Prior to its October launch, Mafia 3 was one of my most anticipated games of the year. A promising start was however marred by "tiresome, repetitive grind," as Andy noted in his review—a claim he later explored further against the rest of the series. In a bid to turn its tide of middling review scores, the game's first free DLC came in the way of superficial costume upgrades last month, however the latest add-on introduces car customisation and races. 

"This was one of the big requests from the fans," says publisher 2K on the game's site. "Today, we’re delivering with some seriously cool customizations for Lincoln’s fleet of up to 10 cars. You heard that right, 10: The six you earn through playing the game, the three cars those who own the Family Kick-Back have access to… and an unlockable 10th car which we’ll get to in a minute." 

The Family Kick-Back is an optional paid DLC, and the tenth unlockable car is the Griffin Marauder which looks like this:

Only by winning races can you hope to unlock that, as well as a number of customisation options, across six circuit lap races and six point-to-point events. More information can be found in this direction.

Mafia 3's racing and car customisation update is out now. Before you go, have a gander at its launch trailer.

Mafia III has its predecessor beat in one respect: the originality of its premise. Playing as a black Vietnam veteran in 1960s America, in a city plagued by institutional racism, is a genuinely bold, interesting idea. Compared to this, a young Italian American rising in the ranks of the Mafia is a fairly standard crime story. But that s about all Mafia III has going for it.Mafia II follows Vito Scaletta from fighting in World War 2, to returning home and pulling off petty heists with his old friend Joe Barbaro, to climbing to the top of the criminal ladder and becoming a made man. You share his journey, which makes the important moments in his life more meaningful. You feel like you re experiencing them through him.Lincoln Clay s story has a promising start. He plans to move to California after his homecoming for work, but is reluctantly drawn back into a life of crime. Then something happens in the story that sets him on a path of revenge, and suddenly his character becomes completely one-dimensional. His motivation becomes killing the man who betrayed his family, and that s about it.Vito is, in many ways, just as driven as Lincoln. But he has other dreams too. Early in the game, when he s still a low-level crook, you drive past the suburban houses of Greenfield and he daydreams about living there one day. Then, later, when he s risen in the ranks and made some money, he realises his dream and buys one, and you feel a sense of pride. It s a relatable, human moment; Lincoln s single-minded quest for vengeance is not.Mafia II is full of humanity. You re playing as a ruthless criminal, sure, but there are moments of genuine warmth. There s nothing in the new game as memorable or charming as Joe and Eddie Scarpa drunkenly singing Dean Martin s Return to Me as Vito drives them home, and realising, to their dismay, that they don t know the words to the Italian verse.

And the fact that they just buried a body minutes earlier is another thing Mafia II gets right. This contrast of the brutal, ugly side of crime and the humour and friendship of the characters is a hallmark of the best crime fiction, from Goodfellas to The Sopranos. You love these guys in the same way you root for Tony Soprano, despite the fact that he s done some horrible stuff. In comparison, Mafia III is a bleak and largely humourless revenge story that, for the most part, takes itself far too seriously.Then there s the setting. The idea of a game with a black protagonist being set in a racially segregated city is, again, a great concept. But the execution doesn t live up to the strength of the idea. New Bordeaux is a dreary, lifeless place painted in murky shades of brown. With the exception of the distinctive French Ward, it s visually and architecturally uninspiring, and fails to evoke the time period as effectively as Empire Bay.Mafia II s city is a stylish mix of Chicago and New York that sidelines realism in favour of capturing the romantic image of a great American city, and we get to explore it in two superbly realised time periods. The game begins in the winter of 1943, and the snow-covered streets are incredibly atmospheric. Military planes fly overhead reminding you that World War 2 is still raging, and there s a sense of uncertainty about what the future holds.Then Vito goes to jail, returning to Empire Bay in 1951 to find a city in the throes of sunny, post-war optimism. He watches shiny red sports cars and loved-up young couples through a cab window as Eddie Cochrane s C mon Everybody plays: a stark contrast to the dark, wintry city you explored earlier. And, once again, you share the moment with Vito, having spent the last hour or so in prison with him. It s a wonderful example of scene-setting, and captures the period better than any moment in Mafia III.

