When you die, you’ll lose half of the money in your wallet – so when the bullets start flying and Lincoln is hurting, the possibility of losing progress and unstashed cash makes a gunfight nail-bitingly tense. You’ll want to call for your consiglierre often so you can stash your cash. Some more expansive missions will require you to choose your cover carefully – maybe even spending some of your ill-gotten gains on restocking your guns, explosives and body armour (courtesy of an arms dealer who you can summon in his orange camper van). Cover-shooting is particularly exciting because your health regeneration is limited to only the health bar you’re currently on – and once one bar gets whittled down, you’ll need to find a medicine cabinet with an adrenaline shot to fully heal. The weapons you’ll wield pack a satisfying punch, which you’ll notice the first time you nail a wince-inducingly splatterific headshot down the wobbly sight of a bolt-action rifle. Mafia III’s meat and potatoes is in the combat.
Helping Lincoln in this task can be entertaining, but just as Lincoln risks losing his soul in an all-consuming quest for vengeance, you might risk losing your interest by just how relentlessly violent his quest is. Now Lincoln wants to take over Marconi’s empire piece by piece. After being shot in the skull and left for dead, Lincoln is set on the well-worn path to revenge. Just as you’d expect, the course of criminality doth seldom run smooth – with him and his friends being betrayed by Mafiosi kingpin: Joseph Marconi. Of course, Lincoln’s trying to put his violent past behind him, but he just can’t help doing a few illegal favours to help out his adoptive family in their hour of need. It’s about the trials and travails of Lincoln Clay – a Vietnam veteran coming home to New Bordeaux (a fictionalized facsimile of New Orleans in the late sixties). Mafia III is something of a misnomer as a title, since it’s not really about the workings of the shadowy Cosa Nostra.