(Belated) Mafia III Review
A solid open-world title with an absolute masterpiece of a story.
In recent years, the third-person open-world crime genre has been dominated by titles such as Grand Theft Auto that use characters, mission designs and general themes to create an interactive caricature of modern or past societies. That has brought us lasting humour at every turn, “token” characters of just about every kind (playable or otherwise), generally larger-than-life gameplay and hours after hours of mindless fun. Developer Hangar 13 has actively rebelled against that formula with Mafia III, producing a deeper, more serious and more thought-provoking story than we’ve seen in a title of its kind in a long while and, more importantly, putting themes that many titles have either briefly parodied or shied away from entirely — particularly racism — at the forefront.
Staged as a historical documentary, complete with regular cuts to historical and interview footage, Mafia III takes players into the year 1968, the city of New Bordeaux — a visually-stunning reimagining of New Orleans, Louisiana — and the story of Lincoln Clay, an orphan and Vietnam War veteran with strong ties to New Bordeaux’s black mob through his adopted father. After his father and best friend are killed when they are viciously and unexpectedly betrayed by the city’s crime boss, Sal Marcano, and his son, Lincoln seeks revenge by destroying and taking over the Marcanos’ criminal rackets one by one in order to draw them out, building himself a criminal empire to rival the mob’s along the way. Lincoln recruits his former CIA handler to provide intelligence on the rackets as he targets them (along with some comic relief), and three of the city’s other criminal underbosses — each with their own reasons for wanting the Marcanos out of New Bordeaux — to help him run the city as he rises to power.
Lincoln’s warpath takes him all around a city that hates him just for existing and really isn’t afraid to show it, which leads to some very interesting interactions with non-playable characters: bystanders will insult Lincoln or act visibly uncomfortable as he walks (read: sprints, because I’m not a patient man) past, police officers will stop whatever they’re doing to watch and wait for him to get himself in trouble, and people of all walks of life spout the “N-word” in every second sentence as though it was some kind of compliment. The racism follows Lincoln in a more casual way throughout the story itself, with characters of all different races using colloquial — and for the most part, offensive — terms to refer to each other, both affectionately and otherwise, in almost every cutscene. So strong is the racism and prejudice within Mafia III, in fact, that Hangar 13 included a disclaimer at the beginning of the game explaining that it does not condone such behaviour, but it was necessary to include it for historical accuracy; although it’s extremely confronting, it’s a fact that cannot be denied.
The thought of a game as long as Mafia III having a more serious story that aims to be more than just mindless entertainment might turn some players off, and that might well be why the genre appears to be so rooted in humour and caricature. However, those who do buy in and stick around to experience the whole thing are in for an absolute treat: Mafia III marries a carefully-woven, interestingly-delivered plot with phenomenal main and supporting characters, dialogue that is poignant when it needs to be and humourous when it wants to be, a soundtrack that takes the player right back to the 60s and a world that truly feels alive, and works in conjunction with everything else to strengthen the game’s messages and create a story that stands head-and-shoulders above anything we’ve seen in the open-world crime genre for quite some time. A scorned tough-guy’s rags-to-riches quest for revenge seems like a pretty bland and overdone basis for a crime story these days, but this one is written and presented so brilliantly that players are led to genuinely care about what happens to Lincoln and his band of merry criminals (and one traitor).
Unfortunately, the masterpiece that is Mafia III’s setting and story is let down by incredibly repetitive gameplay and mission design that makes it very difficult to want to explore anything outside of the main story. That’s not to say that it’s horrible — it’s not bad by any means, it’s just nowhere near as good as the rest of the game, and that’s somewhat disappointing. Hangar 13 clearly didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel when designing the missions, opting instead to focus on the game’s story, but this leaves the game devoid of any real challenge to the player. Throughout my whole playthrough, I did not come across a single mission or task that took more than one or two attempts to complete, even playing through it on a harder difficulty mode, and there were very few missions that led me to take a moment to think about my approach; the one-size-fits-all “run in, shoot like crazy, duck to reload and shoot some more” strategy worked for basically every mission. The game is also littered with collectibles and optional side-missions, an apparent response to the criticism of Mafia II’s extremely linear nature that would have been quite welcome but for the fact that they added very, very little to the game aside from something to peruse in the pause menu.
Nestled in amongst these bland, monotonous and repetitive missions are underboss missions that stand head-and-shoulders above the rest. Taking over both rackets in a district lures that district’s capo out of hiding to try and personally defend their territory from Lincoln’s murderous onslaught, and they do so in some pretty extravagant ways. Some of these missions are set in rather unconventional locations — especially when compared to the rest of the game — with plenty of new things to look at as you kill your way through them, and the scared-shitless capos pack a great deal more of their goons into their strongholds than you’re going to find anywhere else. They also culminate in some pretty memorable death scenes (hanging a man from a ferris wheel carriage and sending him up to his death stands out in my mind), and although they’re not all that difficult in any way, they’re a very welcome break from the monotony of just walking, driving, shooting and killing through the streets of New Bordeaux.
