Mafia 3 Review: Come for the Story, Stay for the Platinum Trophy

There’s a point in just about every game nowadays where you realize exactly what said game is all about. It’s usually very early in the game, after you’ve completed a few story missions and a side mission or two and now you’re staring at a world map full of tiny icons and markers.

One of two things happens when this moment arises. You either get a tingly feeling of joy for having a new outlet of fun to look forward to after each soul crushing day at the office, or you feel emptiness. Emptiness because the plot is clichéd and the gameplay is duller than… A day at the office, and all you got for your sixty bucks is a bunch of samey “quests” and worthless collectibles that you’re going to gather up because there is a trophy or achievement attached to it.

It’s a bit of a miracle that I completed Mafia 3. By the time I reached that moment of realization maybe three or four hours in, Final Fantasy XV came out and Half Life friggin’ 3 wasn’t going to keep me away from the latest Final Fantasy. Mafia 3 went back into the box.

Lo and behold, FF XV let me down and I felt oddly compelled to go back to stealth-killing racists and gathering Playboy magazines in 1960s New Bordeaux.

When an Indie Developer Shoots for the (Procedurally Generated) Stars

For me, No Man’s Sky is a bit like a brussels sprout. I haven’t tried it, but I’ve seen pictures online and heard from enough people that I can tell it’s just not for me.

But there are plenty of games that fall into that category. I just don’t have the money- and certainly not the time- to play every game that gets released, and even among the more well-received titles I often have to pick and choose. No Man’s Sky is different, though, in that I’m sure I’ve never read so many opinions or developed such a strong opinion about a game that I haven’t played.

In all honesty I’m beginning to feel sorry for Sean Murray and his development team. It’s pretty damn obvious that he’s far from innocent in all this, but how many other indie developers get this amount of hate thrown their way?

Player Choice, and How The Witcher 3 Absolutely Nails It

Publishers nowadays are in the habit of rereleasing their major games a year or so after launch, packaging them with all the DLC and add-ons and calling them “Game of the Year” Editions, so it’s no surprise that The Witcher 3 will be getting the same treatment at the end of this month. So what’s different? Nothing, really, except that CD Projekt Red’s 2015 masterpiece is one of those titles that can call their product the “Game of the Year” without anyone raising an eyebrow. It’s an unofficial title to bestow, but The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is a once-in-a-generation sort of game.

The conclusion of the Witcher trilogy does so many things well, and anyone who has yet to play it can fork over fifty dollars rest assured that it’s money well spent. Hell, if anyone is getting ripped off here, it’s the publisher. There’s enough content in this package, between the main story, the sixteen add-ons and two DLC episodes to last for months and the amazing thing is, it manages to stay fresh from start to finish.

Catching Hamilton Fever

I’ve decided that I want to be a theater nerd. That’s what I’ve been thinking about lately.

Let’s get one thing straight, though. Two things, actually. One: I’m not looking to appropriate any branch of nerd culture for the sake of fitting into some sort of clique. I’m no hipster. No part of me is interested in following the theater world just so I can call myself a theater lover, so maybe it’s not correct to say that I want to be a theater nerd, per se. Really all I’m saying is that I want to learn more about the world of theater and maybe watch more plays.

Uncharted 4: My Final, Spoiler-Filled Thoughts

It doesn’t feel like the Uncharted series is a decade old, does it? Could’ve only been a couple summers ago I was marveling over the visuals in Drake’s Deception, and working toward what became my first platinum trophy. But that was ten years ago.

So now that the series is complete and the story has been told, we’ve controlled Nathan Drake in, what, four different stages of his life? From youngest to oldest we have child Drake at the orphanage, teenage Drake in Uncharted 3 where we also meet a dapper-as-shit Victor Sullivan, young adult Drake in the Panamanian prison and then, obviously, present Drake.

Early impressions of The Last of Us

What I’m about to do is dangerous. Taking a skeptical approach with a game that the internet loves feels a bit like trash talking the kids at a little league baseball game. People tend not to take a liking to you. I don’t think The Last of Us is a bad game, to be clear, but Naughty Dog has built up such a reputation over the years that they’re going to have to live with the high expectations they’ve earned for themselves.

To be clear, I’m only about a third of the way through The Last of Us. My impressions are only a work in progress. When The Last of Us was announced with a cinematic trailer last year, I made a point of it to avoid all the screenshots, the gameplay videos, the story leaks, all of it. Everything was going to be fresh this time, unlike my experience with Uncharted 3 when I more-or-less had seen every major set piece and action sequence beforehand. So The Last of Us has remained mostly fresh.

Sort of. I’m not disappointed with it, I’m just… Meh. I’m underwhelmed. The game does nothing new, or at least, nothing noticeably new. You end up spending way too much running into corners just in case there’s a hidden artifact in one of the drawers or something, and the environments aren’t even that interesting. They’re pretty, but that’s about it.

