Live Magazine Christmas 2016 Edition

REVIEW
Fun fact: Mafia II holds the dubious
honour of having the most swearwords
spoken in any game. 397
F-bombs alone litter Vito’s bloodsoaked
journey through Empire
Bay, boosted up even further with
various other curses and racial epithets
we won’t discuss here.
mafia 3
It’s almost refreshing. There’s
nothing more jarring than watching
some movie and seeing a warrior,
blood-soaked and panting, turn to
his colleague. The gun is gripped
in his friend’s hand, still smoking.
He’d shot that man right between
the eyes. You’d seen the blood
splatter; heard his death rattle as
he dropped to the ground.
Then the protagonist, painted with
the blood of a dead man, shouts,
“What the heck?!”
Mafia II kept it real. With that kind
of foul-mouthed pedigree, Mafia
III really has to step it up. Rather
than the pastiche of 1950’s bigcity
America that was Empire
Bay, Mafia III occurs a little further
south: New Bordeaux, Louisiana,
1968. Touted as a “modern town
with traditional Southern values”,
it’s no surprise that New Bordeaux
is a rough place to be for a young
black veteran. As Lincoln Clay, a
young man just back from the Vietnam
War, you are facing the kind
of prejudice any black man might
face at that point in history. To do
otherwise would be to pretend that
such prejudice never existed.
Lincoln’s story takes place within a
documentary framework. Missions
are punctuated by interviews with
historians and people who knew
him, discussing Lincoln’s actions,
character and his place in history.
It gives the whole game a very
unique feeling, letting the game focus
on the human element – loyalty,
family, strength of character
– while not sacrificing the big-picture
shootouts the previous games
were known for. All the exposition
needed to set up late-60s America
flows naturally through these little
interviews, saving players the
chore of poring over database entries
or enduring hamfisted exposition.
The actual story is simple, but effective.
Just returned from the
Vietnam war, Lincoln Clay heads
back to his adoptive family, leaders
of the local black mob, Sammy
and Ellis. Lincoln fully intends only
to stop in before leaving the crime
life and taking a real job, but things
– as they always do – go awry. Too
spoil too much would be to do the
game a disservice. Suffice to say
that this is very much a revenge
tale. We know as soon as Lincoln
promises to take everything from
the man who murdered his family
that this is not going to be a story
of half-measures.
It’s not all grim depression, though.
The Mafia games have always excelled
at big, bombastic set-pieces,
and the third entry is no different.
Intense shootouts, high-speed
chases and harrowing escapes
are littered throughout the story,
all without ever having to introduce
a single laser gun or superpower.
Mafia goes big, but it keeps its feet
on the ground.
There are no virtuous reasons behind
Lincoln’s story, either. What
he wants is revenge, total and
crushing, on the mob that took his
people away. This opens up possibilities
for the kinds of activities a
‘hero’ could not usually do. Lincoln
is a man on the warpath, trained in
psychological warfare and fresh
from the battlefield. The things he
does and the effects he suffers
from them fit that to a T.
The gameplay is nothing you
haven’t seen before. Mafia III basically
represents a collection
of all the successful open-world
features that came before it.
‘Hacking’ junction boxes to reveal
details on the nearby map is
straightup Watch_Dogs. Sneaking
around and performing cover kills
and takedowns mix in Assassins’
Creed and Arkham in equal measure.
Lockpicking is charmingly lowfi
in its use of a crowbar and combat
knife, similar to Fallout. There’s
nothing new in Mafia III‘s toolbox,
but none of it is done poorly. The
developers have clearly gone for