Sometimes it’s better to do less, but better!
The first thing that catches our eye when starting the game is the huge problems with optimization and graphics in the game itself. "Mafia" is very demanding on hardware, requires a good processor and video card, while the weight of the game exceeds 50 GB (along with add-ons). However, the game looks very messy and weak for such high requests. Therefore, the owners of fairly powerful gaming computers will be able to play at the maximum graphics settings.
At medium and low settings, all the small details are loaded almost under the nose of the main character, from thirty meters it is impossible to distinguish not only the make of the car, but even its color. Passers-by NPC are loaded literally before our eyes, so especially sensitive players may really not like it. And most importantly - soap fog that surrounds the hero everywhere! And he hides the flaws in the schedule.
The second problem of the game is lags. Our character can get stuck in bushes, scripts often do not work, and therefore missions simply do not start, there are times when enemies consciously go to kill us, although we were in stealth mode and did not make noise at all, cars beat against invisible walls, get stuck on the road, in the air here and there fly bottles, bags and boxes that for some reason did not fall to the ground after they were dropped from their hands. Everywhere there are similar "anomalies" that obviously no player will like.
If this does not scare you away, then move on - car physics. After the masterpieces of the first two parts, in which driving a car was a great pleasure and could carry away no less than skirmishes, in the third it became terrible. All cars became "cardboard", lost their weight and the specifics of the turn. But they became faster and more difficult to stop. The developers made car chases and skirmishes almost non-stop, but a simple ride around the city became terrible and boring. In addition, in the first parts, we started driving with simple and inexpensive cars, gradually moving to more expensive and faster ones. In this part, we begin to play with a cool, almost racing car. Right away.
And the last minus of the game, which really upset me is the "dead city". Almost from the very beginning, a huge map of just a huge city, divided into specific quarters, opens up for us. Black gangsters live on the outskirts of impoverished neighborhoods and illegally push grass and weapons, in the center of the city there are quite wealthy mafia people who intimidate those who are undesirable and engage in “business,” instead of recycling garbage, they process corpses of unwanted people in the industrial quarter, and they cook in a rich private sector "meth", which is sold for crazy money to rich women as a means to lose weight.
Various signs appear on the map here and there: hotels, wine shops, gas stations, sinks, pawnshops, bars, cafes, saunas, churches and much more. However, absolutely nothing can be done in them! You can’t buy food, you can’t sit at a table, you can’t order anything and talk to anyone, you can’t buy anything or sell anything! You can only go in, give the seller a mug, take money from the cashier and grab a few syringes from the first-aid kit, that's all! You can only kill your enemies. No talk, no intimidation, no capture, nothing like that.
Well, now I’ll tell you about the advantages of this game. The first is the plot. Our character - a black guy Lincoln Clay, lost his family in childhood. He was adopted by a very good person and even placed on church service, but nothing good came of it. Lincoln is quite cruel and severe, besides, he is very pumped up (pumped, to be honest). In his youth, he fell into the Vietnam War, from where he returned with an even more traveled outlook on life. Lincoln is not against killing anyone, sometimes even in a very cruel form, not against torture and, in principle, for any violence and bullying (but he does not like to offend women).
The task of this “killing machine” is to unite the three leaders of various groups into one force and completely seize power in the city of New Bordeaux, overthrowing the current mafia in the person of Lu Marcano. The resistance force is represented by such people as: the head of the Haitian mafia, the hidden and wise Cassandra, the leader of the Italian group, already known to us Vito Scaletta and the drunk brawler and the leader of the Irish thugs Thomas Burke.
The gameplay itself is very monotonous and consists in the phased seizure of each district in the city and the appropriation of the businesses operating there to one of its "officers". At first, a close friend of Lincoln, John Donovan, collects all the information about the area. There is always one leader and two assistants in the area. Next we go to make a mess: we destroy the goods, kill the thugs, obtain information about the points of sale and brutally eliminate the leaders. After that, the leader himself comes to the area and tries to restore order. We catch it and kill it very cruelly, so that others are afraid. We divide all businesses between our friends and move on, to the next quarter, to do the same. In total, the game has 12 quarters.
Despite the monotony, the gameplay itself can be divided into two possible paths: stealth (silent and competent elimination of opponents) and robbery (grenades, machine guns and a couple of thugs with shotguns). Often, the second path gradually follows from the first. And here everything is with the game in a more or less good form. Stealth is pretty monotonous and stupid, but it is far from always possible to eliminate everyone quietly, so you have to think everything through carefully. But the shootings turned out great. The weapon has its impact and rate of fire, opponents fall very beautifully from injuries received, cars willingly take off into the air at the slightest hit, everyone actively uses grenades and Molotov cocktails, in general there is an action and it is quite good.
As a result, at first I really liked the game and I played with great pleasure (despite the schedule), but closer to the middle of the passage I realized that I was going through the same places, but under different scenery. Although it is worth recognizing that the quality of immersion, the atmosphere and sound in the game are excellent! Toward the end, I just wanted to finish it as soon as possible, she was really fed up.
I would not consider Mafia 3 a failure. She has a lot of pluses and a lot of minuses. I do not regret that I spent my time on it, which means that the game is not so bad. Therefore, for the passage I recommend!
