At first we would like to thank 2K and Hangar 13 for sending out Mafia III in order to test and review.

 

 

About 2K:

 

“Founded in 2005, 2K develops and publishes interactive entertainment globally for console systems, handheld gaming systems and personal computers, including smartphones and tablets, which are delivered through physical retail, digital download, online platforms and cloud streaming services. 2K publishes titles in today’s most popular gaming genres, including shooters, action, role-playing, strategy, sports, casual, and family entertainment.

 

The 2K label has some of the most talented development studios in the world today, including Firaxis Games, Visual Concepts, Irrational Games, 2K Marin, 2K Australia, 2K Czech, Cat Daddy Games and 2K China. 2K’s stable of high quality titles includes the critically acclaimed BioShock®, Borderlands™ and XCOM® franchises, the beloved Sid Meier’s Civilization series, the popular WWE 2K franchise and NBA 2K, the #1 rated and #1 selling basketball franchise*. 2K is headquartered in Novato, California and is a wholly owned label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO).”

 

About Hangar 13:

 

"Hangar 13 is the newest 2K development studio. We are focused on creating AAA games for console and PC. The studio is comprised of industry veterans drawn from a diverse range of studios, who have collectively shipped hundreds of titles across a wide variety of genres. We are located just thirty minutes north of San Francisco, where we’re building or own proprietary engine and tools in service of our first title, Mafia III."

 

In this article we will take a look at one of the latest game titles for PC (but also available on consoles), Mafia III. As fans of the Mafia series and L.A. Noire, we were more than happy to try out this new game, right from the moment it was announced. While the previous iteration was developed by 2K Czech and published by 2K Games, the new game is developed by Hangar 13 (a debut title for them) and published by the same 2K Games.

 

Mafia II was set in 1940s – early 1050s era of Empire Bay (a fictional city based on New York City, LA, Boston, Detroit and Chicago) and the player is taking control of Vito Scalleta, a war veteran which becomes involved with the Mafia when trying to pay back the debts of his father. Mafia III is played in the same third-person perspective, but this time the game is set later in 1968 and to be more precise the city of New Bordeaux (a fictional recreation of New Orleans); this time we are taking control of Lincoln Clay which is an orphan and Vietnam War veteran who is on the run to build a crime organization in order to confront the Italian mob; he was an orphan adopted by the local black mobsters which later did serve in the Vietnam War. He later returns to New Bordeaux and reunites with his friends (from the black mob), led by his stepfather named Sammy Robinson which had serious debts with Sal Marcano of the Marcano crime family; Lincoln has a meeting with Sal, which proposes that Sammy should not lead anymore the black mob and that Lincoln must take his place; Lincoln did refuse but still wanted to pay back the debt.

In order to get the money, he put a plan in motion by cooperating with Sal’s son Georgi for robbing the Louisiana Federal Reserve; the heist went fine, they got the money, but Sal does betray the black mob and Sammy and all Lincoln’s friends are killed by his team. Lincoln was shot in the head and left for dead, but Father James, one of his close friends rescues him right after the killing took place and the local was set on fire. During his recovery, Lincoln did ask for assistance of CIA agent John Donovan, who was his handler during the Vietnam war. Donovan does agree on helping him for spying on the Marcano family while Lincoln promises to destroy the Marcanos and take control of New Bordeaux.

 

Besides the main game, we can also purchase the Mafia III Season Pass which does grant you access to three major expansions over the course of a year, each which introduce unique new criminal story lines, characters and gameplay features to the world of New Bordeaux, along with exclusive expansion-themed vehicles, weapons and more. The Family Kick-Back DLC is providing the owner with three lieutenant-themed bonus vehicles and weapons:

 

 

 

Mafia III was a pretty consistent download right upon release:

 

 

 

After clicking on the game executable, the game will not launch right away, but display first a launcher, which assist us on choosing the preferred graphical details:

 

 

 

 

After the initial game launch, we will be prompted to adjust the screen edges:

 

 

The screen brightness adjustment is next:

 

 

We can then set the game language, text language, but also enable subtitles if necessary:

 

 

The Mafia III splash screen is next:

 

 

Before beginning the campaign, we can select the difficulty and aim assist level:

 

 

Some words from the development studio are displayed right afterwards:

 

 

The game is filled with retro-style cinematics which do want to get the player into that specific atmosphere right from the start:

 

 

Mafia III comes with a unique storytelling mode which does resemble a documentary; we will see multiple interviews of characters like the retired FBI agent Jonathan Maguire, Father James, John Donovan and so on:

 

 

In most cinematics, the game engine is used:

 

 

During the storytelling and actual cinematics, the close-up environment, people and vehicles are rendered with high detail:

 

 

There are situations, though, when low quality textures are being spotted in the background:

 

 

