henke on 1/5/2017 at 16:47
Well GTA V does have better missiondesign, but Mafia 3 has more humane and realistic characters. As for the virtual tourism-angle, 1968 New Bordeaux and it's surrounding bayou and countryside is a beautiful and unique setting. I'm enjoying driving through it, and there's nothing but 60's hits on the radio. Seriously, check out (
http://mafiagame.wikia.com/wiki/Mafia_III_Soundtrack) this soundtrack. I think GTA V does a better job of framing it's city though, surrounding Los Santos by high hills so you're often looking down on it. There's a few places in Mafia 3 where, if you're driving towards the city at night, it's this big beautiful sea of lights, but mostly you rarely get to take in the whole city at once like that. The whole place is pretty flat, and I think it could do with more hills. But yes, for virtual tourism I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Thirith on 1/5/2017 at 17:35
I think you just sold me on it. Not immediately, I've got too much of a backlog for that, but it does sound like something I would enjoy.
PigLick on 1/5/2017 at 17:35
you know, "virtual tourism" is an interesting subject regarding games. We should talk about it more.
Thirith on 1/5/2017 at 18:49
I'd definitely be up for that.
henke on 7/5/2017 at 10:54
Still playing a lot of Mafia 3, not sure how much of the story is left, but I had to share this amazing moment that happened during a recent race.
[video=youtube;R-dMn7WhDu4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-dMn7WhDu4[/video]
henke on 7/5/2017 at 12:21
And here's a race through the bayou, showing off the wonderful vehicle physics in this game.
[video=youtube;hk7nXeSnD9U]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk7nXeSnD9U[/video]
also showing off the noticable pop-in and occasionally chugging framerate on PS4. Might wanna play it on PC if that kinda thing is important to you.
also also there IS awesome 60's tunes playing while you're doing these races, but they automatically get excised from PS4's Share capture. Boo!
henke on 7/5/2017 at 13:32
add this to the increasingly long list of games with a 0451 keycode reference.
henke on 25/5/2017 at 11:25
Finished Mafia 3 today. Pretty good ending.
Overall, it's a game built on strong systems but weak mission-design. The driving is great, the shooting and stealth are good, and there's ample opportunity for emergent gameplay moments to spring up in it's open world. But the missions, man. Good God. I don't know if anyone here played the Godfather 2 game, but this is pretty much exactly like that. You take over districts one by one and there's barely any effort put into diversifying what you actually do in the game. It starts off strong, with a mission where you rob a bank, dump the money through a hole you blew in the floor, and escape by boat through the canals. But after that pretty much every mission follows the same structure of "sneak/shoot your way into a place, and kill the boss-guy". That's it. Over and over for 20-30 hours. I get that the game is going for a down-to-earth tone so it's understandable that the missions won't be GTA V or Watch Dogs 2-style hijinks, but even GTA IV managed to have more interesting missions while still sticking with a more grounded narrative.
However, like I said, the underlying systems are strong, and I enjoyed driving around and blasting gangsters enough to stick with it till the end, so, eh. 7/10?
PigLick on 25/5/2017 at 12:45
I cant remember a game you ever gave lower than 7/10. I call you the Tolerant Gaming Man.
Tomi on 6/12/2018 at 23:40
I finally got a new computer last month and I got to play Mafia 3 at last! :D
I agree pretty much with everything that our Tolerant Gaming Man here has posted earlier. Mafia 3 is a really good game, and with some more creative mission design it could have been amazing! I'm feeling more generous than henke... maybe 8/10? I think it's better than Mafia 2 at least, but didn't impress me as much as the first game did all those years ago.
The driving is great indeed; the car physics just seem to find the perfect balance between realism and fun, it's just so satisfying. The supercars that you can just "summon" out of nowhere later on in the game kinda ruin a part of the fun though, because finding/stealing a cool car should be a part of that experience. Another annoying thing is the damn pedestrians who often jump on the road under your car when they try to dive to safety... It hasn't got big consequences but I feel guilty about killing innocents. :( I also found it a little disappointing that the cops don't fine/arrest you for speeding or running the red lights anymore, instead they just shoot you without asking questions if you park your car too close to the police station or have a little car accident. Sounds a bit over the top maybe, but then again the protagonist is a black male in a US redneck city...