And why am I carrying planks and ladders around like it’s so difficult to figure out that the ladder goes up against the wall with the yellow ledge? Come on now... Uncharted’s platforming was never exactly brain-busting, but at least it was a fun way to traverse the environments. I’m already bored of the point A to point B progression in The Last of Us. It’s just dull.

The combat is nothing special either, and that’s an optimistic way to phrase it as far as I’m concerned. I will say that I’m enjoying the struggle to maintain and conserve resources (I’m playing it on Hard). The best moments so far have made it feel like Naughty Dog really figured out how to translate the cinematic zombie experience into a playable adventure. It’s satisfying to sneak up on a runner, smash his head with a brick and then spray bullets (of which I only ever have like, five at a time) in a panic at the second zombie as it sprints toward me from across the room. If I’m fortunate, two of the bullets hit and I can run up and finish it off with a couple melee punches. It works.

But those segments where you’re sneaking around a dark room while the clickers stumble around like… Well, like NPCs? Those just aren’t doing it for me. It’s a bit pretentious to expect a video game to make you feel like you aren’t playing a game- I mean you’re holding a controller in your hands and staring at a screen. But the best games can really suck you into the experience, and those stalking segments with the clickers do the opposite for me.

We’ll see, I’m definitely going to give the game a chance and play it all the way through. That opening sequence in Texas was downright masterful, and I’ve heard that the story is fantastic, so the game has promise. I just can’t help but feel that it’s overhyped. When I read reviews stating that the Last of Us is a seminal experience that will transcend generations, or a masterpiece that people will be discussing at the water cooler for years, I start to wonder what it is that I’m missing. But again, I’ll wait until I’ve completed the game before settling on a final judgment.

**Update: Upon completing the game I can safely say that I enjoyed the experience a lot more than I thought I would. The story was intriguing and I loved the ending, and combat became more enjoyable as more options opened up.This isn't the Citizen Kane of gaming that so many people are calling it, but it's a really good adventure game with a satisfying, thought-provoking plot.

Some quick thoughts on Wind Waker HD

E3 just passed and, wow, it gave us a lot to digest and mull over. Next gen consoles, Kingdom Hearts III (!), Microsoft’s business strategies. But I have to say, even after several years of Nintendo taking a back seat to Microsoft and Sony, I'm still not entirely used to it. It just seems weird, it isn't right. It's uncomfortable even. I appreciate everything that Playstation and Xbox are doing for the industry, but they both lack that laid-back, light-hearted, Saturday-morning-cartoon-and-sugary-cereal sort of philosophy that Nintendo represents and that I still find myself craving from time to time.

Games are evolving more and more into an adult medium, but we don’t have to abandon our simplified (cynics might called it “childish”) roots. Gamers are a nostalgic bunch. Most nerds are. So now if you’ll humor me, I’d like to get a little nostalgic for a moment. Come along with me as I reflect on one of Nintendo’s below-the-radar highlights: Wind Waker HD.

The original Wind Waker came out at a time when E3 every year was sort of like a second Christmas for me. The Gamecube was my console of choice, and as much as I loved the Playstation 2's bountiful library of JRPGs, I'd still argue that Nintendo’s purple lunch pail was the best console of its generation. Nintendo was waning, sure, mostly due to their inability to secure the third party lineups that Sony and Microsoft had, but nobody could argue with the company's ability to churn out brilliant first party titles. It made E3 such a fun event every year. You just couldn't wait to see what the new Zelda would look like, or the new Mario. Needless to say, when people got their first glimpse of Wind Waker's cartoony, cell-shaded graphics back in the early 2000s, it caused a stir.

Wind Waker’s art design was a risk and the fans let them know about it, but give the game credit and consider it for what it was: a design choice. People never really think of Wind Waker as an open world game, but it was. And it was huge. With all of the islands and dungeons, and towns and whatnot, it’s easy to see how a more realistic visual style might’ve limited the developers (in the same way that I’d argue it limited Twilight Princess a few years later). The cell-shaded graphics made for a far more memorable experience, in part because the designers could really work their imaginations to create some unique environments. If a game is all about building anticipation for the player, then Wind Waker with its vast, open seas full of myriad little islands, is a textbook example of what makes for a great game.

I only wanted to bring it up because, frankly, Nintendo doesn’t get the credit it still deserves in the industry. They say kids get more cynical with each passing generation, but let’s not forget that sometimes the games (or movies, or books, etc.) that get written off as childish sometimes pack more of a punch than people realize. It’s a very good thing that Nintendo is re-releasing its updated masterpiece so that new generations can experience it.

Okay, you can go back to your war games and your DLC and your Cloud gaming now.