Instead of talking about 10/10 all-timers this week, I'm turning my attention to a series of what I would consider 'solid 7s' that I have played through over the last month - the Mafia series. I had a really interesting and, if I'm honest, enjoyable time playing through this admittedly flawed series and the trilogy actually works really well as a whole, with connections throughout the games both narratively and thematically. I highly recommend giving them a go.

The Life.

I played the original Mafia game upon its initial release. Coming just after GTA 3 it was a much more realistic take on the then new and fresh open world city genre. It seemed amazing but I bounced off it because I found it really hard (realistic traffic laws had me in perpetual trouble with the popo) and the console version was fairly rough. I always fancied a go at it but you know how it is, you constantly put stuff off for the latest greatest and the pile of shame grows and grows and grows.

I've also had a strange connection to Mafia III, despite not playing it. There was a videogame exhibition at the V&A museum and there was a section about games that disrupted the norm and made you think about inherently political elements found in most games. There was a section in there showing Mafia III and its approach to racism on a screen and honestly it made it look like one of the best games ever made. In that same room was a quote from an article that was ran on Midnight Resistance. I didn't write it, I can't even remember who did or what game it was about (it certainly wasn't actually about Mafia III!) and unfortunately the website was purged without warning at some point in the last couple of years so I can't even link to the thing, but I remember seeing the name of the website amongst a bunch of really important stuff and thinking "hey maybe we did a good thing here". I've always been meaning to try Mafia III because, despite all of the negativity I feel around that whole period, seeing the name of one of my projects in the V&A was a positive that has stayed with me and that game is somehow associated with it in my head.

I jumped into this playthrough of the series with the 'Definitive Editions', released in 2020. Out of all of the games, the first game has had the most work done to it, as it is a full on remake of the first title from the ground up, using an improved version of the Mafia III engine. Essentially, this meant that in my playthrough I actually started with the most visually impressive and the most up-to-date in regards to things like quality of life elements and control tweaks. I also elected to play it through on the 'classic' difficulty, which retained many of the realism elements of the original. Traffic laws need to be followed, reloading a clip that isn't empty will cause you to lose the remaining bullets and damage inflicted to enemies and you is upped substantially, to the point where it is almost one shot kills.

I absolutely loved it.

In fact, I enjoyed my time with it so much that it made me think about my overall distaste for open world games. I can't stand games like Horizon, Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima and the like because the open world offers me little more than distance to travel between the cool stuff and the odd pretty vista to look at. I've said it many times but with the unsustainable cost (both financial and the actual human cost) to making a big open world game, it would be completely unfeasible to fill a space that vast with the sort of top quality content that makes up the main story missions, which is why there's loads of repetitive filler content. Side missions that are based around simple objectives and lack a lot of the detail and set pieces that you get in the main missions. If they can be ignored, then that makes things a bit more palatable but there's usually a skill tree or another thing that requires you to interact with these lesser missions, so you can unlock more cool stuff in the game. It sucks.

Mafia has absolutely nothing to do in the city. It's just a place to drive around, to take in the sights and sounds and absorb the atmosphere as you jumped between the main missions. You can even choose to skip all 'unnecessary driving', which turns Mafia into a much tighter action game. Even if you drive everywhere, you're still looking at a nice twelve hours spent in Lost Heaven - there's no fat here. For some reason, this works for me. I don't feel like I'm being cheated out of value by not having the map full of stuff to do because I know most of it would be boring anyway. The city is there to set the scene and it does that perfectly. It's an incredible looking game and the atmosphere it sets is flawless. Does it need to be an open world game when you can jump between missions? Perhaps not, but it certainly helps that simply driving around the place is really fun. The shooting is serviceable but feels satisfying and even a feels bit dangerous, meaning that firefights are often tense shootouts and the story, although borrowing heavily from Goodfellas (unsurprisingly) is carried by a decent script (rewritten to make the plot flow better) and some excellent performances that really bring some memorable characters to life - a theme that continues throughout the series.

Mafia II is a remaster of the original release, rather than a full remake. They've sharpened textures up and the game runs in native 4K but it's ostensibly the same game that you would've encountered back in 2010. Coming to it straight off the back of the full remake of the original Mafia game is quite jarring - it's a bit like hitting the Yakuza 3 remaster after playing through 1 and 2 Kiwami - but it is still a decent GTA-like and, much like the previous game, has a city that is more about setting an atmosphere than housing a million things to do. Driving is still satisfying and the combat, although definitely inferior, still packs a punch.