There is some nice world-building in Mafia III. I love walking through the French Ward and hearing distant jazz music leaking from the doorways of bars and clubs. A small detail, but one that brings the place to life. Mostly, though, it s one of the most uninspiring virtual cities I ve explored in years, with miles of seemingly identical-looking streets.A result, no doubt, of the pressure to make it bigger than Mafia II. But it really didn t have to be. A smaller, more lovingly crafted game-world is always better than a sprawling, forgettable one. I wouldn t have cared if New Bordeaux was the same size as Empire Bay as long as it was a detailed, atmospheric, and interesting space to play in. As it stands, there s a lot of New Bordeaux to explore, and not a lot to find.

Empire Bay was the same, of course. In fact, one of the main criticisms of Mafia II was that the city was devoid of things to do. But I ve always found that complaint fallacious, because, really, Mafia II is not an open-world game; it s a scripted, linear shooter that just happens to have an extremely elaborate backdrop and some limited freedom. Mafia III, on the other hand, is more explicitly a traditional open-world game in the sense that its missions are scattered around the map and can be accessed at your leisure.Mafia II is linear because it serves the story. It spans years, and having a focused, scripted narrative is the only way to effectively tell such a sweeping tale. Mafia III has a story to tell and an interesting one at that, at least before Lincoln becomes The Terminator but the structure and design of the game betrays it. You spend most of your time in New Bordeaux running between objective markers, taking over rackets and territory, and while you re spending hours doing that, the story is going nowhere.Mafia III s design is, perhaps, a result of critics who claimed the previous game s city was too limited. But by responding to these complaints with a more familiar open-world structure, the story has suffered. If they used the same formula as Mafia II some moments of freedom, but ultimately a completely linear experience the story they wanted to tell might have had a better platform. I might have cared about Lincoln Clay and his quest for vengeance. I might have felt like I was going on, and sharing, a journey with him like I did with Vito. But, alas, I just didn t care.

This week, PC Gamer gets stuck in the past. From beating up racists in the 60s, to fondly reminiscing over World War 2 s varied terrain. (It did have a lava level, right?) Also, what happens when trucks meet physics meets jumping meets streamers? And what s the deal with review scores?

You can get Episode 26: "I miss World War 2" here. You can also subscribe on iTunes or keep up with new releases using our RSS feed.

Discussed: Mafia 3, Battlefield 1, Clustertruck, Slayer Shock.

This week: Samuel Roberts, Phil Savage, Andy Kelly.

The PC Gamer UK Podcast is a weekly podcast about PC gaming. Thoughts? Feedback? Requests? Get in touch at pcgamer@futurenet.com and use the subject line Podcast , or tweet us via the links above.

This week s music is from Mafia 3.

If the third time's the charm, the Mafia series must have started out as one repellent goodfella. The previous two games were multiplatform, so this isn't new territory by any means, but Mafia 3 came out last week and created quite the stir. Initially there was a 30 fps cap, but a patch over the weekend thankfully took care of that problem or did it? Let's look at the essential features for a PC game, how Mafia 3 stacks up, the available settings, and what sort of performance you can expect with several hardware options.

Essential feature check and PC behavior

There are many things that go into creating a game, but when we talk about PC games and in particular, games that push the envelope on graphics quality there are certain items we look for. Here's our feature checklist for proper PC behavior.

Any (graphically demanding) PC game worthy of the name should have the option for an uncapped framerate. Mafia 3 failed this test at launch, but a patch released just a few days later addressed this shortcoming. That of course raises an important question: If the framerate cap could be patched out in just a couple of days of fixing and testing, why was it there in the first place!? It speaks volumes that 2K Games ever thought having a cap on PC was acceptable.

