2K’s Mafia series of third-person action games has evolved alongside the more rambunctious Grand Theft Auto franchise as an alternative for more historically minded gamers that prefer The Godfather to The Fast and the Furious.
Mafia III, developed by Hangar 13, is the series’ most ambitious entry yet, setting its story of revenge with an African-American protagonist in the charged environment of the American South in the 1960s. We took a hands-off view of the upcoming open-world action title at the recent E3 convention.
You play as Lincoln Clay, a recently returned African-American Vietnam War veteran who arrives in 1968 New Bordeaux, a crime-riddled southern city modeled on New Orleans. Lincoln finds camaraderie among the black mob, but is soon the sole survivor after the Italian mob betrays and murders everyone but Lincoln, who narrowly escapes. He then sets out to form his own criminal organization and take revenge against the Italians, who have solidified their control over the whole city.
Each of the city’s 10 districts has a distinct flavor inspired by various parts of New Orleans and the surrounding area. These range from the rollicking French Quarter to backwater bayous, to palatial plantations. Each of these districts has its own criminal elements, trafficking sex, drugs, weapons, and political influence. Unseating the Italians and their allies and seizing control over these districts provides an an overarching structure to the game.
Each district has a number of available quests and objectives through which you can chip away at the Italians’ control, such as intercepting shipments of contraband, knocking over an orgy, or taking out a lieutenant. Being fundamentally an open-world game, you have a number of options for how to approach each objective, whether you want to sneak around with a low profile, or come in guns blazing. You can call a mobile arms dealer to wherever you are and buy the exact loadout you need for however you want to approach a given objective.
In practice, the gameplay is very similar to a Grand Theft Auto game, revolving around third-person gunplay in an open environment. Lincoln has access to a wide variety of weapons over the course of the game, for causing mayhem in the sweltering streets. The metagame of controlling districts is what separates Mafia III. Once you’ve done sufficient damage to the Italians’ income in a given district, you seize control over it, reaping the profits for yourself.
Taking control of a district leads to a sit-down meeting with your three underbosses (Burke, Cassandra, and Vito), in which you decide who will have control over your new conquest. Each respective underboss, based on their style of management, will lead to a different income and particular bonus from each district.
Beyond just min-maxing the bonuses you want, you have to consider the feelings of your underbosses as well. For instance, in the demonstration we saw, Lincoln awarded a newly captured district to Cassandra. Burke, however, was sick of being passed over for the last few districts, and left the meeting in a huff. This triggered a storyline about Burke betraying Lincoln and needing to be dealt with accordingly. This layer of dynamic storytelling, driven by the strategic metagame of controlling the city, will help to make each play-through of Mafia III unique.
The moment-to-moment gameplay looked very familiar, as Lincoln blasted his way through a riverboat full of thugs. What will separate it from the pack will be whether the strategic layer of controlling the city presents interesting decisions, and if it can all flow together into the sort of gripping, cinematic narrative that the game promises. The politically charged setting leaves us hopeful that the game could offer up an interesting tale, and not just another excuse for killing sprees.
Mafia III is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on October 7, 2016.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.