Recent reviews by 3st

It's a good game when you get over the fact that this should have been the second addon to Hitman (2016).

The game is okay but removing the option to select the map you want to play is the most idiotic decision these developers ever made and as everybody knows: They have a history of making dumb decisions.

Update: It's also dumb that you cannot play more than three casual matches/day. Your aren't my mom so you should not be able to tell me how much I can play.

I enjoyed the game initially. But having to grind to unlock other weapons just sucks. I wouldn't have bought it if I knew this change was coming.

Pro: Good remake honoring the original Game.
Contra: No Bruno Speedster 851. The IMHO best car of the original game isn't in the remake. :*(

Overall still the one of the best video game remakes ever. Recommended.

Horrifying bad remake of a great game. Props to Ubisoft for not using additional DRM/copy protection or requiring an Uplay / Ubisoft Connect account. But that's everything positive I can say about this game.
The levels are badly designed, ugly and empty. The enemies (who all look like clones) are super dumb even on highest difficulty setting and animations suck. However, the the worst thing about this game is the movement. The character moves ridiculously slow, everything (especially the mouse!) feels mushy and the character becomes even slower when you aim with iron sights.
I asked Steam for a refund after two levels. This game could have been great but it isn't.

Okay.

I recently took another look at the game. The developers put a lot of work into the game after release. I appreciate this. They fixed the most annoying bugs, removed the FPS cap, reworked the tuning aspect of the game etc. Also the story DLCs are of the same quality as the game itself. This way they are adding more to the game than Mafia II's DLCs that were fun but very arcade-style.

But the game still feels a bit crude and overall not like a real game of the Mafia series. Mafia II is still superior in a lot of the technical aspects and overall quality. The driving model is very limited. Fighting system is very limited. Some parts of the game look very bad and some cars are designed badly (e.g. one of the fastest and thoughest cars of the game is a Camino like pickup truck that was added to the game with a DLC - it doesn't feel well balanced and overall overpowered). A lot of the tasks you have to fulfill in the game are highly repetitive - that is a distinct contrast to the original games that had a relatively small number of very good designed missions. These were aspects that were very important for the original developers and a lot of the original games' fans. Thus Mafia III is an okay open world game but with very limited connection to the Mafia series.
To me Mafia III feels more like a "Scarface: The World is Yours" successor than a Mafia II successor! You have the limited collection of your cars and a driver that brings them to you, you have these assassination moves, street races, gangs, with the DLCs you even have a house that you can renovate and furnish to burn some of your money.

Conclusion:
Mafia III in it's late 2017/2018 state with all the DLCs is an okay open world game. You can have a lot of fun with it. There are farout worse open world games out there. You shouldn't expect a successor to Mafia II though and the price for the game at Steam is much too high in comparison.

The 30fps cap isn't the biggest problem of this game.

Let me put this first: I am a Mafia franchise fan. Always have been. I bought Mafia on it's release in English and German. I preordered Mafia II. I bought every single DLC for Mafia II and I played them all. I have more than 100 hours of playtime in Mafia II according to Steam. I preordered Mafia III and was looking forward to it and it's new setting.

However, Mafia III isn't closely as good as it's predecessors.

I won't give you a final rating of the story or setting of Mafia III. Some people didn't appreciante that they moved from an Italian Mafia background to a black gang background. I was (and still am in a way) open-minded towards it and a bit apprehensive. I haven't played much of the story yet but so far it seems alright, even though I got the feeling that I might already know where things are going.

The conversations and cutcenes are still of high quality. IMO the cutcenes are at least on a Mafia II level, maybe even better.

So that's fine. What's the problem? Primarily the game's technology. I won't even mention the 30fps problem this game has but it has bad graphics, bad controlls, bad sound and bad physics.

As long as you are on foot these problems aren't that noticeable. Shooting and the cover systems are similar to that of Mafia II. There are some developer decisions that I have to critizise in this regard though: Your health will regenerate really fast. You also have the option to take a medkit in order to regenerate it instantly. Enemies are very passive during shootouts. You can easily kill them from cover even on highest difficulty. The protagonist seems kinda overpowered.

This becomes even more apparent when you take a look at melee fights: When you approach an enemy from behind you can instantly kill him / knock him out. But even when you run towards him you can knock him out with one or two hits (unarmed people on the street get knockt out after one single hit). There is no advanced melee fighting system like in Mafia I or II.

But most of the technlogical problems this game has only become visible once you get in a car and drive around a bit.
Driving itself is very underwhelming to begin with. You can still select "Simulation" driving mode in the menu but even if you do so the handling is very easy. You can drive at full throttle all the time without any problems. You can "drift" on a straight street. The whole driving model is very basic, unrealstic and easy. I don't think I can find any open world game with a comparable driving model in the last ~10 years.

You will also notice several other problems while driving through the streets:

-Mafia III's world might be bigger than that of Mafia II or Mafia I but it feels empty and lacks details.
-The car's motor sounds are bad. They don't change when you accelerate or make a burnout. The Thunderbird has the sound of a sewing machine.
-When you hit another other car with high speed it will barely slow you down but fly through the air like it was hit by a NASA rocket
-All static objects other than traffic signs are undestroyable and will stop you instantly if you crash into them though. Even some(!) phone booths.
-When you drive into a pedestrian they will be stand in front of your car while beeing pushed around. They will drop dead as soon as you stop. I have seen better solutions in open world games of the pre-GTAIV-era!
-Volumetric smoke? Nope!
-All in all bad effects
-Aggressivee LOD
-Bad textures
-Low draw distance
-Fog
-In the first daylight missions the weather will change within seconds from super light sunny with massive bloom effects to dark clouded and back. Quite annoying.
-All in all very bad lighting in the first daylight missions (bug?).
-Ugly, low detailed car models! Really. There are cars that look like they are out of the 50's. Some have a strong resemblance with cars from the same era that where in Mafia II. But they didn't take the models from Mafia II. They created new, similar looking models that look worse on closer inspectation. Makes me wonder why. Did they just buy the name and not the rights to use previous content? Was the game that is sold to us as Mafia III developed as Mafia III or did they just buy the licence and put it on a random open world game?
-The damage models of the cars are worse than in Mafia II
-Sometimes shadows are casted to different directions

There are also bugs where certain items fly in the air because furniture isn't displayed or instances where the player falls through the floor of the map.

Conclusion
Mafia III feels like the first attempt on creating an open world game of a small studio that has no experience whatsoever. It feels unfinished. And it is. Even with a release half a year later it wouldn't reach the AAA game level of it's predecessors.

However, you can still have some fun with this one. But I recommend you wait til it is on sale.

Kinda like a family friendly, too short and too easy version of Hotline Miami. No bad game but it doesn't feel quite finished. But it seems the developers quit working on it...

The overall game is fun and the developers (recently?) made some progress but this is still a bad example for early access. Why? Because you should get a real professional development for your money but NCG: Wreckfest is one of those early access titles you start up once every few months to see if there is any real progress. This game still isn't finished and probably never will be.

A coop game for free? GREAT!

It is a fun game. Would like to see the developers to make something without aliens though.