Elsewhere, Mafia does better. It supports all the common resolutions I've checked, including everything from 5:4 aspect ratios like 1280x1024 through common 4:3 and 16:9 options, and up to ultrawide 21:9 stuff like 3440x1440, though it appears some of the HUD elements have issues at 21:9. (I didn't check multi-monitor modes.) V-sync is a toggle, and fullscreen/windowed modes are present (though borderless windowed isn't directly supported). You can also change the field of view (range of 55-90), which combined with resolution support allows the game to render 'properly' at virtually any resolution.

Mafia 3 includes good support for remapping and customizing the controls, but not all mouse buttons can be mapped. You can turn on/off various assist features (like aim and driving assist), and tweak the sensitivity of the mouse and keyboard. Key changes also show up in the in-game cues, so if you change the 'open door' from the default E to F, you'll still get the appropriate overlay. Audio settings are limited to five different volumes (master, music, dialog, SFX, and cinematics), as well as a dynamic range option of low/high. Setting dynamic range to low vs. high didn't seem to make much of a difference, or perhaps I just don't have the ears to detect subtle variations in audio quality.

Worth noting is that the game takes quite a while to load, even on high-end hardware Core i7-5930K and an SSD. I timed it at 27 seconds from launch until the main menu, complete with several unskippable logos for 2K Games, their partners, and a warning to not exit when the autosave is active. Loading into the game world is a bit faster, at around 11 seconds using a slower CPU and a hard drive will increase the load times quite a bit, naturally. Once into the game proper, however, loading scenes are scarce mostly you'll see them when you die and reload.

Having a seamless world to roam around in does increase the system requirements, and here Mafia 3 is a real doozy. The minimum reqs ask for a Core i5-2500K or FX-8120 for the CPU, and an HD 7870 or GTX 660 graphics card. I suspect the CPU is less of a factor with older graphics cards (more on this later), but don't expect mainstream GPUs from several years ago to run the game well. The recommended hardware consists of a Core i7-3770 or better, and an R9 290X or GTX 780 / GTX 1060 GPU. Ouch.

Graphics settings and impressions

Initially, Mafia 3 struck me as a reasonably attractive game. Of course it could never live up to the concept art hype, but at high quality it looks good and at times great sunsets in particular can be quite pretty. The game also includes an active day/night cycle, which generally means global illumination is required, and depending on how it's implemented it can really tax your hardware.

What sort of knobs and dials can you tweak to make the game run more smoothly? Not many, actually besides the usual resolution, V-sync, fullscreen toggle, and the fps limiter, Mafia 3 has just nine items to tweak, and four of those don't really count. For example, the screen borders option can be useful if you're running on an HDTV that has overscan by default, but for standard PC displays it's not important.

The global quality preset modifies eight core graphics settings depth of field, ambient occlusion, motion blur, geometry detail, shadow quality, reflection quality, volumetric effects, and antialiasing. Most of the individual settings have Low/Medium/High settings that match to the global preset, with depth of field and motion blur being the only two on/off items.

Several of the settings have almost zero impact on performance: depth of field, motion blur, and geometry detail can be set on/off or low/high as you see fit. Depth of field applies during cutscenes and when using the sniper rifle, motion blur is a post-processing filter that doesn't really change performance, and geometry detail is supposed to increase the object complexity, but in practice on the cards I tested it makes very little difference set it to high and forget about it is my advice, as there are a few instances where it can affect shadows.

The above three images represent the High/Med/Low presets. Medium and High both look pretty similar and the world of New Bordeaux looks quite nice, but even the Low preset looks good it wouldn't surprise me to find out the "Low" setting is basically what you get on a current-gen console. Lighting and reflections are clearly different, but I wouldn't say low quality looks bad I might even argue that without the heavier antialiasing and other effects, the sharpness of the low preset is actually preferable to the other settings. But the water quality is definitely worse, so maybe reflections is one to turn back up if you have spare performance.

In terms of performance, I didn't conduct extensive testing with Mafia 3, but I did run tests using the three global presets, and I did a bit of checking on which of the individual settings have the largest impact on performance. What it comes down to is that there are two major settings that can tank performance: reflection quality and volumetric effects. Three other settings ambient occlusion, shadow quality, and antialiasing can have a moderate (maybe 5-10 percent) influence on framerates, depending on your hardware.

