August is here, which means another cluster of PS4, PS3, and Vita games heading in the direction of PlayStation Plus subscribers, this time including open-world crime caper Mafia 3, and multiplayer slasher-rama Dead By Daylight.
Mafia 3, which was described as being “as clever and original as it is tedious and broken” when Eurogamer contributor Edwin Evans-Thirlwell’s reviewed it in 2016, is the first of August’s two PS4 offerings. This most recent Mafia instalment relocates the series’ familiar open-world formula to the New Orleans of 1968, where protagonist Lincoln Clay returns after serving in the Vietnam war. Needless to say, crimes ensue.
Edwin was particularly taken with Mafia 3’s world-building, noting that its city “often genuinely looks and sounds like the product of decades of ethnic struggle and systematised abuse. The portrayal of social division isn’t binary and overt, but intricate, entrenched and unresolved.” Yet the strong narrative and sense of place sadly couldn’t sustain its uninspiring mission design and the “soup of by-the-numbers fetch-quests, outpost infiltration sequences and firefights”.
Source: Eurogamer Mafia 3 and Dead by Daylight lead PlayStation Plus' games for August