Regardless of whether you’re burning, breaking or stealing to take out operations you will uniformly be killing a whole load of goons at every turn. New Bordeaux is split into districts you take out low level operations that lead you to capos, killing the capos leads to killing the more important story-integral bosses. Gameplay wise it’s oddly similar to Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.
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There’s a sort of Tarantino-style hyper-violent camp to the whole thing which definitely helps deal with some of the darker elements a sort of Inglorious Basterds with a Black Vietnam vet and a horde of poorly trained racists, Django in the 60’s with blue jeans, the Rolling Stones and automatic weapons. It’s not that she’s particularly bad as a character she just has very little going on to the point where I can’t remember any of her dialogue or interactions with Lincoln, which is a shame because the game doesn’t have a whole lot of female characters. Burke is a drunk, racist, bitter Irishman, Mafia 2 protagonist Vito is into respect and acts as firm hand on the tiller and Cassandra is a Black woman. What works slightly less well are Lincoln’s underbosses, who are only afforded broad strokes of character. Speaking of stand-out characters the central trifecta of Lincoln as a man forced through circumstance into becoming a monstrous killing machine falling back on his extensive, Vietnam-hardened special forces training to deal with the fact his relatively happy life has been cruelly and needlessly taken from him and Donovan and Father James as the devil and angel on his shoulder works very well. The game has some good set-pieces and stand out characters but it’s largely there to keep Lincoln moving from place to place killing people, which works for me. It does stop the game from talking about things it’s just shown you and it does add a certain sense of drama to proceedings but it did spoil a rather cool murder before I’d committed it.
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It’s a nice idea but they often detail or at least mention events before they’ve happened.
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As I said you spend the game murdering people as revenge for what happens to you: events are set up by a framing device in the dual forms of a documentary made years after the fact featuring Lincoln’s friend and confidant Father James and an FBI agent tracking Lincoln, and a scratchy recording of a Senate hearing in which Lincoln’s mentor and unhinged CIA agent John Donovan explains why he helped Lincoln murder so many people. The Story is quite straightforward and focused, all told. I was hyped going into it, as I have been since it was announced. It’s 1968 excellent music and horrifying racism run rampant, you’re basically The Punisher, and frankly it’s the best idea for a game I’ve seen all year. After two games exploring the well-worn, over-exposed path of the Italian mob Mafia 3 puts you in the boots of Lincoln Clay mixed race Vietnam veteran and adopted son to the head of New Bordeaux’s (New Orleans in all but name) Black mob, who after losing said father and adoptive brother and being shot in the head embarks on a journey to murder the current Italian Don and everyone said Don cares about and works with. Mafia 3 is one of those rare games that comes around now and then worth picking up on concept alone.