Performance

So how does the game run? Not so great. I can confirm that the game will struggle to hit 60 fps even on high-end hardware, at least if you want to run at the high preset. My test sequence consists of running around the city a bit, climbing into a car, and then driving along a set path. Indoor areas aren't as demanding, but a large portion of the game is spent in the city, and that's where players are most likely to encounter choppiness.

Digging into the specifics, I measured average frame rates of just 41 fps on a GTX 1070 at 1440p high and 4K high cuts that nearly in half. Even at 1080p high, the 1070 only managed 53 fps, while 1080p medium bumped that up to 70 fps, and 1080p low yielded 100 fps. If you have lesser hardware, like a GTX 960 or R9 380, prepare for the worst if you want 60+ fps. A GTX 960 4GB card (R9 380 4GB was similar) scored 50 fps at 1080p low, and that dropped to 32 fps at medium and 24 fps at high.

You want 60+ fps? 1366x768 low got me there, but that's really hitting the bottom of the barrel. Ugh. RX 480 and GTX 1060 let you run 1080p low at around 70 fps, and the R9 390 and GTX 980 should come in at this level as well. Yeah a GTX 980 is going to need to run the low preset (or turn antialiasing, reflections, and volumetric effects to low) to hit 60 fps.

I did a bit of poking around with CPU testing as well, just for good measure. My default configuration is a six-core i7-5930K at 4.2GHz; disabling four of the cores and running as a dual-core 4.2GHz part only dropped the GTX 960 about 10 percent at 1080p low, and 1080p high showed no difference. Faster GPUs are a different matter, however, with the GTX 1070 dropping down to 55 fps at 1080p low and 44 fps at 1080p high. Running a quad-core CPU mostly makes up for the deficit, but clock speed is still moderately important. Regardless, you're not going to hit silky smooth 60+ fps framerates at 1080p high with anything short of top-end hardware like the GTX 1080.

Final analysis and parting shots

So where did things go wrong? New Bordeaux to my eye doesn't look any better than Los Santos from GTA5, but performance is substantially lower you can run 4K very high settings with 4xMSAA in GTA5 and get similar performance to 1080p high in Mafia 3.

Part of the difference may be in rendering effects that don't necessarily have a massive impact on visual quality but cause a big hit to performance, but that doesn't seem to be the only factor. Durante wrote recently about what 'optimization' really means, and why it's not always accurate to label a game as poorly optimized if it's simply a few specific settings that tank performance and for valid reasons.

Volumetric effects and things like contact hardening shadows, screenspace reflections, antialiasing, and more can be seriously demanding. But while Mafia 3 is doing many of those items, it's not doing them particularly well just look at this shot of Lincoln standing under a streetlight. During the daytime things seem to go better, but even then I still have to go back to that other open-world game, GTA5, and ask why this game is so much more taxing on hardware.

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is another recent game that can eat graphics cards for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and come away still hungry. Unlike Mafia 3, it includes many more options to tweak, and the default 'medium' setting is arguably better than Mafia 3's 'high' option. Turn DXMD to 'ultra' and there aren't many PCs equipped to handle the workload, at least not yet. But in that game, I can point to various features and know why they kill performance for only a moderate improvement in visual fidelity. With Mafia 3, the answers are far less certain.

Going back to the original 30 fps cap, the most likely explanation in my mind is that the game and engine were built to achieve that modest (sluggish) goal, and not much more. The CPUs and GPUs I tested are far beyond the PS4 and Xbox One hardware, and even if the low preset does correlate to console settings, the resulting performance is still sketchy at best. The game engine (and story and mechanics, but that's another topic) needs a serious overhaul. To me, it feels like this is less of a badly optimized port and more of a poorly optimized game in the first place.

