Mafia II - Jimmys Vendetta

Jimmy's Vendetta is a standalone DLC add-on for Mafia II, set in an alternate-timeline version of 1950s Empire Bay. You play Jimmy, a mob enforcer and fixer who was set up by the Gravina Crime Family and the Brodie Gang, sentenced to fifteen years, and then escapes during a prison riot to work through a revenge list that runs from mid-level racket bosses all the way up to Judge Hillwood, the man pulling the strings. On paper, that sounds like it has the bones of a decent crime story. In practice, the narrative is delivered almost entirely through brief text briefings before each mission, and a couple of short cutscenes bookend the whole thing. If you came back to Empire Bay hoping for more of Mafia II's careful characterisation and scripted drama, Jimmy will disappoint you fast. What you actually get is an arcade-flavoured mission set: 22 scored story missions rated one to five stars in difficulty, plus 12 vehicle theft jobs. Every mission is timed and graded on a D-through-S ranking system. Points stack up for headshots, chained kills, car destructions, power-slides and general mayhem, with results posted to online leaderboards. The super-charged car upgrade lets you hit higher speeds than the base game allows, and some of the combat missions, especially the ones built around blowing up vehicles and picking off enemies from cover, use Mafia II's solid gunplay to decent effect. When it clicks, it clicks. The problem is that plenty of missions are just drive-a-truck-from-A-to-B affairs with no interesting wrinkle, and the pacing suffers badly for it. The core complaint that reviewers and players kept coming back to in 2010 still holds up: Mafia II was praised precisely because its restrained open world served the story, and Jimmy's Vendetta inverts that entirely, giving you free roam and a pile of side-mission-style objectives with almost nothing tying them together emotionally. Jimmy himself is a deliberately blank instrument, a professional killer rather than a character you invest in. That works fine as a premise but it means there is no dialogue, no camaraderie, and no reason to care about the scorecard beyond personal competition. There are also some bugs baked in from launch, including the occasional indestructible vehicle mid-mission, that have never been patched out. For completionists who want every corner of Empire Bay explored, or score-chasers who enjoyed the grading system in games like Devil May Cry, there is something here to chase. The runtime lands somewhere between five and six hours for a first playthrough, and the achievement list extends that if you genuinely want to clock 1,000 enemy kills or drive 1,000 miles. Everyone else, including people who loved Mafia II for its writing, should probably look at Joe's Adventures first, since that DLC at least stays tethered to the main game's timeline and cast. Jimmy's Vendetta is a game that does one thing, arcade mob action in a great-looking city, reasonably well, and everything else with visible indifference. Alex, Scout Team