Mafia III - PlayStation 4

Fans of Grand Theft Auto will loudly applaud this third installment of the Mafia game series. I have been playing the title for just a few hours now, but I am totally loving it. The year is 1968, and you play as Lincoln Clay, a bad-ass Vietnam Vet back from the war to take control of the underworld in the New Orleans-styled city New Bourdeaux while you avenge the death of your beloved godfather. Basically this game is like an adult GTA with superb period mise-en-scene and a killer soundtrack. The truth is, MIII has probably the best selection of tunes I’ve ever heard in a video game, but then, the late sixties were an especially rich period in rock music. So far, I’ve heard Creedence, Hendrix, Aretha, James Brown, Janis, the Airplane, Otis, Sam Cooke, Little Richard, the Stones, Steppenwolf, the Beach Boys, and many more coming over my car’s radio – sorry, hip hop fans, but THIS is what great music sounds like! And then there's a vintage blues station offering much more listening pleasure as well... The game also features excellent dialog and voice-acting, plus very cinematic cut scenes. The game play includes a good blend of stealth and assault-type combat. Typically you start a mission in stealth mode and then switch to blasting when your cover is blown. The missions include killings, sabotage, spying, intimidation -- a full range of heinous activities! So far, the checkpoints seem well placed so you don’t have to regress too far back through the story when you die in an especially violent encounter. Short of Nazis, there are few villains I find more enjoyable to put down than the racist redneck crackers on display here. There are some subtleties of strategy I haven’t needed to mess with yet, involving slicing the pie among your lieutenants so they remain allies and not rivals. I hope this empire-building doesn’t become too onerous; I just like driving around the city and completing missions! You can collect various oddities including old Playboy issues and Vargas portraits. You also need fuses to help you tap into telephone junction boxes that give you more intel on neighborhoods of interest – and their inhabitants. I’ll report back if my opinion of Mafia III changes, but at this time, I think this is probably the best game I’ve played on the PS4 after Uncharted 4 and Just Cause 3. Laissez les bon temps roulez, y’all! UPDATE: Well, I have racked up plenty of hours playing this title now, and my opinion holds: if you like Grand Theft Auto, you will LOVE this game. I have also found that you would do well to pay careful attention to control prompts at the bottom of the screen. Push the square button while you're looking at the map, for example, to get a handy readout of available story and optional missions. Push the right arrow when you are asked to assign a racket to one of your lieutenants, and see what additional perks assignment to each lieutenant will give you, which helps you decide. I also found that you don't have to stop for the frequent red lights and stop signs -- the police on patrol don't seem to pay any attention to your bad driving habits. And MIII is a LONG game -- I have now been playing for hours and hours and still I'm only fifteen percent through! As I said, I rank this game right up there with Uncharted 4 and Just Cause 3 as my favorite PS4 titles to date. HIGHLY recommended!!! UPDATE NUMBER TWO: well, I finished the game some weeks ago -- IMO, it was excellent from start to finish -- and I also got the Season Pass of DLC. The first batch of DLC was terrific, featuring a new section of New Bourdeaux to explore, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the second batch that just came out. MIII is one game that really keeps giving (well, for a price anyway!) I hope the DLC keeps coming too...