Lincoln Clay returns from Vietnam in 1968, only to find himself fighting another war on the streets of New Bordeaux, Louisiana. A feud between his adopted family members of the black mob and a Haitian crime syndicate turns bloody, and suddenly his plans to leave his hometown behind for a job in California are put on hold.Clay s violent homecoming and a daring bank heist are the focus of the first few hours of Mafia III, and it s a strong start. The story is fast-paced and cinematic, using stylish editing to jump backwards and forwards in time, reinforcing the setting with evocative 60s music. With tracks from The Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, and The Rolling Stones, they must have spent a fortune licensing the game s soundtrack.New Bordeaux is an analogue of New Orleans, a city that was racially segregated in the 1960s, and Hangar 13 a new studio formed by 2K Games to develop Mafia III hasn t shied away from this. Racial slurs are used with abandon, frequently aimed at Clay. And if you enter a whites only establishment like a bar or restaurant, the owner will angrily confront you and call the police if you refuse to leave.While exploring I accidentally stumbled into a bar on the edge of the bayou, and didn t realise it was segregated until the owner came over and said as much, but in more colourful language. I refused to leave, of course, wanting to test the limits of the game, and he made a dash for the phone. I had to grab him and choke him to death before he alerted the cops.

It s weird seeing one of the most shameful periods in American history reduced to a game system like this, but I m glad Hangar 13 tackled it head-on rather than tiptoeing around it. With a few exceptions, like a gang of yee-hawing cartoon rednecks Clay encounters, the racism feels like it s there because it s a natural part of the setting, not just for shock value.The city itself is a straight-faced homage to New Orleans, not an exaggerated Grand Theft Auto-style parody. There s a good amount of variety, from the colonial architecture of the French Ward to the swampy depths of Bayou Fantom, but the muted colour palette and restrained art design make for a bland and largely forgettable open-world.An unexpected betrayal is when Mafia III begins to lose its way, and the promise of those early hours fades. Clay survives an attempt on his life and embarks on a single-minded quest for vengeance, which involves conquering New Bordeaux district by district until he has enough power and influence to dethrone Italian mob boss Sal Marcano.This is when the racket system comes into play. To claim a district, Clay has to bring down, then take over, rackets run by rival gangs. These include prostitution, drug dealing, contraband smuggling, and other illegal activities. The more you own, the more money you ll earn, and with every racket that falls Clay gets closer to Marcano.Every racket has a Dollar value, and your job is getting that number to zero by killing people, breaking stuff, and stealing money at various locations scattered around the map. Then when you ve caused enough trouble, the boss will be lured out of hiding, giving you a chance to kill him and incorporate his business into your burgeoning criminal empire.

When this was first introduced I enjoyed it. Creeping into gang-controlled territory, quietly stabbing people, slipping money into my pockets, sneaking up on lieutenants and interrogating them, and causing mischief. But then I realised, after completing countless slight variations of the same mission for several hours, that this was the entire game.

The rackets aren t side missions you can dip in and out of at your leisure. It feels like they should be, but the game is actually built around them. Complete enough and you ll unlock the occasional story mission, some of which are genuinely fun, but then it s back to the grind. Driving between boring locations, killing generic gangsters, and occasionally smashing or setting fire to something to drive the value of the racket down.Amazingly, considering the size of the city they ve built, they reuse some locations. You ll clear a warehouse, factory, or strip club of enemies to draw the boss out, then return later to finish him off, and the goons will have respawned often in the same position. It s fairly shameless filler.Honestly, if the rackets were a side mission in another game you d ignore them. They somehow make running a crime empire seem like the most boring, repetitive job in the world. And just when you think you ve made some progress, more open up in the next district, and the tedium continues but this time with a slightly different backdrop.Most open-world games are glorified checklists, but the best ones hide it with variety, engaging missions, and a story you care about. Mafia III just feels like busywork, and the narrative slows to a crawl after a promising opening act. Playing as a black war veteran in a segregated city is a compelling concept, but Clay is a deeply uninteresting character, whose place in the world is more interesting than anything he does or says in it.The slick presentation, impressive facial animation, and solid voice performances fail to disguise the fact that this is a wholly unoriginal and joyless revenge story. It has none of the charm of Mafia II, which at least told its tropey mob story with some personality and enthusiasm. In fact, Mafia III barely feels like it s part of the same series, despite the presence of Vito Scaletta as one of Clay s partners in crime.He recruits three associates to help run the empire, each offering special services that can be used in the field. You can call up Cassandra s mobile arms dealer if you re low on ammo or need to buy new guns, or use Vito s Italian mob connections to hire some armed heavies in a pinch. And when you capture a territory you choose which of the three gets to run it, which can cause conflicts within the group. This is one of the game s best ideas, but overshadowed by the lack of imagination elsewhere.