The story, however, is where the game shines. Again, a fairly by-the-numbers tale of betrayal and revenge, such is the mafia genre, but once again it is elevated by some truly memorable characters and some really convincing performances by the voice talent. What I did find most interesting, however, is the dialogue. This game features a 'warning' of sorts in regards to the dialogue and how it is presented 'as is' from the original 2010 release. The game is packed full of casual racism and other offensive terms. Now, I'm not in the demographic for any of these to be targeted at me, so I'm definitely not the right person to be making a judgement call on any of this, but personally I found the unflinchingly 'authentic' dialogue of the 40s/50s part of what made Mafia II's world feel so believable. A reminder that even the characters you like were complicit in the embedded racism of the time period - something that the series continues to explore in Mafia III.

The third game is, without a doubt, the most interesting of the bunch. Unfortunately, as a game released in 2016, where open world games were (and still are) big business and far more formulaic, it is full of the standard open world game bloat as a consequence. Every area has you doing the same repetitive mission types - steal the car, kill the man, blow up the thing etc - until you've done enough damage to operations to access the sub-boss encounter. Best a couple of them and you'll unlock the area boss, which is usually where Mafia III's best interactions lie, with cool, bespoke environments for the battles and they're full of action-packed set pieces. In the previous two games, you just moved from mission to mission and a much more linear approach here would've made for a much more enjoyable game. As expected, the driving remains fun and the shooting is far closer to that of the Mafia remake, feeling satisfyingly chunky and meaty and incorporates stealth elements into it pretty seamlessly. It's just those endless repetitive missions... they pad out a top drawer 10-12 hour game like the previous two into something nearer to 30.

What keeps Mafia III compelling throughout is the narrative. Expanding on the ideas touched upon in the first two games, Mafia III is a really well-written and really brave look at a particular time period, not only capturing the atmosphere and vibe effortlessly but refusing to shy away from the gigantic shadow of racism that loomed (and to be fair, still looms) over parts of the USA. It tackles the subject head-on, with unflinching use of racist slurs and iconography throughout the game to leave you with a constant feeling of unease around many of the characters, even those who are supposedly on your side. It captures the tension, the disgust and the anger through a good story, a great script and some incredible performances. Lincoln Clay is a fantastic protagonist and all of the support characters have compelling motives, both as part of Lincoln's fledgling criminal empire and throughout the cast of antagonists. I found it extremely effective to have some characters instantly jump to racism when confronted by Clay, despite previously not showing any signs of harbouring such beliefs, making you second guess any previous interactions you may have had with them.

There's a few slightly half-baked attempts at incorporating the racism of the period into in-game elements, such as police response time varying and certain areas being no-go zones but those are all found quite quickly to be a bit unimportant in the overall experience. An idea that perhaps sounded better on paper than it is in practice.

It's a shame that Mafia III feels like such a chore at times because when the game is at its best, hitting that GTA style mix of on-foot shootouts, set pieces and exciting car chases, it hits some real high points. The slow-burn tension of bringing down a slavery ring, which should leave you feeling more and more disgusted and outraged with what you're seeing as you progress through the questline and it building to a shootout with a famous radio presenter at a KKK cross burning meet is an incredible payoff of not only spectacle, but some genuine catharsis. Having him finally snap, on air, over the radio as you're driving to that mission and have him finally become completely transparent about his racist beliefs, rather than just hinting at them, is a real masterstroke.

As well as the reasons I mentioned during the intro, another reason why I wanted to play the Mafia games is that I'm a little tired of how polished and homogenised the AAA space is right now and playing some supposed 'lesser' games that didn't review as well but are packed with interesting ideas and cool moments was exactly what I needed to feel better about the whole videogames thing. There's no denying that these games aren't 10/10s - far from it - but the world building, storytelling and approach to real life issues are so much more intriguing to me than having fucking Spider-Man defuse ten fucking bombs or some shit. Should you stick to the big, tentpole releases, you might be getting a fun, frictionless and entertaining time for your money (which is totally fair, considering the rising price of these titles) but you're potentially missing out on some elements, be they narrative or interactive, that will stick with you and make you think about what exactly it is you enjoy about videogames.

THANKS FOR READING.

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