Act 3 Missions

Swaying the Balance

Act 3. How far we've come. Plot-wise, this is the point where we take the fight directly to the usurpers of our throne as we come back to Portland and start setting up our operations there.
While we've already had a few difficulty spikes, this is where the overall difficulty level doesn't know what it wants to be anymore. For whatever reason we return to menial jobs, with the occasional stinker that's either exceedingly boring or annoying. Get ready for trial and error gameplay, painfully long sequences, and questionable mission design choices where the thesis statement wasn't "let's make a challenge" but "let's make this one feel cool".

#48 — Getting Deeper

🎥 No gameplay, actually! This is just a cutscene mission.

Joey kicks off the third act by showing up at the doorstep of Luigi's Sex Club 7 and... asking Luigi for a job. The club owner says that if Toni were to find out about that, he'd kill them both, to which Joey replies that they can just keep quiet about it, no one has to know about him weaseling his way back into Portland. He must be really missing his old pal (or really itching to work at a strip club). As Luigi keeps refusing, saying that Toni has his spies everywhere, three Mafia goons with shotguns enter the scene — they admit to being a death squad sent by Toni...

...but they don't carry out his order. Joey steps towards them and gives a brief speech about how he recognizes these guys as the old guard of the Leone Family, who — in turn — recognize Joey as the rightful heir to the family after Salvatore's death. The leader of the trio says that according to tradition Toni had the full right to take over, but Joey replies that it was the decision of Salvatore himself to have Joey inherit his role as the Don, and Toni is just an usurper. I'm almost certain there's a great nepo-baby joke in there somewhere.

Joey asks the three goons to take his side as he swears that Toni will get what's coming to him, and he kinda just rolls a natural 20 because the guys go "well, okay, we're in" with no further convincing being necessary. After that, we kinda... get Luigi's Sex Club 7 as a property. Guess he must've been moved by that little scene and decided to also join our side or something, complete with taking us on board in his club.

#49 — Get To Work

As the legendary philosopher Britney Spears once said: "you better work, bitch". Luigi gives us a simple task: bring the girls to the club. Our task is to pick up 3 ladies and drive them to the club. They're not even really spread around the city and all of them honestly would've been able to just walk to the destination on foot, but I guess we needed to do something to pad out the mission count.

Wait a second, why are we back to doing regular low-rank goon shit anyway?

Reward: $1,000

#50 — No Friends

Not that pimps are noble individuals by any stretch of the imagination, but Luigi turns out to be a pretty nasty one towards his girls. One of them found a guy and has been sleeping with him, separate from the whole prostitution thing that's going on. Apparently the mission title is the club policy, as Luigi's task for us is killing the girl's lover and bringing the girl herself to the club. Jesus. We sure picked one interesting individual as an ally with this one, haven't we?

The girl and her lover are at Greasy Joe's Diner under the Callahan Bridge. Once you arrive there, you might realize the two NPCs out front were spawned by the mission since regular pedestrians aren't scripted to stand there and have conversations like that. Indeed, they are the lover's friends, who will turn hostile and open fire from their Tecs once you start shooting. The bartender is also an enemy to look out for, and he will similarly open fire once you do. He's armed with a shotgun, meaning he'll knock you to the ground if you weren't expecting him. Make sure not to kill the girl in all of this, as your objective in all of this is to bring her back to the club alive.

Reward: $2,000 and an icky feeling

#51 — Booby Trap

Luigi's not in, but he's left us a letter and one more job: he wants us to bring him a certain car. Take a wild fucking guess what this mission's title means.

Once we enter the marked Banshee located at the end of the most distant dock in Portland, Joey starts reading a letter. It's not made clear if this is a different letter or the same one we were given over at Sex Club 7. If it's the same one and for some reason we've held back on reading it until we were in the car, that would make the mission's premise hilariously idiotic because the literal first line of the letter is "Hi Joey. The car is a bomb". and none of this would've happened if we'd just read it before entering the vehicle.

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. The letter follows with an explanation that the bomb is tied to the car's doors and its speedometer, meaning we'll die if we try to exit the car or make its speed drop below a certain level. However, we are being given a way out for some reason: the bomb will deactivate if the car reaches a certain point located in Harwood. And the letter is signed by Toni, meaning Luigi only set us up but didn't orchestrate this entire plan.

