During Take-Two Interactive's financial conference call related to the quarter ended on September 30th, CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked to comment on the reviews received by Mafia III, mentioning that the company and its competitors are seeing anomalies in the reviews system.

"In terms of the reviews and scores... Yeah... There is sort of an odd anomaly, you're right, the scores are lower than we would have liked, but there are a lot of stellar reviews, and I think the most prominent reviewers really loved it, and recognized that what we're doing, from the story, art, characters and excitement perspective is really unmatched in the marketplace.

So I think we and our competitors are seeing some anomalies in the reviews system. We take them as they are, and we don't argue with it, but we do have an enormous number of exceedingly favorable reviews, and most importantly consumers love the title and they're buying it hand over firts, and at the end of the day, that's how we're judged."

For reference, Mafia III is sitting at 62 on Metacritic for PC, 67 for Xbox One and 69 for PS4, but sales appear strong indeed. The game is the fastest-selling game in 2K Games' history, having shipped more than 4.5 million units in its first week.