in this game is just derivative and monotonous. All those critical reviews that you may have saw from reviewers, other players, and your favorite YouTubers could have all mentioned just how repetitive the missions are in this game. It's as if the developers of the game couldn't get the game design right. You end up doing the same activities over and over just to progress through the story.

Let me demonstrate. I'll even label the steps and it's essentially all the missions in a nutshell.

1. The game instructs you to talk to an NPC.(One of your underbosses, their partners, etc...)
2. Said NPC tells you their problem that you need to take care of. (Kill someone, rob something from someone, rescue someone, etc...)
3. You go to drive over to the location to take care of the problem. (Mind you there is no fast travel in the game, so expect to be doing a lot of driving)
4. You take care of the problem and have to drive back to tell the NPC that you took care of the problem and get paid.
5. Assign district/racket to an underboss depending if the mission demands you to do so.
6. Depending on the type of mission, you get a cutscene.
7. Repeat steps for next mission

What went wrong with the mission structure? Did these guys get lazy halfway through the development of the game or was it all just an afterthought?

Okay, the previous game had the same issue in terms of repetitive gameplay. However, you didn't have to keep on doing the same tasks to capture areas of a map in order to unlock the next cutscene. Every mission you did progressed through the story. It made the game feel shorter, but the story was good and made you want to push through the game in order to finish it.

This brings me to my other main criticism of the game: the open-world. New Bordeaux is a great setting for the game especially in 196 due to racial segregation and Vietnam effecting American culture at the time. However, there isn't much to do in the world.

All you're doing is driving around completing story missions and not really doing much of anything else. There are collectibles, but they don't necessarily add anything important to the game. Sure, there are optional missions, but they are pretty much the same as doing the story missions in terms of the activities. Sure, you can race in the game, but why do that if you're spending a good chunk of the game driving to your next objective anyways?

Don't get me wrong, you could still have fun with the game by doing stupid actions that aren't relevant to the missions. Much like GTA, you could have a standoff with the cops in the game if you'd like. However, a neat part of the game is that depending on what part of the map you're on the cops will either come quickly or slowly. It's not really encouraged to take part in these activities since you can die pretty easily in this game if you're not careful due to the amount of damage you could take in the game.

I talked about what was wrong with the game, but does it make it a bad game? No. The story and characters are possibly the strongest part of the game.

You could tell that a lot of effort has been put into the story and voice acting. Holy shit. Just look at the cutscenes for the game and you'll know what I mean. The cinematics are just graphically impressive and the lip syncing is on point. I wish the game looked exactly like the cinematics, but I guess we can't all get what we want.

Sure, the revenge story has been done a million times in different variations, but the actor for Lincoln Clay did a damn good job at showing how much rage was truly behind the character. I like Lincoln Clay as a character and prefer him over Vito from Mafia II. The reason for this is because of how Lincoln Clay doesn't seem to give a shit abut what was going on in American society and is instead focused on his adventure for revenge.

I said it once and I'm going to say it again. This is not a great game, but I would say it's worth a try if you could get past the repetitive gameplay. This is easily one of the best stories told in 2016, but this is a rare case where story over gameplay has harmed a game because this particular gameplay isn't very good.
Till Next Time!!