The repetitive mission structure might not have bothered me as much if the game was more fun to play, or if there were any interesting systems to experiment with. The melee combat has a satisfying crunch to it, but the firefights are about as generic as cover-based shooters get. Vehicle handling, even with the vaguely more responsive simulation mode activated, is frustratingly weightless and slippery. And the AI is astonishingly dumb, with enemies behaving more like confused robots than people.The PC port is pretty bad too. The textures are muddy and the image is curiously blurry, even when set to your monitor s native resolution. The fact that I couldn't hit 60 frames per second with a GTX 970, even on medium settings, suggests poor optimisation. And the aggressive colour grading an attempt to create a vintage 60s aesthetic is way too overpowering. The city can look spectacular at night, especially when it rains, but overall the image quality and the fidelity of the world are incredibly disappointing.The shift away from the Italian mob and the choice to tackle a difficult period in American history was a bold, subversive move especially for a series with such an established, passionate fan base and in that sense I have a lot of respect for Hangar 13. The 60s setting is nicely realised too, with some fantastic world-building helping to establish the era.It s just a shame the game attached to it is so rote, unambitious, and poorly designed. It draws too much water from a very shallow well, repeating the same mission types far too often, and wrapping its story around a territory system that just isn t deep or entertaining enough to support an entire game. Mafia II was criticised by many for being too linear, but I d take that over this aimless parade of dull any day.

I think three updates might be enough for Andy's news article about Mafia 3's 30 frames-per-second lock, so I'm turning over a fresh page, quill in hand, to bring you the news that the promised patch is available to download now. If you've not been following this minor controversy, Mafia 3 launched with a 30fps lock on PC, and there are probably dozens of frothing YouTube videos about that. The developers promised a patch that would allow 60fps play, and whadda ya know, that patch is here.

You can now play Mafia 3 at 30fps, 60fps, or some crazy fps like 227 if you prefer, as there's also an "unlimited fps" option. Oh, you wanted more fps, so say the patch notes; here, have all the fps in the world.

"To select your framerate, just head to the display menu in-game. Just make sure to tailor the framerate settings to the power of your machine. This patch also includes improvements to keyboard remapping, so head to the controls menu to check out the options. Note: this patch resets keyboard mapping to default, so any changes you made to the controls previously will need to be customized after installing the patch."

We'll bring you our review of Mafia 3 soon (PC Gamer wasn't given review code in time for a timely review), but for now, have a read of Andy's impressions of its first few hours.

Mafia 3 is out now on PC, but our review isn t ready. Why? Because 2K only gave us review code yesterday afternoon UK time. Not ideal, but here are some early impressions based on seven hours of play. I quite like it.First, let s talk about the frame rate. As I write this, Mafia 3 is locked to 30 frames per second on PC. The developer says it s aware of this, and that a patch due for release this weekend will fix it, but it s still bewildering. They should have known PC gamers would react badly.But I have, at least, managed to tune it out. At first the controls felt sluggish, in that way games running at 30fps do, but I ve slowly gotten used to it. I don t even think about it anymore, and I m managing to enjoy the game for what it is, rather than the amount of frames it s running at. Of course, as soon as the patch is out I m switching to 60.I loved Mafia 2. Yeah, it was a pretty by-the-numbers shooter, whose open-world was ultimately an elaborate, overly detailed backdrop for a linear action game. But it was a superb period piece set in a beautiful, atmospheric city, and had an engaging story and colourful characters.And my opinion of Mafia 3 is much the same. It s definitely more of an open-world game than the previous one, with fewer scripted missions and more stuff scattered around the map you can access at your leisure.