Mechanically, we're looking at a copy of VC's "Publicity Tour" except more deranged. The detonation meter starts working roughly after the time it takes us to leave the pier and does not let down from there. While sustained accelerated driving will slightly lower the meter, you'll find that even letting go of the gas pedal is enough to make it start going up. The only way to defuse the mechanism is to get to the point marked on the radar. Our destination is next to the Head Radio Headquarters, in the middle of the final intersection right before the underwater tunnel, below the el-train station. Your only feasible route there is just straight forward, going on the outer road that wraps around Portland. Essentially, you are at the mercy of traffic, and this mission is perhaps the biggest test of your driving skills as you have to handle a sports car on snow-covered roads.

Once we make it to the defuse point, the detonation bar will freeze (though it will stay on the screen for the rest of the mission). Our final objective is to go to Sex Club 7 and confront Luigi about the car being a trap. His defense is that he did not know about the bomb and was simply told he'd be paid for telling Joey to pick that car up. If that's not good enough for you, you're out of luck because Joey's already forgiven Luigi and is now setting his sights on Toni directly, saying something about "a final hit". Oh well.

Rewards:
— $8,000;
— The ability to collect revenue from Sex Club 7 using a pick-up in front of the building;
— A grim realization that Luigi can probably be outwitted by a carrot on a stick.

#52 — Home Sweet Home

The mission begins with a shot of Sex Club 7's front entrance, where Joey announces his plan to Mickey and Luigi: it's time to take Toni out. We know he's hiding in Salvatore's mansion, so the plan is to storm the mansion directly. Mickey says that he and Luigi will focus on quietly eliminating Toni's loyalists and offers weaponry hidden at the restaurant, while Luigi offers the advice that Joey should bring some men along due to the mansion probably being heavily guarded. Joey obviously refuses because he wants to personally see the fear in Toni's eyes, as he himself puts it. And so begins the attack.

Going in through the front gate is the absolute worst decision you can make. That path is blocked by a car and guarded by two goons with M16, not to mention this is obviously Saint Mark's so wild Mafia spawns will start shooting you on sight, which will result in your death either directly (by dealing constant damage from unexpected angles) or indirectly (by distracting you from bigger guns). My advice is to actually go behind the buildings at the top of Saint Mark's, on the rocky shelf overlooking the beach. This path gives you cover from the two guys at the gate and doesn't have any random spawns on it, letting you kill the guards one by one at your own pace.

With the lead-up path cleared out, it is time to enter the mansion itself. As we step inside, we are approached by Leo Muscaletti, that guy who's the right-hand man for Toni. We briefly exchange words with him, but before we can present our lead counter-arguments, Leo kinda just runs away deeper into the mansion and our task becomes clearing out the remaining goons in the building. If you still have some flamethrower ammo, you can do a funny just like back in "End of the War" and blast fire through the walls of this interior.

Once you've killed all the enemies, you'll be treated to an outro cutscene to the mission. Mickey and Luigi, along with a bunch of Leone loyalists, arrive to see the results of your assault on the mansion. Joey says that Toni wasn't actually here, and we ran into Leo but he managed to escape. Anywho, the balance has shifted in our favour: we've reclaimed our father's mansion, and Toni has been forced into hiding. And if we want to put an end to his schemes once and for all, we're going to need all the info we can get.

Rewards:
— $10,000;
— Leone Mansion becomes a safehouse;
— The Mafia is no longer hostile;
— New outfit is available at the Leone Mansion.

Triads (Portland)	Diablos (Portland)	Yardies (Staunton)	Hoods (Shoreside)
#53 — Sniper on the Roof	#57 — Diablos	#61 — Tail	#65 — The Job
#54 — Help from Nowhere	#58 — Getting Traitors	#62 — Latest News	#66 — Pain in the Cops' Ass
#55 — Junk Riddance	#59 — A Plumbic Meal	#63 — L.C.P.D.	#67 — Evidence
#56 — Chinatown Massacre	#60 — The Last Date	#64 — Inner Circle Mash	#68 — Kamikazi

The missions are numbered in accordance to the mission list. However, you do not necessarily have to do the missions in this order; you can handle the mission strands in whatever fashion you choose.

Time to start asking around until a icon appears on the radar. Once it does, you can keep doing gang missions or jump into the final parts of Joey's pursuit of revenge.

#53 — Sniper on the Roof

Joey pays a visit to the fish market in Chinatown and chats up one of the Triad merchants with a password which he apparently knows from somewhere. The Triad member recognizes the password and asks Joey what his business is, to which he replies that he is looking for jobs to do. The Triad goon offers us a gig: he's going to be meeting someone today, and he expects the person in question to be trying to dodge paying their debts again. We are to act as a sniper and take out the debtor.