The shooting bits can be really good too. I love it how you often actually feel quite vulnerable in this game; trying to take on a few enemies at the same time in a bad spot is a sure way to get yourself killed quickly, so most of the time you can't just run around the place killing people. The enemy AI isn't always very good though, so at times escaping a potentially deadly situation can be disappointingly easy too, but fortunately the AI provides an adequate challenge for the most of the time. The stealth gameplay is a nice change and it felt really fun at first, but once I learned how to do it really effectively (by exploiting the AI), I actually often chose to go in my guns blazing instead because it was more fun that way. That's the problem with just about every game with stealth though. It's just silly how you can lure out the bad guys one by one by whistling, no matter where you are... Noisy factory hall, busy marketplace, crowded nightclub, middle of the jungle, public WC... just whistle and a lone enemy soldier will come see what's going on, and you can take them out easily. :D
The story is actually really interesting, but it just drags on when there's way too much filler content. I think Mafia 3 would have been a much better game had they cut out like 75% of the side missions and stuff. Of course, a lot of them are completely optional and I think that it would be possible to rush through the game and skip most of the filler, but that's not an option for a completionist like me. :p But this time even I couldn't be bothered to play
all of the optional missions, especially the ones in which you have to drive to the other end of the map to steal some slow-ass mega-truck, and then drive all the way back again for a meaningless reward. The main story missions are great though (and the cutscenes are fantastic!), but yeah, everything in between those should have had some more variety.
What I
really love about the game is the atmosphere though. I haven't lived in 1960's USA obviously, but New Bordeaux feels like a really authentic experience, and I got the impression that the devs have done their research very well. The city has many different parts that all have their own styles and things going on. I think that the game looks gorgeous too, even though some of the reviews that I've read say that it already looked outdated in 2016. :/ The weather effects and the day/night cycle makes things look even better. The soundtrack is quite easily the best that I've heard in any game ever, even though it too started to feel a bit limited after the ~50h mark when I had heard all the same tracks too many times. Of course I knew and had loved most of those songs before, but really, the amount of cool songs is just unbelievable. I did discover some new tunes as well, for the last week or so I've had (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBgaf5gXJcc) 'Palisades Park' play in my head. So simple but so catchy and fun, I love that tune! And the way how some of these songs are used in the game is fantastic too - for example that (
https://youtu.be/9Ah6yrGOz-Q?t=140) 'Paint It Black' scene near the beginning of the game was just breathtaking, despite of how predictable it was.
Open racism is a part of the great atmosphere and it's one of the main themes in the game. I like it how they haven't beeped out the n-words or censor anything (like I've just done here!), but they're not exaggerating it either. I had such a good "payback time" moment in one mission where I got the chance to whack a bunch of KKK-like racist and religious nutters. I did some very bad things and it felt better than it probably should have. :D I always find myself being a Goody Two-Shoes no matter what game I play, but Lincoln in Mafia 3 apparently made me discover my dark side. The main characters in the game are surprisingly interesting - they're usually not plain good or evil, but something in between. Kinda hard to explain.
There are multiple endings in Mafia 3, and the one that I chose felt quite satisfying. I thought that I'd be all Mafia'd out once I'm done with the story, but I actually want some more. No point replaying the game for some time though, especially as it takes a while until the story really gets going. I already played the
Sign of the Times DLC campaign, and that definitely offered something different and pretty cool, so I might check out the other two DLC campaigns in the future. They're terribly expensive though and apparently really short, so I don't know, perhaps I'll just move on to the next game.
tldr: I had prepared myself for a slight disappointment, but Mafia 3 managed to surprise me in a very positive way!