Mafia III

Extraordinarily dark writing and an impeccable sense of time and place coupled with the greatest licensed video game soundtrack to date, make Mafia III a creative triumph. Its mechanical shortcomings will only apply to gamers concerned with Twitch heroics more than living through one of the most interesting time periods of recent history. A very solid recommendation.

Removing two thirds of cookie cutter content, and giving Lincoln’s character some real depth, other than a one-dimensional sociopath avenger, would have been pretty nice. [Nov 2016]

If anything, I think the game is worth checking out for the story alone. It’s unfortunate that the gameplay is so much of a slog that some players may not think the story is worth the trouble. However, if you have the time, the extra coin, and love mob stories, this tale has a satisfying end.

Mafia III keeps its promises in the powerful story and setting, but fails in getting the same results on the technical side, as well as in several details of the gameplay.

Mafia 3’s strong characters and confident storytelling kept me engaged, even if the gameplay rarely delivered anything but bog-standard and repetitive open-world action. That’s a bummer, because Lincoln is an incredible protagonist and New Bordeaux is a fantastic setting thematically, and it would’ve been great to see them put to better use.

Mafia III does most things right, though. It is an enjoyable game, one that has probably the best licensed soundtracks for a game outside of a music-based game. The combat and cover mechanics work really and the cut-scenes allow the story to progress smoothly in the wonderfully presented city of New Bordeaux.

Lincoln Clay's personal vendetta offers a thrilling story and a great setting, but a lot of the game is just grunt work.

Mafia 3 seems to be a great game that was rushed to meet deadlines...Sadly, it's paid the price for its rush to market with a noticeable lack of polish across gameplay and presentation.

Hangar 13 tells a great story in Mafia 3, pitting Lincoln Clay against those who took his family from him. Great characters, solid dialog, and some top-notch motion capture flesh out the world. Unfortunately, the open-world nature of the game kills the story pacing with a repetitive mission loop. Mafia 3 could've been great, but it's just good.

A flawed game with lots of potential, good ideas and some excellent elements like story, ambientation and music, but it fails on execution and polish.

Mafia III is a missed opportunity to put an important time in American history in the spotlight, and ends up being one of the most lifeless and one-note open-world experiences I’ve come across. You can see the potential for a great game here, but it sticks to safe and simple gameplay and storytelling conventions, and ends up being a bloody bore.

It's a game made of contradictions, and seriously hampered by unnecessary derivative elements and a hole-ridden script.

In Mafia 3 you don’t play as a person; you play as a big bad guy with a sharp knife who’s out for blood. In other words, it’s not Godfather, it’s a slasher flick where you’re cast as a serial killer – and if you look at Mafia 3 from that angle, it suddenly “clicks”. In a slasher flick victims shouldn’t be smart or relatable, but their deaths should be entertaining and there should be enough of them – and on that front Mafia 3 delivers; that’s why it’s somewhat fun to play. Still, it’s probably not the kind of fun Hangar 13 were aiming for. [Issue#213, p.42]

Mafia III isn’t necessarily a bad game, but it is definitely not a true heir to the Mafia series. The story is rich and the gameplay is satisfying (although it’s nothing special), but having played the previous games in the series (especially the first one), I never felt like I was playing a Mafia game.

The story and characters are excellent and the game is enjoyable, but the open world detracts from the experience rather than adding to it.

The story and characters are excellent and the game is enjoyable, but the open world detracts from the experience rather than adding to it. [Issue#257, p.62]

This is what you call an unfulfilled potential: great style of narration, perfect characters, original setting – but all wrapped in a depressingly repetitive game content. [Issue #268]

Mafia 3's goals are ambitious and even laudable, but to tell a serious story about race, especially within the form of an open-world action game, requires heavy lifting. For all of the writing's attempts to push the genre forward, its game design is trapped in the open-world conventions of five years ago. That stale foundation isn't strong enough to hold the weight of Mafia 3's words — even if they're words that are worth hearing.

Though Mafia III's campaign contains quite a few memorable moments like that bayou shootout, they're buried under a pile of repetitive filler missions and underserved by dated gameplay, which adds little to the standard sandbox shooter formula we've seen in dozens of other games. And worse still, the game suffers technical blemishes from start to finish.

The first few hours of Mafia 3 are great. It really feels fresh. But after a while, it starts to get boring as you realize you are doing the same thing over and over again in order to reach the main story-line. And visually, it doesn't look like a game from 2016.

Hangar 13 has done a terrible job on the PC port. But even ignoring all those pesky technical issues, Mafia 3 suffers from lack of variety. The game’s open world is dead and artificial, while the great atmosphere and competent storytelling feel wasted.

Sometimes, Mafia 3 is a glimpse of what could've been an amazing, immersive game. At other times it’s a buggy, unoptimized mess that should've stayed at the drawing board for at least two more years.

Starts promisingly, but soon slips into a tiresome, repetitive grind, never doing its unique period setting justice.

Mafia 3 has one of the best soundtracks in any game ever and is good in brief stabs, but it's difficult to recommend when its rays of mafioso sunshine are buried beneath poor mission design, repetitive action and forgettable bloat.

Mafia 3 occasionally shows off the fantastic game it could've been, but most of the time, it just leaves you with an impression of - and a longing for - the game that it isn't.

The average urban action game does not offer anything that would define it against the competition. Quite good in driving and shooting, also the setting is interesting, but the game soon gets boring due to the annoying repetition of the same actions. It is technically imperfect, but with excellent sound and successful engagement to its story – but again the story itself is mediocre.

An initially intriguing game that quickly reveals itself to be a slight and unimaginative shooter. An opportunity missed, and a let-down on a technical level to boot.

Someday, maybe, the Mafia series will find its footing. It will stand tall, secure in its own skin. Until that day, Mafia III will sit at the back of the bus, waiting for something braver to defy convention.

At its heart, Mafia 3 is a simple story of revenge, but its actors sell it to you with gusto, and the linear prologue does a great job of getting players invested. Unfortunately, as soon as you’re out in the open-world and you’re free to roam, it becomes a repetitive slog, not least because when you’re doing the same thing on repeat, it only serves to highlight the limitations of the rest of the game.