Our sniping position is the roof of the building where we pick up a flamethrower for "Trial By Fire" in the standard III. Keep in mind that this mission desperately wants you to play the role of a sniper, so getting off that roof will actually fail the mission.

The debtor is walking in a circle around the Triad... menacingly. Safe to say the talk didn't work out because our immediate objective is to kill the guy. Once we do, we'll get a cutscene showing two cars full of the guy's friends coming up to the Triad goon to kill him as revenge for their friend's death. Keep firing at the targets and don't let them kill our precious VIP. You'll pass the mission once you take out all the attackers.

Reward: $1,000

#54 — Help from Nowhere

The Triad member congratulates us on a job well done and offers further work. He claims that someone blew up their fish factory — wonder who could've done it — so now they have to move their stuff to a new warehouse.

Once you get to their old lock-up (which is the same warehouse used by Vincenzo Cilli in LCS), you'll be told that the Colombians are pretty pissed with the Triads for letting the factory get destroyed again, which I'm not sure how they're responsible for that, but okay. A Triad goon will drive the truck to its destination — the Raffles Fish Factory next to the Portland el-train station where you stop to meet Chico during III's "Chaperone". Your task is to clear the path by killing all Cartel members trying to destroy the truck, so basically it's a rehash of III's "Escort Service". The truck takes the shortest route through the city, and the Cartel goons will focus their attention solely on the truck, letting you kill most of them by just running them over. Each one of them can easily be spotted by the fact that they are spawned in by the script before the surrounding pedestrian NPCs do.

Reward: $2,000

#55 — Junk Riddance

One bad deed deserves another. The Triads want payback for the attempt at destroying their operation. The Cartel is trying to salvage their remains of the operation from a storage near the destroyed fish factory. We are asked to kill all the goons there and crush a car containing the product in the city crusher. Explosions are a no-no, and so is drowning the car — it's gotta be done by the crusher.

The tall building next to the Callahan Bridge has been repurposed into an interior here, entered from the south. Be warned that it is a very tall one, so once you take care of the guys on ground level, carefully look up and take care of the remaining 5 Cartel goons standing on the catwalks. Once that's done, you'll just have to drive one of the Cartel Cruisers to the crusher north of Saint Mark's. It's just a formality as the game doesn't even spawn any sort of chasing enemy to make the drive at least a bit harder or something.

Reward: $3,000

#56 — Chinatown Massacre

The jig is up: the Triad member addresses Joey by name and explains that he wasn't the only one to try and convince them to make an alliance, with two of Toni's men walking in lockstep with Triad goons. As we become surrounded from all three angles in the market, our former Triad contact declares that his gang refuses to associate themselves with any Leone, and a shootout ensues.

Our only objective besides surviving the ambush is killing those two goons working for Toni. They do not participate in the shootout themselves and are immediately running away in two different directions. The Triads pose a relatively small threat, especially if you came prepared with full health and armor, as they're only equipped with pistols. Once you kill Toni's goons, the mission concludes. The Triads don't seem to turn hostile though. Maybe they prefer ceasefires to alliances.

Reward: $1,500

#57 — Diablos

Joey's next ally candidates are the Diablos street gang. He begins the negotiations by immediately questioning their tough guy reputation to one of their members. The response is that if we want to prove ourselves to be worthy of joining their tough guy posse, we are to deliver a car without any scratches. Shouldn't be a problem considering we've done much worse crimes.

The objective is a Diablo Stallion located in a backlot not too far from Joey's Autos. Once you enter the car, drive back to the Hepburn Heights housing projects. However, do not drive directly into the marker. Instead, drive in and position the car's front facing the exit from the courtyard, because — surprise, surprise! — now we need to complete a checkpoint course! The timer starts ticking in the middle of a pager message letting us know we're now supposed to complete this trial. Luckily it's just a ride around the Red Light district, but the timer is still surprisingly tight on this one. Haul ass on the straights, but don't forget to take the few corners properly, and you'll have the Diablos' respect in the bag!

Reward: $2,000

#58 — Getting Traitors

Our new friend in the Diablos — or at least a gangmate of our friend — very casually states that there are some traitors within the gang and he asks us to check the docks. This oddly specific instruction turns out to have been a trap — not only do we not find anyone, but the Diablos are now actually trying to block our way out of the docks. Depending on your arsenal they might not even pose any threat at all. Naturally our next objective is to get revenge and kill the asshole who set us up like that. He's at the el-train station in Hepburn Heights. If you have an RPG, you don't even need to walk up the stairs, you can just fire at the station and the splash damage will kill him on the spot.