Still, I m enjoying my time in New Bordeaux, mainly because of the setting. The graphics don t have the high-end sparkle of something like Grand Theft Auto 5, but it makes up for it with detailed world-building, excellent sound design, and some impressive lighting especially in the rain at night.It s an incredibly stylish game too, using cinematic editing and licensed music, Scorsese-style, to reinforce the 60s setting. The story is a pretty standard crime yarn so far, but it s told confidently, and the cutscenes feature some incredible facial animation. Nice to see my old pal Vito back too.The setting throws up some interesting moments in the open-world. I wandered into a bar and was wondering why the owner started hurling racist abuse at me. Turns out it was whites only'. I refused to leave, so he ran off and tried to call the cops. But I managed to choke him out before he did.

Also, on the subject of NPCs, I gotta hand it to this waitress. Scared for her life, but holding that tray like an absolute pro. Give that woman a raise.

A big part of the game is taking over rackets (drugs, prostitution, etc.) which involves a lot of driving around the map beating people up, destroying stuff, and intimidating people. And, for the last two hours, I feel like this is all I ve been doing. After a very plot-heavy first few acts, it feels like ages since I saw the last cutscene or story mission. Hopefully the racket system isn t the whole game.When I saw some early footage of Mafia 3 showing off the stealth and the see-through-the-walls Batman vision, I groaned. But, surprisingly, it s one of my favourite parts of the game. The AI isn t terribly smart, but sneaking around and quietly strangling racist rednecks is really fun. It reminds me ever so slightly of Metal Gear Solid 5, but nowhere near as deep or polished.Mafia 3 isn t the best open-world game I ve played, but it certainly isn t the worst so far. My review, which you can read next week, will be much more in-depth, but I still haven t fully decided what I think of it yet. I know I don t hate it, but I m not sure if I love it either.

Update 3: Update HardererAnother statement on the Mafia 3 website indicates that the promised patch will arrive sooner than we might have expected:

We currently have a patch running here at the studio that includes 30, 60, and unlimited frames-per-second options in the video menu, among other improvements for the PC version of Mafia III. We re verifying the patch now to ensure everything is working as expected. If everything goes well, we expect the update to go live this weekend. We will be keeping the PC community up-to-date on the status of the patch throughout the weekend and thank you for all the feedback!

Update 2: Update HarderA statement on the official Mafia 3 website acknowledges that at launch, Mafia 3 will run at a maximum 30 frames per second on all platforms. The statement mentions that the studio is at work on a patch "that will give players the option to play Mafia 3 at higher framerates." Here's the statement in full:

We know how important having options that best suit your PC s performance capabilities are. The team has been hard at work ensuring that Mafia III s performance is consistent across all platforms, and right now the game runs at a solid 30 frames-per-second. We are currently working on an update for PC that will give players the option to play Mafia III at higher framerates. We ll share more details about the update, and when you can expect it to arrive, very soon. In the meantime, the team welcomes feedback and would like to hear from you about what performance adjustment options are important to you. We re actively considering a number of additional post-launch improvements on PC that would give players more control over how they can tailor the game s experience to suit their rig s performance. It s been an incredible journey developing Mafia III and we couldn t be more excited to get the game in your hands and hear what you think!

Update:Nvidia's latest game ready driver is out now. But even after updating the frame rate is still stuck at 30. I've also been searching for any files to tweak to uncap the FPS, but no luck so far.

Our original story is below:

We received Mafia 3 code this afternoon, and I've started work on the review. But I noticed that the controls felt kinda sluggish, before realising that, if my Fraps readings (and my eyes) are correct, the game is locked to 30 fps.

I thought maybe my PC just couldn't handle it, so I shifted down 720p and the lowest graphics settings, but it was still locked to 30. I'm running a GTX 970, an i5-6600K overclocked to 4.5GHz, and 16GB of RAM, which should be more than enough. And it still happens when I disable the in-game vsync option.

So yeah, not great. Whether this is something that'll be fixed in a day one patch, or will be sorted via a forthcoming graphics driver update, remains to be seen, but as it stands it feels like Lincoln is trudging through sludge as I walk around the (very pretty) city of New Bordeaux.