Excellent game not a problem

I had played Mafia 2 quite a bit and remember being really impressed, so I decided to try out this one. I love almost everything about it. It does feel a lot like Grand Theft Auto if you want to compare it to that, except not quite as polished and with less to do. However, I believe the story in this Mafia is wonderful, I love all of the characters so far. The driving always bothered me in GTA games, and it does in this game as well. It has its pros and cons. A con would be the damage model, which isn't very good at all. On the other side, the way the cars get dirty and have new and rundown versions of all the cars (I'm guessing, anyway, I've seen both of many of the models) is pretty fantastic. I'll run around for awhile doing missions and such, running through the bayou and whatnot then have to stop and check out the car just to see the dirty effect. I also like how it has actual speeds in MPH. As usual, it's all about the details. A couple more pros with the cars include how the old-fashioned head lamps will glow an orange tint between going from on to off. Or how if you exit a vehicle with the steering turned, the wheels will remain in that position once you get out. There's many brilliant little details which get me hooked on games like this. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the soundtrack. For me, it easily took the #1 spot for best soundtrack in a game. GTA: Vice City would be my #2, and just like Vice City, Mafia III's soundtrack really helps to put you in the mood of the time period taking place in the game. Not only does Mafia's do this perfectly with due diligence of making sure all the songs are 1968 or earlier, but hearing these songs during cutscenes and around town on shop radios and in home radios really help to put you in late 60's Louisiana. Unbelievably good job on the music in the game. This game is far from perfect, but probably deserves a spot on your shelf.

I put about 60 hours into this game so far, and although I will admit it is not an outstanding/excellent game, it is very close to it. The game has some minor glitches, but I personally love mafia stories/movies, so I had to have it. The context of the game is very well accomplished, being this a game in New Orleans in the late sixties. It is true this can be a somewhat repetitive game, but again, I am probably not very picky with games, and I love the action. I actually think about this game and dream about it, so this means something, this is a very good game, at least 7.5/10 or more. Not GTA 5 of course, but I like it and if you are thinking about getting it, you should. I would not pay more than thirty bucks, though.

Where do I start? This game was both heavily under & overrated when it came out, so I waited for the price to drop. There is a lot of big picture thinking in this game and the narrative is amazing. I found a couple bugs here and there, but they are pretty minor in the long run, aside from the game crashing only once so far in my play-through. I am not completely done yet, as I am a completionist and plan to get all the collectibles and pass all the side missions, but I have started on the second set of Lieutenants and believe I am around 20 - 30% through the game, so let's go through the seven sandbox categories. BUGS / GLITCHES - Every once in a while, I will come across an enemy or vehicle that is stuck, but they hardly affect gameplay. - When you are turn aggressively, even if you are in your lane, pedestrians may jump right in front of you, even though you were not going to hit them at all - this is pestering when there are cops around and someone commits suicide in front of you, but you get blamed for it. - If you are running away from enemies who are shooting at you and the cops are around, but you are not shooting at anybody, the cops will start coming after you, too. I was leaving the scene after killing a guy silently, and the enemies saw me and shot at my car, and all of a sudden, I was in a police chase - that was kind of weird, considering no one saw me kill the guy. - The game did crash on me once so far after I died during a mission, and I am not sure why, but I would not be surprised if it was a fluke. DRIVING - Driving took a bit to get used to, especially with random street cars, which I usually just take, but after you unlock the vehicle delivery, you will most likely just use the better cars, like Clay's Drifter. Overall, very realistic driving with old, heavy cars and no ABS. - I usually thumb the throttle when you are off-road, or you are just going to spin the tires and get nowhere. - I'm glad they took a page out of GTA's book and did the slow-mo driving. This helps immensely when trying to get away from the cops or completing a turn after you oversteer and start sliding. - This may fall under gunplay, but it has more to do with driving. You can use your side-arm to automatically target enemy tires, engines, or fuel tanks, and blow them up or make them loose control, or drop explosives from your car window. ENEMY AI - I play as stealthy as possible, although am very confident in the game's abilities should a firefight break out. - Enemies actually look for each other if they wait to long to report to their post, which works to your advantage because they usually come to you one at a time. One time, three of them came to find out where their buddy when and I took all three of them on by surprise. - Anytime you melee kill an enemy from cover, the game will automatically put them behind your cover, but you can move them further away, if you notice an enemy's overlapping "beats." - Hiding from the cops is usually easy since people have to actually find a payphone to call, but it does mean you cannot come into the blue areas until they cancel the call unless you can be very stealthy about it. Once they do find you, however, they can be quite vigilant. GRAPHICS - The graphics are smooth and amazing - I have not experienced any frame-rate loss and am confounded how this is possible. Driving between districts is does not cause any hang-ups. - The non-cinematic cutscenes are shot from a fixed angle and are not the most exciting, but this is the only gripe in this area. GUNPLAY - All the guns have a distinct feel and although you can only carry two at a time, with limited ammo, it's not always a rifle and a pistol. There are shotgun and SMG sidearms. My favorite combination is an SMG and a shotgun sidearm, but I have not even unlocked half of the weapons. - I tried to play with auto-aim off for the realism, but it is honestly a lot more fun with the auto-aim on - I felt like I was wasting a lot of ammo shooting people from too far away with the wrong gun, but now it is a lot better. - Throwables included proximity mines, frags, molotovs, and voodoo dolls (useful for getting a group of enemies together and take them out). You cannot "cook" grenades, but they are usually more useful for blowing up vehicles anyway. - This ties into stealth, but I like how there is an incapacitate option in the game menu, in case you want to go non-lethal. On the first playthrough, I am killing everyone I can unless they make me more money not to. SOUND - There are only a few radio stations in cars, but all three are packed with plenty of songs you will actually not mind hearing over and over again. Also, there are news commercials after you complete missions that tell you what a bad influence you are in the city. Very minor but thought-out thing: the radio stations actually get distorted when driving through a tunnel! I laughed out loud when I realized this. - The guns, explosions, engines, squealing tires, everything is on point. - When you are using the 6th sense mode, conversations may appear much closer than they are, but unless someone is shooting or highlighted in red, you don't generally have to worry about them. STORY IMMERSION / COLLECTIBLES - Cinematic cutscenes are amazing and really help tell the story from present and "past from the future" tense. - I found myself wanting to skip some of the shorter cutscenes between you and your partners, but I love the enemy cutscenes and how Clay always breaks the bad guy's elbow when he recruits them. - The racist epithets are more prevalent than I have heard in my life, but I respect the developers for putting them in and not pretending those racist times were not as disgusting as they actually were. Lincoln Clay is in his own league of badass and it never seems to bother him. - The collectibles are not difficult to find. They appear as blue icons on the map after hacking fuseboxes in districts, and are definitely nice to look (they come in the form of Vargas paintings, album covers, and auto & Playboy magazines)