Reward: $1,000

#59 — A Plumbic Meal

Our next meeting with the Diablos... doesn't actually happen. We just kinda stand there and wait through the cutscene. However, once it finishes we get a pager message presumably from our Diablo friend apologizing for having been unable to meet us in Hepburn Heights. We are instead invited to grab a Diablo Stallion and meet him in Atlantic Quays. Once we get to the warehouse from III's "Chaperone", it turns out that the Diablos do have a traitor problem! We are treated to a rehash of VC's "Trojan Voodoo", with us following a convoy into battle and staying in formation. Thankfully the ride is short: we just need to get to the parking lot of Greasy Joe's Diner under Callahan Bridge. Once there, waste all 7 traitorous Diablos and that's it for this mission!

And in case you were wondering, "plumbic" is a chemistry-related term referring to the presence of lead.

Reward: Up to $3,000 depending on the amount of surviving allied Diablos

#60 — The Last Date

This friend of ours is very bad at acknowledging our presence. Once we catch his attention, he drops one hell of a revelation: the traitors are in cahoots with the Italians. Gasp! My only guess is that they're Toni's Italians, not "our" Italians. Our job is to go to their meeting spot and kill everyone. The spot is in a new area inside the alleyway with a bribe star pickup. Kill everyone and... that's it. Quite an underwhelming end to this gang's mission strand if you ask me.

Reward: $3,500

#61 — Tail

Joey arrives in Staunton Island to see what the Yardies have in store. He yells at a Yardie who's just walking down the street and pretends that he's a new member of the gang. The guy kinda just... believes it and starts to complain about their leader having been acting suspicious recently. Joey must've put all of his skill points in Charisma or something because we're given the task of figuring out who the Yardie boss has been talking to. And to that end, we're going to have to tail him.

This is probably the mission I point towards the most often whenever the topic of bad design in video games comes up. When you get to the indicated spot, you will be treated to a cutscene of an NPC leaving the Staunton Island City Hall. Your task is to follow this unmarked walking NPC without getting spotted until he reaches his destination. This takes approximately 5 real life minutes.

There isn't much to say about this mission and yet there is so much to say about this mission. The stealth mechanics follow the ones introduced in mission #37, "Plan 1", which means the target has 180 degree vision, and his detection depends on whether he has line of sight relative to the direction the model is facing. There is no grace period or spook-o-meter like in San Andreas; the moment you're spotted, you instantly fail the mission. The path of the Yardie leader has him cross the street, walk along the diagonal path under the Callahan Bridge, then take a left into the lot with the two destroyed skyscrapers we visited during mission #23, "In the Destruction". It's not a long path by itself, but the NPC's agonizingly slow walking speed is sure to make you question if it's all even been worth it.

My advice is to stay on the east side of the diagonal road's divider, only jumping onto the divider from a traffic car's roof once the Yardie leader has already walked off the road and onto the lot. The range we have to be within to avoid failing the mission is fairly lenient. The only thing to look out for is any sudden unscripted turns he might take when trying to pathfind around a pedestrian.

Once our target reaches his destination, a cutscene reveals that Toni's men have already gotten to the Yardies before we did. Great. If it's any consolation, originally the length of the NPC's path in this mission was almost twice as long and led into the back alleys behind Staunton Island's Ammu-Nation.

Reward: $1,000

#62 — Latest News

Our apparent Yardie contact congratulates us on a job well done and tells us to kill the drug dealers that the boss has been doing some business with. It's not clear (nor is it probably important in the first place) whether he was a client or a partner in crime. Either way, we talk to three people and apparently override whatever deal it was that they all had with the Yardie boss. That's... it.

Reward: $1,500

#63 — L.C.P.D.

So it seems like the Yardies are doing some house cleaning thanks to our actions. A new problem came up though: the old leader has been arrested, and getting rid of him will be borderline impossible while he's in police custody. Arguably you could just leave him there, but on the other hand that invites a cycle of revenge and okay maybe it does make sense to get rid of him altogether.

We need to get a cop car. How you get your hands on one is entirely up to you, but once you do, your destination is near the payphone where you normally pick up Yardie missions in standard III. Once there, you'll get a cutscene of two cops escorting the Yardie leader into your car, only to immediately realize that you're not a cop and call a 3 star wanted level on you. You can leave the car without failing the mission, so you can either lose the heat through bribe stars or through switching cars and going into a Pay'n'Spray. Once your wanted level is gone, head to Ammu-Nation to close out the mission.

