Recent reviews by DocJohn

Honestly overall I thoroughly enjoyed this game. Enought to play it one more time to enjoy the DLC and gain a more satisfactory ending.

The things I liked
1) Visuals
(Ill talk about the bad visuals further down in my review). I enjoyed the 1960s southern american city setting. I loved how the cars looked and how the game generally looked when it was in action.

2) Story
The story was refreshing somewhat, it wasnt some mobster trying to climb up the mob ladder and become capo of some family. Here you are trying to tear a rival family down and build the foundation of your family on the ashes of the previous one.
3) Music
The music choice in that game was superb. Loved almost every single song.

4) Gameplay
Pretty straight forward and enjoyably smooth to play. Controls werent clunky or weird. Overall it was a blast to play through.

The only real issues are the bugs and other developer choices.

1) Customisation
When I started playing there were no options to customise cars, or your outfit; which was disappointing considering in MAFIA II you were able to purchase clothing and vehicle modifications. In Mafia II you were more free to customise your character. In mafia III on the other hand you have no power over the character other than how your allies preceive you. Some very limiting customisation options were added as DLC later on but by that time the damage for me was already done.
2) Visuals
The game looks good but sometimes the lighting goes all out of whack. Everything looks nice but all of a sudden you are the silver surfer and everything is excessively reflective and silvery. The good visuals arent constant and the bad ones are extremely noticable. Its not something you can try and ignore.
3) AI
The AI is not that good. Actually its quite bad. Pedestrians keep getting scared and jumping into oncoming traffic even if you are not driving in their direction or at any speed. Lincoln Clay is talking to someone and there is no lip movement. There are times where I have cleared a whole warehouse of baddies by just 1 whistle. I just hid behind a door and kept adding bodies to that same spot over and over again until only the districts boss remained.
4) Bugs
One noticable bug for me is that when I start the game sometimes it stutters. Im driving fast down some highway and my game is running at a smooth 60+FPS. Then any movement from the mouse is stuttered. I try looking to my left and the game is turning at -60FPS and it seems like it is struggling.
Also if you are in full screen mode and you tab out and back in again, dont have any hope that your game will be running smoothly. The sounds for me dont work and the cutscenes have no video, just the audio. When my sounds bug up like that only voices, impacts (bullets) and footsteps can be heard. Nothing else...
5) Gameplay
I enjoyed the game. I loved the during/post Vietnam era the game was based in. I loved the music choice, the cars and guns. THe one thing I genuinly got bored of was the tedious task of gaining a territory. You speak to some underboss or whatever, they tell you who runs things. You interrogate some guy, you kill some other guy and you bust some of his rackets and then you go talk to your underboss and go face the enemy in the same racket you massacred half his crew in 5 minutes ago. Then you just repeat that whole process a total of two times per district. The first time it was cool BUT by the time you had taken over half the city, had made a ♥♥♥♥ ton of money and could invest in upgrading weapons, health etc. You are unstoppable whether you blast your way through or go in Sneaky Beaky like. Honestly this gameplay choice makes this game very easy to speed run.


I know I might of mentioned more bad than good in this review but honestly, I replayed this game regardless of some bugs and nuisances. If you enjoyed mafia II you will most likely enjoy this one as well. Maybe not as much as mafia II but you will enjoy III non the less.

Bought the game because I really enjoyed the first Homefront game. I regretted buying this one. It has many bugs and issues, such as out-of-sync audio, buggy AI, clunky controls both on foot and on the motorbike. The biggest issue I have is the Ashgate "Hearts & Mind" error which to be fixed requires you to delete your save and restart the whole game. After spending a good 10hrs to reach the Ashgate level I dont believe it is worth it anymore. If you are thinking of buying this game maybe hold off until the developers actually fix the issues.