The third person interface presents itself with the current mission name, the action we need to take on first, the map on the bottom right and also a list of collected items on the bottom left:

 

 

By pressing TAB, we will be able to access the other menu items: Map, Kill List, Assets, Journal, Collection, Options, Game; the Map does display the waypoints we need to go to:

 

 

The portraits of the killed mob members will appear in the next tab:

 

 

Next we do have main associates which will unlock as we do progress throughout the game:

 

 

Journal will write story details as we do progress:

 

 

Next we would like to remind of collectibles, present in the older games too:

 

 

The Options menu allows customization of controls, general game settings, display settings and audio settings; the latest game patch allows unlocking from the initial 30FPS to 60FPS or Unlimited, which makes the overall game experience smoother:

 

 

The last tab allows us to load a checkpoint, restart the mission from the beginning, work with the 2K online account or exit the game:

 

 

Right after we start the first campaign mission, it won’t be long and we will have to start driving; the cars are rendered with nice details, the lights turn on automatically during night time and we have the current speed along with the RPM in the bottom center area of the screen, as a retro dashboard would look; a handy rear view camera is also displayed on top, while the destination we will have to reach is drawn on the map (they did not have GPSes during that time did they?):

 

 

Mafia III does also come with four camera modes while driving:

 

 

Driving during night time is pretty sweet, while the motion blur tends to hide a bit the fact that lower resolution textures are being used for the objects located far away:

 

 

What we did notice is that even if the map is bigger than Mafia I and Mafia II combined, the routes set to destination when traveling from one finished mission to another are quite short so you won’t drive for like five to ten minutes like in GTA V; besides the map, we also get virtual street signs drawn right as we do approach the intersections, along with an indicator of remaining distance to the destination:

 

 

When we did reach the destination, we will get to see green signs, and here is the place where we do usually stop and get out of the car:

 

 

During the robbing of the Federal Reserve, Lincoln is assigned with a task which uses for his own advantage in order to gain access to the vault:

 

 

This is actually the first moment you will start fighting and killing people for survival; besides using the actual weapon, you can sneak in the back of the enemies and perform silent kills:

 

 

The cinematics sporting the actual game engine look great indeed, while the faces of the in-game characters were rendered from real-life actors; thanks to this technology, the voice sync with the face animation is great and the details are considerably better than what we have seen around with L.A. Noire:

 

 

 

Mafia III does also feature great gun-fighting experience, with or without auto-aim; depending on the area on the body the enemies are hit, they will die instantly or later in huge pains:

 

 

Other enemies will be alerted by the nearby gun noises and come searching for you:

 

 

We can either adopt Hitman style killing by sneaking behind the enemies silently and killing them instantly or choking them, but can also adopt the guns blazing mode, where we can kill everything in sight; even then, we must take cover behind different objects in order not to be defeated by the incoming bullets:

 

 

During gameplay, if we encounter new elements, the wizard will introduce them to us:

 

 

The central interface area will also display hints from where the enemies are approaching:

 

 

Driving during a clear weather day is a pleasure, will well detailed retro environments, while the cars and people complete the scene; the top area does also display the mission which has just ended, and the title of the next one:

 

 

The open-world environment allows us to go virtually anywhere with our car, damage it, bump other cars in traffic, kill pedestrians and more:

 

 

When having an impact with other solid objects, debris will come out of the car, but will disappear after a few seconds:

 

 

If we do bump the car many times, it will eventually break and in most cases its hood will also pop up and show smoke; on Mafia III we won’t die in the car when we have just impacted a building or other car at high speeds and also the ability to fix the car while on the road has been eliminated (we hope the developers will add these features later on via patches):

 

 

Cars can be stolen from incoming traffic or we can simply steal the cars which are parked on the streets; in both cases, if a pedestrian sees us, he/she will try to alert the police by taking a call at the nearest street payphone; we must intercept him/her in time because if we do not, police will be on our tail really quickly and the will not just leave Lincoln alone that easy…

One other feature which is not present in Mafia III but was in Mafia II was that incoming traffic drivers did die if the impact was rough. This time, only if the NPC car explodes, we will see both the car and the driver inside burning:

 

 

One other weird occurrence is the fact that if we do impact a NPC car and the drivers along with the passengers cannot get out that easily, we are not shown an animation with them getting out of the car but they will pop out in front and on the back; surprisingly, they are not really scared, they do not run after the incident but continue walking normally like nothing has really happened:

 

 

Another issue we have encountered with the peds is that they pretty ignore you when bumping onto them with your car, like they do not really see you (in GTA V they become quite alarmed and start running around); if you just bump a pedestrian with your car, they will fall down and die instantly (also hoping this will be fixed in the next game patches):

 

 

In Bayou missions, we can drive boats and an interesting feature is that we can feed the killed enemies to alligators:

 

 