Reward: $3,000

#64 — Inner Circle Mash

Time for — dare I say it — the most interesting concept present in the gang missions. Not necessarily the best, just the most intriguing one. The strongest member of the Yardies has put forward a challenge, and the Yardies are set on removing their old leader through dethroning him in a duel of honour. However, Toni's faction has learned of this and seemingly decided to get some petty revenge on the old leader for his incompetence. Our role is to watch over the fight and ensure that no one else but the challenging Yardie lands the killing blow on the gang's boss.

The fight takes place in the parking lot used in III's "Kingdom Come", with Yardies standing in a literal circle and setting the ring for the fight. The mission will keep spawning Mafia goons to interrupt the fight. You might actually be better off using an AK instead of the sniper rifle given to you by the script. Once the old leader's HP has been drained to 0 by a melee attack, the mission ends and presumably some things about the Yardies change in our favor.

Alternatively, instead of doing what the mission wants you to do and being the lookout, you can jump down to a Stinger on the parking lot and run the boss over by yourself. The mod's script checks for every single weapon type's damage, but does not account for environmental damage such as drowning or being run over by a car.

Reward: $100 per each surviving Yardie member

#65 — The Job

Just a quick side note: don't confuse this one with the repeatable race available from the payphone!

We show up at the housing projects in Wichita Gardens asking for a job, only to get immediately recognized as Joey Leone. Our daring protagonist decides to bluff that we just ended up needing work, so our new contact within the Hoods — a member of the Red Jacks faction — straight up tells up that they're gonna be robbing a convoy, with the Jacks and the Purple Nines working together instead of their typical bickering. Our job, predictably, is assisting with the heist.

The gig is happening at the bridge connecting Pike Creek and Cedar Grove. You must kill the cops guarding the armored van without letting any of the Hoods die. Once you take control of the truck, the mod points you towards the garage that normally belongs to your safehouse in standard III; that is the intended drop-off point for the truck. However, the mod also offers an AMO for this mission, which is to let the Hoods take the cops' attention off of you by causing trouble of their own elsewhere. Your wanted level will progressively drop on its own, meaning if you're able to just drive around the block in Wichita Gardens, you can easily get the bonus reward. Not that you'd be needing it at this point in the game though.

Reward: $2,500
AMO: $5,000 for finishing with 0 wanted stars

#66 — Pain in the Cops' Ass

This time it's our turn to run the distraction. This mission is painfully simple: get a 4 star wanted level and survive at it for 3 minutes. Not even remotely a challenge if you do as little as entering your safehouse, where the cops can't path into. Meh.

Reward: $3,000

#67 — Evidence

Whatever the Hoods were doing off-screen in the last mission ended poorly. Everyone who survived is now on edge, Jacks blaming Nines and the other way around. However, our contact claims that there's some evidence stored in a plane which will exonerate all Hoods and prove none of them were at fault. The catch is that the plane is being guarded by the cops. This mod's plot is more digestible when you spend as little time questioning its rationale as possible. Anyway, we need to retrieve the evidence and bring it to the Hoods' meeting before the tension gets too high and things escalate to shooting. It's just a timer disguised as a bar, but honestly I kinda like the framing device of a patience meter.

The plane in question is a Dodo located at the Francis International Airport, logically. Once you enter the plane, you'll get a 4 star wanted level. The final challenge of this mission is getting to the meeting place — a backlot in Pike Creek — before the patience bar runs out without getting obliterated by the cops.

Reward: $3,500

#68 — Kamikazi

As a closer to the gang missions saga, the Jacks and the Nines will be holding a meeting to discuss the future of the Hoods. However, our contact within the Hoods has learned that someone might be trying to crash the meeting... using suicide bombers in rigged cars. Yeesh. Head to the parking lot at the uphill zigzag between Wichita Gardens and Cedar Grove. Your targets are a bunch of sports cars, some coming from up above and some coming from the bottom road. Destroy them before they ram their cars into the meeting spot. Once all the cars are dealt with, you'll get a lengthy pager message telling you that the Hoods have figured out who's behind the attack and they'd like you to take the bastards out.

Your targets are in one of the backlots in Pike Creek. They are three Hoods members talking to one of Toni's goons. Funnily enough, these guys did not think to find a spot that couldn't be attacked from above, so you don't even have to drive into the backlot and can instead terminate them with grenades or just plain ol' rifle fire. With all of these jokers dealt with, thus concludes the final mission of the gang missions segment!

Reward: $5,000

If you've been following the order of missions described in this article, then the only thing left for you is the finale! Time to finish this once and for all!

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