Given its pretty open-crimeworld shininess but blah reception, Mafia 3 [official site] seems likely to fall in the category of ‘games to maybe pick up cheap on sale and pootle around over Winterval while clutching our bellies and groaning ‘I should never have drunk all that eggnog”. In which case, you might be interested to know that an update yesterday added races and car customisation. This update comes a month after an update added dressing up, another feature I’d sorta expect to see in a sandbox. But hey, now players can design super cool radcars. … [visit site to read more]

Our John thought Mafia III [official site] was a vast, seemingly unfinished calamity but you might think that he is wholly, objectively wrong. If that s you – happy days. 2K have released an update that gives New Bordeaux s revenger-in-chief a bunch of outfits, some of which you ve already seen if you ve gone through the story and some of which are new. Alongside these new threads, there s some bug fixes and performance improvements and all that sort of thing, you know, the things that matter, blah blah blah. But yes, let s see some outfits. … [visit site to read more]

The Witcher 3 [official site] is the longest game I’ve played for years, or at least the longest game that I’ve actually come close to completing. There was a time when I’d be thrilled to hear about a new fifty or sixty hour epic adventure, very much subscribing to the policy the more the better , but now I’m more likely to flinch away from the screen when a game’s sprawl is revealed.

I’ve realised that my aversion to enormous games has been growing for a while, but the announcement of Red Dead Redemption 2 brought it into sharp focus. Do I really want> yet another massive open world game? I’m not sure that I do.

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I have a terrible confession to make. While, on a weekly basis, I protest about the oft-unchanging nature of these charts, the truth is that a new entry makes me sigh. It means I have to laboriously type out new HTML rather than just copy the links from last week. This means terrible, unspeakable suffering in a week such as this, where there actually are quite a few ‘new’ games. … [visit site to read more]

Here, at last, is our Mafia III [official site] review. Having published two reviews-in-progress over the last week, this is the final version. I’ve still not finished it, because the game is apparently infinity hours long. And it’s a fascinating mess. A vast, seemingly unfinished, calamity, incredible amounts of work routed by its AI, bloated plot and lack of ambition. Here’s wot I think:>

… [visit site to read more]

As it was prophesied, soon it will come to pass. The Steam Charts approach their endgame: where all sales and all pre-order shenanigans converge to ensure that just one game occupies all top ten placements. Soon, there shall be unity. Terrible, terrible unity. … [visit site to read more]

For reasons that are increasingly apparent, 2K chose not to share review code with the press for Mafia III [official site], instead choosing for everyone to be able to buy it before critics could potentially warn them off. Having played the game for many, many hours, here is a second incarnation of my review-in-progress of the crime caper, in a revised and much extended version of my previous coverage. The final review will be later this week.>

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Mafia III [official site] might be a bit of a derivative drabfest, but the focus of ire from PC players has so far been on the lacking elements of the PC port. Framerates locked to 30, weird control mapping, and many crash bugs and dumb-ass AI. At least the first two of these issues have been addressed with a new patch.

… [visit site to read more]

For reasons that are becoming apparent, 2K chose not to share review code with the press for Mafia III [official site], instead choosing for everyone to be able to buy it before critics could potentially warn them off. So it is that we couldn t get our hands on it before you could, and I m playing the game over the weekend to be able to bring you a full review next week. But in the meantime, below is a Review In Progress, my thoughts from the earlier hours of this open-city mafia-me-be, to give you a rough idea of whether this is a something in which you want to sink your pennies. Clearly the below is not a final review of the game, but it sure contains my feelings about the experience so far.>

… [visit site to read more]

No sooner had Mafia III [official site] launched last night than publishers 2K threw up their hands and admitted problems with the PC port. They said they were working on a patch adding options like removing the lock keeping framerates at 30fps, and have since followed up saying that’ll be coming sooner than we perhaps expected: this weekend. They don’t say if it’ll fix other problems like crashes, mind. Our John has experienced one crash during three hours of crimes, which he’s currently committing so he can tell us Wot He Thinks of Mafia III, but some players report more.

… [visit site to read more]