We do a special kind of review on gamelust called a ‘rolling review’ where we play the game and share our opinions on a daily basis as we progress through the game. This gives you an in depth look at whether or not we are enjoying the game, as well as a dynamic score through out the experience from beginning to [hopefully] end, updated daily. If you would like to watch us play the game throughout the duration of this review, check out our channel on twitch. We will be online playing between 7pm and 10pm US Central.

Note: Audio has been disabled during cutscenes by the publisher. I have enabled subtitles so you don’t miss the story, but unfortunately you’ll lose the superb voice acting for a brief moments of the stream.

Additional Note: Since there are problems with the audio on the stream, and literally no one has watched it, I have decided to suspend streaming during the rolling reviews. The time spent setting up the additional feature, plus allowing me more freedom to play whenever I feel like will only benefit the final product until there are more users on the site.

10/7/2016 – xsuicidesn0wmanx

We will be starting our rolling review of Mafia III tonight at 6PM CT/4PM PT.

I ordered the Deluxe Edition of Mafia III that came with the Season Pass included and some bonus content. So far the Day 1 patch weighs in a 2.6GB, and it took 4 minutes for the game to be ‘playable’ according to the Xbox(25% installed). Full install, from disc, took about 40 minutes.

I’ve always been a fan of the Mafia games, I played a bit of the original on the Xbox, and had 100% completion on Mafia II. After playing a couple hours of Mafia III, I am fairly certain I will get another 100% completion notched on my belt. The Mafia series is not ashamed to be a GTA Clone, and is owned by the same parent company, so the similarities are always increasing. I think this is a big reason why Mafia seems to perform better than all of the other GTA Clones out there. While many of them do a good job, this one has the same publisher guiding the game, and probably shares a bit of technology between the two franchises.

One of the things that has impressed me so far is the graphic technology for facial animations. I would wonder if this game has some of the technology from LA Noire being used, because the animation is simply spot on. In fact, almost everything about the game reminds me of LA Noire. I feel like I’ve been transported into the 1960’s, much like how LA Noire took us  back to the 1940’s.

So far I’m enjoying the story, though I’ve only begun the revenge portion of the game, the early game setup was fairly lengthy and added a lot of depth. The one thing I am not so sure of is that the dialogue makes me a bit uncomfortable. We live in a day and age where many of us are more racially aware, and this game does not hold back their interpretation of life as an African American in the 1960’s. In many ways the game actually makes me feel a bit uncomfortable at the way I’m treated by others in the game.

If I have one complaint so far it’s that the sound is pretty bad if you use a 5.1 sound system. I’ve had sounds that should be on the right side of the room come out of the left, and dialogue from an enemy off in the distance coming through loud & clear from the front speakers. Beyond those minor annoyances the quality is still pretty good. Unfortunately, if you’re watching one of our live streams, it would appear the audio cuts out during cut scenes. For those few who have watched, I do have subtitles on.

So far the game is definitely in the high 80’s to low 90’s range, with the potential to get even better. We’ll start at 88 for now, and see how far that number can climb as I play through the story.

10/8/2016 – xsuicidesn0wmanx

Well, tonights session didn’t turn out as good as I had hoped. It seems to be a recurring trend among new games this gen. Mafia III starts fast out of the gate, but before you can get to the end of the run, they missed a gear or two. I’m still having fun with the game, but I had two separate crashes where the game just suddenly stopped w/out warning. Although the problem was not obvious, it did seem like the game had problems loading mission objectives during a mission. i.e. One mission I was tasked with taking out an underbosses goons before taking him out. As soon as the game went to tell me to go kill the underboss… BOOM! I’m looking at the dashboard. No error message or second attempt to load the scenario, the program suddenly exited. I also ran into a cut scene where the audio cut out on me, much like the audio does on the stream.

The time in between the game fucking up was still mostly enjoyable. The one aspect of game play that I’m not too pleased with is how perfectly the cops can seem to stay on my tail when I’m trying to escape, almost like they’re glued to the back of my vehicle. I’ve also had cops chase after me even though I was the one getting shot at, tho I’m not sure if this is part of the racial tension or just a flaw in the game.

The one positive for the night is that I’ve been doing a lot more stealth in game, and the stealth kill animations can be absolutely brutal. On one occasion I stabbed a guy in the chest with a gigantic knife, then repeatedly stabbed him in the face after he was pushed up against the wall. It was overkill, but the shocking nature of this event had me slightly giddy. I also had one enemy that I had punched a few times and timed the lethal attack just right and the main character, Lincoln Clay, put his gun in the enemies mouth, shoved him back a few feet and pulled the trigger. Blood everywhere. This game is as colorful with the violence as GTA is with the language.

So far I’d guess I’m somewhere between 33% and 50% done with the game. Because of the problems I had tonight, and the fact the game is starting to feel a bit like a chore, I’m lowering my expectations for this game down to an 85. That said, I’m still hopeful this will stick around in the 80’s.

10/9/2016 – xsuicidesn0wmanx

I didn’t spend much time on the game tonight, ended up playing The Division with a buddy for a while. The thing that really stands out for me right now how well crafted this story is. If I had to summarize the story so far using just one word, I’d probably go with the word ‘tense’. The story goes out of it’s way to make you feel uncomfortable.What started out as a simple heist and and action packed escape, quickly turned into a bloodbath. You end up building an emotional attachment to Lincoln and his friends, all of whom seem to be mourning losses of their own.

At its heart, this is the same old revenge story that has been told a million times already. As Lincoln looks to take down the man responsible for his own personal tragedy, you gather both friends and enemies, none of whom seem to get along with one another. This only further enforces the feeling of tension. My allies hold a hatred for each other, and I can already tell sooner or later one will probably betray me.

Since I didn’t play the game for very long I’m going to stick with my previous score, still sitting at an 85 with hopes it stays above 80.

11/21/2016 – xsuicidesn0wmanx

It’s been a while. Like ReCore, Mafia 3 fell down the backlog for a bit once Gears of War 4 had released. I spent much of the past weekend finishing off the story for this game. Although up until this point I had been completing each district 100%, I eventually broke down and started skipping some of the side missions. Once I had done enough damage to expose the leaders of each racket, I jumped at the chance to get this over with. This to me really hurts the game, I spent more time playing the game ready for it to be over than I did anticipating the next move.

While the last time I played the game I was hopeful that the game would remain above 80, there is no way I can possibly give this game anything higher than 79. While the concepts the game was built on were solid, it is a gta clone after all, the game as a whole just does not work. The story is pretty good, and I really enjoyed the cut scenes, but the missions in between and all of the excess busy work you’re forced to do really sours the mood. A lot of the excess fat is also the fact you can’t fast travel, this just further extends the amount of time spent waiting for the game to continue it’s progression. You’ll finish a mission, receive an incredible cut scene, only to find out you have to drive 5 or 6 minutes away to the next mission on the other side of the map.

The real reason I found myself getting frustrated with Mafia 3 is because the damn game kept crashing on me. I’d say I spent at least 9 hours with the game this weekend only for the game to crash 5 or 6 times on me. I even found myself restarting the game when I noticed shit wasn’t working right. Mission objectives would stop working, enemies you have to kill would not spawn, I even had a moment where I could walk up to any cop in the game and open fire and no one would try to arrest me or shoot back. There were just so many random glitches, from shit exploding out of no where to picking up hidden items only for the icon to stick to the map making me think I hadn’t picked the item up.

At the end of the day, what could have been a masterpiece ended up a buggy mess stuffed with too much filler and empty promises. While I held high hopes for this title, my final score will fall somewhere between 70 and 75. The game simply couldn’t hold up its end of the deal.