Mafia III is my first Mafia game and I am going into this knowing nothing of the previous titles apart from what my friends and colleagues have told me about the series and honestly. I am really enjoying it, I should note however for a lot of people the game has been incredibly buggy since the launch and a lot of people have been quite angry about its lacking frame rates although. The frame rates have now been rectified the rest of the issues have not.
Now at the very start of the game, they tell you straight out this game is basically meant to be an accurate representation of the time period that it is in and depicts scenes of extreme racism and hatred towards people of colored skin. It’s pretty bold in it too and doesn’t sugar coat it calling the protagonist Lincoln Clay a nigger, negro, and pretty much every other racial slur under the sun for a good part of the game this is a huge story and focal point and they executed it very well.
It even has extreme versions if you visit white neighborhoods the cops will start harassing you and attacking you for doing nothing at all. I was driving down the road and they kept running their car into me before requesting backup and having me chased out.
But let’s not lose too much focus here this is a review after all. The game’s overall controls are pretty solid although the timing when using items is off and that creates issues. When I am in a game like Grand Theft Auto V I can easily switch between things, and heal in this the delay often gets me killed, and when your character died you’d lose half the money I have gotten up to that point which is quite annoying, to say the least.
The soundtrack to the game is mainly of old classic rock from the time period, like songs such as “Help me Rhonda” and “Respect” and since I am a fan of classic rock and grew up with it due to my parents I have good regard for that and the blues. My personal thoughts is that the music is amazing, and I absolutely love it. Since I don’t get MP3s on my computer for those songs I just kinda idle in my car now and listen to them.
As it goes for visuals the game has been quite buggy for a lot and if you try running things on high and medium even if you have a newer PC it can become incredibly laggy. I was forced down to a crippling 12 FPS a second because of it and when trying to fix the graphic settings on the loader I could never get it to save. This brings me to the menu for the game. It ends up being slightly confusing to a newcomer to the series and it was hard to navigate and although I figured it out. It did present a fair amount of issues, in the end however I did discover that the game has another graphic menu inside the game once it’s loaded and from there I was able to fix the graphical issues I had. Putting the entire game on low basically fixed every single issue I had.
Even on low though the game remains visually breathtaking and the cut-scenes remain flawless. If anyone is having issues I recommend putting it on low. Hell, I am running an ASUS GTX590 the kind that burns out easily and was crappily made and it manages to push a solid 30-45 FPS so it’s fairly well optimized for older equipment such as mine although numerous people are complaining they can’t play it due to poor optimization on AMD CPU’s and I feel kinda bad for those who can’t enjoy this.
In conclusion, Mafia III is amazing, as a game that entails my introduction to the Mafia series. I found it very enjoyable and an accurate representation of racism of the past and of some areas in Florida where I grew up. But it also stands as a harsh reminder that if we hate/fear people for the color of their skin, heritage, beliefs, or gender. We just continue to let Racism grow in America and in the world.
We as gamers no as people need to recognize these issues and take a stand against them, and show people this way of thinking is wrong and will always be wrong.
An autistic gamer with opinions on games who also enjoys making dumb videos on the internet!