At full throttle

Faster, Baby! is the first of three expansions intended to enrich the map and the history of Mafia III, a title that although not reaching the heights of its predecessors does not lack several advantages, starting from a narrative component much higher than the average of the open world .

 

The approximately 10GB of data to download for the Steam version of the game include a new town, new vehicles, slow-motion driving modes, missions entirely dedicated to the four wheels , possibility to launch grenades from the car, proximity mines and an important patch, accompanied by a demo.

Faster, Baby! it is the first expansion of Mafia III and focuses on the four wheels to give a show

SIMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

From the first to the third Mafia something has been lost, above all from the point of view of artificial intelligence and the uniqueness of the missions, but the last incarnation of the series has however conquered us with a crossive narrative involving and full of facets ranging from racism to the most raw anecdotes about the Vietnam war.

At full throttle
At full throttle

Scenes of film interlude, charismatic characters, models of excellent workmanship and quality Italian dubbing close a more than valid picture, net of obvious technical problems. Problems that have been partially addressed with a patch released together with

 

Faster, Baby! which, also available through the € 29.99 Season Pass, widens the game map to the southwest, towards Sinclair Parish, an entire town that extends over a rather large area, almost equal to that of the great swampy bayou of New Bordeaux.

 

Prey to the most unrestrained corruption, the new area is a perfect hunting ground for Lincoln Clay, the tormented antihero that we find here in his most civilized version, in spite of the bloodiest of the Mafia III finals.The opportunity to make money is not lacking, thanks to a rebellious genius and his grass trafficking, but the main goal is to eliminate the real bad guys,

 

those who have sold the soul for a bribe. The leader of the latter is Walter Beaumont, head of the racist and violent police who has overcome the limit by murdering a civil rights leader and represents an opportunity for gluttonous redemption.

 

Nevertheless Lincoln remains a criminal, one that solves the problems with the lead and the blade, relentless though characterized by important nuances that give us back all-round antihero. To change, at least in part, is the action with an expansion that despite being focused on the narrative dimension magnifies the importance of cars.

 

Once set up the simulation guide to add pepper and drift to our adventure, we launched explosives in the running, smashed tons of objects to distract the police and tackled the dozens of ramps that is full Sinclair Parish using the new driving in slow motion that allows face high speed corners and extreme maneuvers with greater precision.

FASTER, BABY!

The novelties enrich the Mafia III gameplay but, excluding the proximity mines, stand out only during the four-wheel missions of the expansion, those that finally call into question the vehicles, while we are chased by tons of policemen and while the machine gun of the future

 

Roxy throws tons of lead from the sturdy Nightcrawler’s passenger seat. Between destruction, explosives and barrels to be rolled in the middle of the road, the fireworks show is remarkable and it is in these situations that the star of Faster, Baby! it becomes brighter. But it does not take long for some clouds to go back to darkening it.

At full throttle

The new patch seems to have solved some bugs, but it still happens that the missions are blocked and we are faced with enemies that are perhaps more evil, but certainly are not smarter.

 

The opponents continue to approach unwary at every corner, often without noticing corpses left in plain sight, and continue to be awkward, even driving, compromising the degree of challenge. We do not regret the return of the flashbacks that tell us some backstage creating a criminal biopic atmosphere that increases realism and involvement of the experience. Intermezzo scenes, however, are shorter and less incisive and culminate in a final far from exciting.

 

However, the first hour of play offers us some interesting ideas, the spectacular missions mentioned above, a couple of exchanges not bad with Roxy and a bad rather interesting though managed in a way too hurried. Then we return to the classic missions structure, with the police becoming a racket to be dismantled with targeted interventions, impoverished by some mechanics but enriched by the herbalist’s

 

dynamics that allows us to spend points to improve the growth and variety of the grass for our new racket. And it is just as we begin to test our green thumb that everything ends, with a fire fight a bit ‘more demanding than usual, after just a couple of hours of play to take it easy. Really little in relation to the genre, especially in the face of the lack of real technological innovations and in front of some not too well-kept dialogue, also from the point of view of animations