Mafia III

Feat of Clay: 2K Serves Up a Flawed but Fascinating Crime Drama 

- Chris Schilling

Sometimes wonderful things happen when you forget to pause a game. Putting the controller down to take a snack break between missions left protagonist, Lincoln Clay, idling next to his car. But our timing couldn’t have been worse. We soon realised that we’d left this tall, muscular, biracial black man in an affluent white neighbourhood, and, having attracted a few suspicious glances, we’d managed to alert the police simply by being there.

We quickly vaulted the door of our convertible and attempted to make a getaway. Accustomed by now to an efficient method of escape – the trusty U-turn – we were about to lose our pursuers when a car inexplicably swerved across the road, sideswiping us. Amid the chaos, the cops caught up; two loud pops later, we were dead. With exquisite timing, The Bobby Fuller Four’s I Fought The Law blasted from the car radio as Clay’s body slumped down in the driver’s seat.

This anecdote was brought to you through a combination of brilliant ideas and slightly wonky systems, which just about sums up Mafia III: it’s a really good crime drama trapped inside a merely serviceable open world game with a lot of rough edges.