Mafia 3 early impressions - I fell into a burning gameplay loop
It all started so well; scripted level design, great cinematography and direction, brilliant performances and animation. I might of known things wouldn't stay at that level. Mafia 3 has a fantastic opening, one that will get you falling in love instantly, nodding your head as 'Paint It Black plays effortlessly to the events on screen. It feels distinctively 'Mafia' especially to the fans of the more linear nature of Mafia 2. A stark contrast to what the game turns into afterwords, it makes you wonder if an Assassins Creed game really did get released this year but under a new guise.
Structured level design turns to formulaic, tick box, repetitive 'missions'. The whole conceit this time around revolves around the original motive of revenge, which tasks you to take over each district of the city. In real world terms that essentially means you drive from place to place, kill a guy, destroy a box, then rinse and repeat. Most of these tasks lack any narrative context other than the idea that to draw out the top boss you're trying to take down, you need to damage his racket. So unless anything drastic changes later on, within a few hours of playing the game you know how the rest of the experience will go down. A lot of the plot is told in documentary style interviews that seemingly take place after the games events, it's an interesting approach though it feels like the actual events of the gameplay need more narrative content between missions. In fact a lot of the cutscenes are played out with just a static camera with two talking heads, a far cry from the cinematic scenes you get more rarely.
This is my most pressing complaint, though it's a biggie. The game seems to have lost what made the series stand out from the more generic open world games and instead has ended up more generic than its competitors. But hey it's still early on so there's a good chance the story might pick up in pace..... Right? Right?
Some quick thoughts elsewhere:
- choice and use of music is fantastic
- the world perfectly encapsulates the time and is extremely detailed.
- visually the games a mixed bag, sometimes it looks great (at night) and other times the skybox is a huge blurry mess.
- stealth seems the more favoured approach which is bound to frustrate some people
- shooting is solid, though doesn't feel too precise and punchy.
- some streamlined things, no traffic laws and no need to gas up cars.
- their version of assassins creeds towers that reveals parts of the map feel like a gameplay design chore most people have gotten sick of by this point.
No comments:
Post a Comment