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.
By now you’ve probably heard all about the complete lack of
variety in Mafia 3’s missions, and rest assured that you haven’t been lied to.
In fact, given the amount of care and polish that went into other areas of the
game, I’d say it’s appalling that slogging through the missions is so dull.
Think original Assassin’s Creed. No exaggeration.
The biggest problem the game has is that it’s made up almost
entirely of filler missions. The rinky dink sections of a Rockstar game in
between all of the awesome set pieces and crazy objectives. As protagonist
Lincoln Clay you speak to your informant, kill a bunch of henchmen, confront a
boss (one of head baddie Sal Marcano’s capos) and then drive to the next
district to do the same thing all over again. It sucks the intrigue out of
everything else in the game as well, like collecting cars and upgrading weapons.
I was so starved for excitement that I found myself reading the articles in the
Playboy magazines that are scattered throughout the city.
Oh, and a small side note: you don’t even get a
trophy/achievement for picking up all the collectible magazines, album covers
and communist propaganda posters. It’s like they thought, “well every open
world needs stuff to collect, so scatter around some titty mags and call it a
day.”
Look, I really did want to enjoy this game and despite the
tone of this review, it does succeed in some areas. The setting is visually
interesting and Hangar 13 did a commendable job of making it look and feel like
1960s New Orleans. I’m tempted to bash them for failing to include any sort of
fast travel option, but cruising through the Bayeux with The Beach Boys playing
on the radio is the most fun I had with the game.
The developers deserve credit for taking a creative approach
to storytelling as well. The cut scenes are made to look like clips from a
documentary full of interviews with modern day versions of the game’s secondary
characters, plus a recurring courtroom scene that concludes with a satisfying
twist. In all honesty, though, if Mafia 3 were a movie you’d watch the trailer
and feel like you’ve already seen it a handful of times.
But are most people going to want to work through the same
mission over and over again in order to get there? There are simply too many
better games on the market right now.
In fairness, there are a couple late-game scenarios that
have enough gravitas to make them fun- including one that takes place at the
top of New Bordeaux’s tallest tower and another on a crashing steam boat- but
even these consist of the same clear-the-room-of-every-bad-guy formula as the
other missions. The bottom line is that you’d be better off playing one of the
other AAA titles that have come out in the past few months. Mafia 3 might be
something to sink time into over the summer when the industry tends to hit a
dry spell of new releases, but it’s impossible to recommend unless you’re on a
third person shooter kick or you can’t get enough organized crime stories.
No comments:
Post a Comment