I can't remember the last time my opinion has swung so hard on a game, in both directions. It's like whiplash, and it puts me in an uncomfortable position of not really liking a game I actually like a lot of individual things about. The game is at its best when it's leaning hard on its plot and characters. However, I found the story itself to be somewhat underwhelming giving the heady subject matter and hype going into the game. The presentation is fantastic, especially the cuts between the "current day" and the sort of documentary/police report sections the game uses to frame the story. Very slick. However, for a game that puts itself out there saying it's going to be dealing with racism and racial prejudice in a serious and realistic manner the story itself is almost on the level of a blaxploitation-style revenge thriller, with our ridiculously competent and overpowered hero smashing and brutalizing his way through a bunch of cartoonishly over the top racists and rich white men. I've no problem with this kinda story, hell, to be honest I was totally invested in everything by the end no matter how cliche, but I couldn't help but feel somewhere that I was expecting more. I'm not sure quite sure WHAT I was expecting given that Mafia 2 was a completely straightforward adaptation of every mob movie ever made. But at least it seemed to know what it was and never suggested that it was anything more, while Mafia 3 literally opens with a disclaimer from the devs saying that they were going to portray some hard truths about the era that would be unpleasant to modern ears and eyes but had to be done lest they compromised their integrity and commitment to telling the story. A story...which frankly could be the plot of a Punisher movie.
The first 3 or so hours of the game are amazing, no joke. One of the strongest opens in a narrative-heavy game I've seen in a while, even with Uncharted 4 and MGS5 in the mix. It's flashy, it sets a great tone, it gets to the point and actually lets you play the game pretty quickly (something the aforementioned games should have done). And it even addresses those hard themes the game was advertising in a fairly serious manner. But then I got out of the prologue, and saw what the REAL game is. It's side-quests. Constant, never ending side-quests. Doing repetitive missions, "conquering" territory, complete 4 or so mini-objectives, fight a boss, do it again and fight another boss, and THEN you can do one enjoyable story based mission. And then you get to do it all again! It's, frankly, mind-numbing. And you have to do it over 10 times! This is the same repetitive mission design that ruined Mad Max and whats even more baffling is that this game's predecessor, Mafia 2, avoided this problem entirely and gracefully. It was a linear set of creative and interesting missions where the open-world just served as the framework you moved through to get from one to the other. It was never anything more than background, but it never needed to be, simply letting you bask in how atmospheric and "authentic" it was without forcing you to interact with it in an exceptionally video gamey way. Unlike Mafia 3, which wants me to believe that there are 3 identical orange cars on their same gorgeously rendered and designed city block and I need to steal them ALL (2 even spawned in the exact same spot).
The actual moment to moment gameplay is actually a lot of fun though, ignoring WHY you are doing things for the sheer pleasure of doing them. This is something else Mad Max did, incidentally. Just running around as Clay, popping gang members and doing takedowns is smooth and responsive and the shooting has this nice visceral feel to it that excuses how simple the game is, tactically. The AI is completely worthless, as others have said, making stealth broken and overpowered, but in a way it definitely plays into the whole power fantasy element the game has going for it. Sneaking or Shooting, whatever you do Clay is a monster and tears through opposition like tissue paper and that ties in cathartically to the events of the story. You WANT Clay to be an unstoppable badass; he deserves to be and needs to be so the bad guys get their comeuppance. So your average redneck goon wandering into a big pile of his friends just to get knifed in the face is excusable, to a degree.
I really want to like this game. I loved Mafia 2, warts and all, and when this game is at its best it really feels like the true next-gen successor I wanted. But more often than not it feels like it's completely forgotten what made Mafia 2 good in favor of chasing the kind of open world design trends people were tired of 2 years ago. It's a good game, that sometimes moonlights as a great game, and that just makes it all the more disappointing.
Loved it