A major contributing factor to the ease with which players can expect to glide through Mafia III’s story missions is one of its biggest story devices: each of the three capos Lincoln works with to take over New Bordeaux offers him perks and services that he can use at any given time. If you’re caught up in a firefight you can’t see a way out of, former Marcano ally and Mafia II protagonist Vito Scalletta offers you his cousin’s hit squad to run in all guns blazing and take out a fair chunk of the enemy’s resistance before they’re exterminated; the Haitian leader known only as Cassandra offers Lincoln access to an operator who can kill the phone lines for a short period of time, stopping enemy Sentries from calling in reinforcements and witnesses from calling the police; and Irish gangster Thomas Burke’s associate is a police dispatcher who can call the police off your tail if you’re struggling to lose them. These perks, known as Associates, are great additions to the formula — and great incentives to work with all three of your underbosses — but the missions were easy enough without them, so I only ever called on them when I couldn’t be bothered doing something they could help me with.
Alongside the world-breaking perk that each underboss offers, Lincoln can gain access to two other perks through his association with each underboss. One of these perks is a service provided directly to Lincoln — Cassandra’s associate is a mobile arms dealer; Burke’s is a vehicle delivery service; and Vito’s is a consigliere who collects and deposits his money and reveals enemy positions — while the other comes in the form of more subtle improvements to Lincoln and his armoury: Cassandra’s associate upgrades your weapons; Burke’s gives your arms dealer access to explosives; and Vito’s upgrades your durability. Each of these perks are upgraded alongside the relevant underboss’ earnings, which rise when the player assigns them to monitor and run a racket or region and when they complete the one-off trafficking mission for each capo’s capo. Although Lincoln has a generally positive relationship with each of his underbosses, the four combustible personalities are united only by their common enemy, and so they are liable to turn on Lincoln if they feel as though he is neglecting them. This was never a problem in my playthrough, however; I simply balanced all three capos’ earnings by assigning regions evenly, leaving me with all of their perks and associates to call upon as I moved through the game.
Mafia III’s gameplay follows the same mantra as its mission design, opting against doing anything too innovative in favour of using a very simple combination of cover-based shooting and stealth. While it never really sets itself apart from any other third-person shooter on the market — and it misses a couple of opportunities to do so — the gameplay is quite solid, even pleasant; every mission has some room for error in mechanics or decision-making before Lincoln dies (unless you go without aim assist, in which case it’s punishing), while the stealth gameplay is quite rudimentary and made a whole lot easier by an apparently-brain-dead artificial intelligence. On a number of occasions, I found myself brutalising a guard who had a colleague standing right nearby, while said colleague just stood there totally oblivious to his mate’s utter destruction. Entire missions can be completed without losing your cover a single time, but it’s never the end of the world if you slipped up; the artificial intelligence is dumb enough to make it easy for you to shoot your way out, especially if you call Vito’s cousin’s hit squad to help you do it.
Driving on New Bordeaux’s many roads is also a cookie-cutter experience as far as the genre is concerned, adjusted slightly for the fact that you’re driving 1960s vehicles rather than their more sophisticated modern-day counterparts. The vehicles in general are a little more difficult to handle than in other titles, although that difficulty is offset slightly by how easily Lincoln can access some of the sportier cars the city has to offer. Larger vehicles and muscle cars are somewhat harder to handle (as one would expect), especially at speed; given that Lincoln’s pride and joy is his Samson Drifter, a muscle car reminiscent of the Buick Gran Sport line, players should be able to get used to that pretty quickly. One gripe that I did find while driving is that although the game tells you that police will react if they see you breaking the law (and boy oh boy do they watch for it), this doesn’t seem to apply on the road, with officers often sitting idly by in their patrol cars as I blow by them at over 100 miles per hour; sure, it would have been an annoyance, but I would have liked to see Hangar 13 add another little challenge to the game by having the police give chase if the player sped past them.
All things considered, Mafia III combines a fantastically-written story with an absolutely gorgeous setting and brilliant character design from start to finish; although that story is let down by rather unoriginal, uninspired gameplay and mission design, those aspects of the game are decent enough to make this a title that you’ll struggle to put down until you’ve seen what becomes of Lincoln and his little crew.
Our verdict:
Mafia III is an absolute triumph in the field of storytelling and a very, very solid game overall, but one can’t help but wish that Hangar 13 had been a little more daring and adventurous in its gameplay and mission design to match; by sticking to rather standard fare, the studio truly missed an opportunity to create one of the games of this generation so far.
Author’s Note: I sincerely apologise for releasing this review so damn late; it has kept getting pushed back by the administrative and editorial tasks that come with launching a site of this type and calibre.
