Hanger 13 gave the world open-ended crime caper Mafia III, a game that is at once a formulaic GTA-style action game, and an impressive slice of the American South in the 1960s (with a few fictionalised elements letting the team interpret New Orleans a little more loosely). It seemed to do pretty well sales-wise but today the chances of a Hanger 13-developed follow-up appear dim. The studio has been hit with substantial layoffs.

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After five years of not being sold for download anywhere (and long being out-of-print on disc), the first Mafia has returned to sale. GOG this week dredged the digital bay, hauled the crime ’em up out, and chipped off its concrete boots to re-release it DRM-free. This version has an edited soundtrack with the licensed music removed, mind. Presumably music licenses expiring is what got the game pulled from sale back in 2012. I’ve not played Mafia since ooh it was on CD, so I am tempted to see how it feels 15 years after it came out – and after two sequels of varying quality and direction. (more…)

Bundle Stars is offering up some rather nice discounts on a big batch of 2K Games’ finest wares this week, with up to 80% off some selected titles from the XCOM, Borderlands, Civilization and Bioshock series, among others.

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Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.>

I was put off from playing Mafia 3 [official site] by John’s thorough review, which told tales of bugs, bad AI, repetitive mission design and more design flaws. But then a few people I respect kept praising it, for its supposedly exciting combat and its more-ish missions. I finally gave it a try a few weeks ago. (more…)

A kooky cult is now causing trouble in Mafia III [official site] with Sign of the Times, the third of its three big story DLCs. I’m told the Ensanglante are a blood-worshipping cult into drugs and human sacrifice, which sounds like a wild time. Sadly, Lincoln Clay is out to shut them down, investigating their crime scenes using new detective skills then, I imagine, shooting their faces off. The DLC also lets Lincoln rebuild his murdered dad’s bar, which is sweet. Given that Mafia III has gone down poorly, I’d expect this to be the last bit of it. (more…)

A demo for Mafia 3 [official site] has arrived, letting all and sundry in to poke around a Nu Orleans. John’s Wot I Think praised the city and was none too pleased with most of the rest so hey, I’ll welcome a demo to have a look myself.

The first paid story DLC is out today too, for folks who’ve already bought in. Faster, Baby! will send players into a small town to deal with a corrupt sheriff. Antics ensue. … [visit site to read more]

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]