Excellent narrative. Strong characters. Powerful story. The gameplay does not offer any advances over what we have seen in other third-person, open-world games, but I found it engaging. I have played through the game three times total. Some may have felt the missions were repetitive, but I was never bored. Stealth is always an option, as is going in guns blazing, though that will, more often than not, get you killed. However, the game gives you the choice, without really punishing you, and if you are going stealthy and you get spotted, it's not game over; you will just need to fight for your life (and you can always kill or subdue the person who sees you, before others are alerted). Cars handle well, much less slippery than Grand Theft Auto V. About 25-30 hours to complete the campaign. The game gives you an open world that is not overly cluttered with tons of side activities or quests. For some, that will be a deal-breaker, but I liked the fact that everything I did was either contributing to the narrative or adding to my understanding of the historical context. I played it on the Xbox One S and the PS4 Pro. AVOID The One S version. I mean it. The graphics are a bit muddy, but the real issue is that the game will randomly crash on you. I counted 12 crashes, but I know I am leaving out a few. The PS4 Pro version is the way to go, if you have it. Or, use the standard PS4, but avoid the Xbox One and One S versions.

Arrived quick and safe. Enjoying the game so far

Súper

Muito bom. Veio bem embalado e funcionando perfeitamente.

Enjoy the game

Bon jeu.Facile à jouer.

Soy fan de GTA desde hace tiempo, este juego tal vez no sea "mejor" pero si tiene al menos mejor musica (por mucho), ambientacion e historia. No es mejor que GTA pero esta a nivel, a mi gusto.

とても良いソフトです。英語バージョンでサブを読んだり会話をスムーズに楽しむことができます。