Alligators can also come after us for a killing when swimming:

 

 

The easiest approach when adopting the silent kill method is to whistle, wait for the enemy to go in search mode, get near us and then perform the kill. If other enemies are not nearby, we can continue taking them down one-by-one the same way:

 

 

When the health is low or we do die, the edges of the screen will become red:

 

 

If we do not have a lot of life left, we can always go to the nearby first aid kit box; these are also seen on the map if located nearby:

 

 

As on the usual shooter games, we can take a better aim at the enemies in order to perform a perfect kill from a single shot:

 

 

The weather system and daylight/cloud shadows are a bit erratic at the moment and we should explain why; there are moments when you are driving and the sun is simply too bright so you can barely see anything in front…when it is cloudy, the shadows on the ground move very quickly like we could say that the cloud movement has been accelerated two or three times; there are also times when shadows appear quite low-res, but also farther-away details such as trees, electricity poles have lower details:

 

 

Jumping with our cars offer a nice experience, but sometimes the car seems to show the wheels going under the pavement, which points to less than ideal collision detection:

 

 

We do also have a so called “Intel View” which does reveal nearby enemies, even through walls and around the corners, a feature which does make them an easier target:

 

 

Depending on the mission, we can also drive other vehicles:

 

 

During the Mardi Gras event, the costumes of the NPCs are beautifully represented and the nearby locations are bringing us closer to the atmosphere of that event:

 

 

The rain effect is well represented for the environment, but after a close study we have seen that water drops are not actually impacting with your car chassis:

 

 

After destroying the businesses of the local mobs, their bosses will eventually come out so we can make a killing; we also have the choice of sparing the bosses so they would work for us for extra income and we can also assign the businesses we have just captured to one of our associates:

 

 

There are missions where we need to get somewhere, stay on a bench and wait a certain time so the cinematic will begin:

 

 

Associates also offer services, like Cassandra which provides you with vans which do carry firearms, weapon upgrades, explosives, vehicle modifications, supplies for patching up or upgrades for the main character:

 

 

The game continues with many other interesting features which are being unveiled to us, while we continue getting more associates, including the non-playable Vittorio Antonio Salleta NPC which was the main in Mafia II. We do have quite a bit of districts to navigate in, where we can wiretap junction boxes and reveal important intel; for doing that we must also collect TL-49 fuses and other key items in that sector.

 

Besides when stealing cars, the pedestrians are also alerted when you do not have your weapons holstered or commit a crime like interrogating a mafia underboss by placing a knife under his neck. Besides that, you can pass through enemy turfs and as you progress through the game these factions will become more aggressive and try to shoot you; when a pedestrian calls the police you may be ambushed not only by the police, but also by the enemy cars at the same time.

 

If you do get killed, you are losing cash and to avoid that you can deposit it to your stash. Later in the game, when you do have more associates, you can call a courier and give him/her the money to make the deposit, which saves quite a bit of time.

 

Mafia III is a very ambitious project from Hangar 13 and has required quite a bit of work to make it happen and the open-world environment is great! There are of course bugs which you will encounter if you mainly wander off and navigate through the rich environment, meaning that the game was mainly thought for you to follow the story line and not concentrate on other activities. In most of the situations, the game details are great, the story is being told in a unique way like a documentary and we also did like the fact that you can have other allies in order to take down the Italian mob which has betrayed the main character. The driving experience is available in both Arcade and Simulation modes, while the shooting scenes are pretty brutal, well done, while sneaking behind the enemies is another route we can take for completing the objective.

 

Since we are talking about a software product, bugs can be fixed in time (as the 60FPS-Unlimited FPS patch) and we will surely see added features added in the near future. We would also like to have some feature returned from Mafia II like the ability to repair the car right on the street, enable a gas meter and make interaction with gas stations possible, or otherwise your engine will stop, enable usage of carwashes or the ability to pop up the trunk or hood of each car you drive. Collision detection issues must be fixed, enable the ability to walk through blood and create bloody footprints, an improvement of the melee fighting system when taking on people on the street, improved reactions of pedestrians, add the ability to pick locks of the cars instead of just breaking the windows off or enabling the possibility to pay off the police once it catches you (get away from jail card).

 

When being shot, Lincoln should not have his clothes clean again just after a few seconds, as soon as he heals, but remain in the current state for a bit more.

 

Issues with mirrors inside buildings are well known and we expect a fix soon:

 

 

Mafia III as-reviewed is currently available on Steam for about 49.99 Euros, while the Digital Deluxe version is 69.99 Euros. We do also have the option to purchase the Season Pass separately for 29.99 Euros.

Later edit: the latest game patch seems to fix the issue when Lincoln was not losing health during a heavy impact while driving.

Mafia III Game is Recommended for:

 

 

We would like to thank again to 2K and Hangar 13 for making this review possible!