None of this is meant to say that Mafia 3 becomes a bad game. There is the interesting wrinkle of assigning control to your underbosses and keeping them all happy to maximize your benefit, but it doesn’t have a ton of impact on the moment-to-moment gameplay. Lending a territory-claiming element to the game like a million other open world titles, though at least thematically tied into the end goal. You’ll take on sub missions to lure out a mob underboss by weakening his operation and then move to take him out or recruit him in your mission to own the city. Just like that game, it can get repetitive very quickly, and it quickly degrades into “drive here, murder this, report back, repeat”. The motivations of the characters take a back seat to a pretty generic mob revenge plot and missions that feel a little reminiscent of the original Assassin’s Creed. Once things open up, the strengths of the characters and setting begin to wane as you’re transitioned into what feels like a poor GTA clone. The stuff the game considers establishing. Like I said though, that’s the first few hours. 'There is the interesting wrinkle of assigning control to your underbosses and keeping them all happy to maximize your benefit, but it doesn’t have a ton of impact on the moment-to-moment gameplay.' While not executed as well as Uncharted 4, the little touches in the performance help bring you into the world. The acting really helps sell the story of Lincoln and the people around him, with little facial animations during cutscenes helping infer intention. The visuals are hardly amazing by any standard, maybe coming in a little above LA Noire.

The opening several hours of setup define a lot of these characters and motivations, and while mainly linear, is brilliantly paced and can much of the time be truly engrossing. The choice to include content that many might find shocking was a smart one and that elevates the story being told. Players feel through the game systems that the world is against them, instead of being told they are. It puts the plight of the coloured main character into perspective, and even helps make the situations he’s thrust into almost sympathetic, when something like GTA struggles with a cartoonish disconnect. But the experience is truly rounded out by the inclusion of these less savory elements, such as bigotry. Period appropriate licensed music litters the soundtrack and artists were sure to splash some colours around the New Orleans stand in, New Bordeaux. There were clearly great pains taken to make the world Lincoln Clay inhabits feel authentic to the time period and to the situation.

'The choice to include content that many might find shocking was a smart one and that elevates the story being told. The developers did not shy away from showing some truly shameful and possibly shocking stuff by 2016 standards, and I love them for it. There is a statement at the start of the game, warning about the depictions of racism. But let’s get to the elephant in the room before we can really get into that. The opening several hours of Mafia 3 really shine as an example of character and storytelling within video games. It frustrated me endlessly during my time with the game that it came so close to making its own way, but ended up weighting itself down to tired gameplay mechanics. Mafia 3 is inarguably kissing the ring of the popular series, as so many other derivative sandboxes do. Grand Theft Auto is the king and open world is the FPS of this generation.

Mafia 3 ps3 review