We already have a review of Mafia 3’s base game on the site that we feel represented most our views here at Respawning and you can read that here! With this in mind I will try not to go over too much old ground so I will attempt to keep this review update nice and short for you.
With the release of the Mafia Definitive Editions, I have finally had the chance to dig into Mafia 3 and I realised that my opinion differs from this review so here we are again!
I feel like Mafia 3 was hugely underrated when it came out, however I do appreciate that I have come to this game in the definitive edition and many of the bugs that people marked the game down for have since been long ironed out.
I know that many people marked it down for not *really* being a game where you are a classic mafioso working within the organization to ride around time and do crimes. Instead you are presented with a fantastic tale of revenge that sees Lincoln Clay betrayed by his Mafia friends so he works from the outside to bring the whole family down in New Orleans.
On his journey Lincoln meets up with fan favourite Vito and many others in order to fulfil this goal and bring the family down. I am such a sucker for a revenge story so this had me hooked from the start and never really let go throughout the 20 hour campaign.
The choice in music (whilst annoyingly bringing down every single one of my streams) is phenomenal as well. Driving along and smashing up Mafia buildings to Gimme Shelter made me so happy every single time. I have since hunted down the Tracklisting on Spotify – listening to it during lockdown constantly to a point that my wife has become sick of every song on the soundtrack.
Gameplay is where Mafia 3 falls short however. I am quite a patient person when it comes to menial Video Game tasks and I really don’t mind going out of my way to smash up 10 liquor stores and loot all of the money out of them, or even kidnap and interrogate 20 people to gain information, however even I started to get sick of some of the tasks after a few hours – I think it was around my 30th store break in and my 50th interrogation that these tasks started to really grate on me and I just wanted to progress through the storyline at a breakneck pace.
Gunplay is pretty great though but is the usual cover and shoot affair we have come to expect from 3rd person action games over the past decade or so.
Ultimately I have enjoyed my time with Mafia 3 and whilst I agree with many of the points that James made in his original review, I still have a soft spot for the excellent storyline and I really don’t mind the menial tasks that were put in front of me. One extra thing of note is that all the storied DLC is now free for all owners of the base game (even those who got it on PS+) and this is such a great move by the developers.
Menial tasks to one side, Mafia 3 filled my need for a simple action game that I could kill time with. The sheer amount of free content added to the game makes it worth dipping back into for anyone who already owns the game and anyone looking to finally sink their teeth into it.
I give Mafia 3 a
It’s never going to win any awards but in terms of fun factor; I just really enjoyed my time with the game. I just wish there was a bit more variation in the tasks presented to me.