Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: 2K Czech
Genre: Action
ESRB rating: Mature
Release date: Available now

As an experiment, let’s take the cover mechanic out of Gears of War and see how it stands on its own as a game. You could also remove, say, the multiplayer component of Halo: Reach, if that’s more topical for you. The point is that some games need that keystone component to really make them stand out, and Mafia II is one of those games. I played the game for the story. If you took that away and gave me just driving from mission to mission, then I could be playing anything from Saint’s Row to True Crime and all points in-between. Or, I could be playing Jimmy’s Vendetta, the second DLC offering for Mafia II.

Oh, you don’t know Jimmy? Well, PS3 owners do, thanks to the exclusive Betrayal of Jimmy DLC they got for free shortly after Mafia II was released. The 360 side of the spectrum gets nothing more than a pretty “here’s the jist” cut scene to fill you in before releasing you into a daring prison escape. Jimmy’s been hornswaggled, to use a period-specific term, and now, free from his confines, is out to get back at all those who betrayed him.

And that’s the whole story right there. You play as Jimmy, but instead of an engrossing narrative full of twists and turns like the main game offered, you get the arcade side of Empire Bay – driving from big spinning icon to big spinning icon, performing kill this or explode that missions, and hoping for a good rating at the end. Yes, you read right; you are rated on your performance in Jimmy’s Vendetta, and you can compare your score with others on the leaderboards, too. Sounds a little out of place, doesn’t it?

Which it is. Don’t get me wrong, because technically speaking Vendetta is cut from the same bolt of cloth as its source. It’s just that I couldn’t help but want for more as each painfully static splash screen gave me my mission objective. I wanted to be…I don’t know…romanced a bit, I guess? Driving – sometimes across the entire city to reach the next mission with nothing but my thoughts and the (thankfully) still awesome soundtrack – felt cheap to me. Jimmy should at least have been mumbling to himself about “those dirty rats.”

Yet, if you can overlook the omission of structure Mafia II is known for, you definitely get your $9.99 worth of game time with Jimmy’s Vendetta. There are around 30 missions, including some rather fun, money making vehicle thefts that actually proved to be more entertaining than the often frustrating “story” missions. An example of this frustration is in one where you are instructed to destroy a local bar, but unfortunately there is no telling how much damage you need to do before the mission is over. You just fend off attackers and hope you don’t run out of ammo or fall prey to a cheap death and have to do it all over again.

I should actually thank Jimmy’s Vendetta because it exposed some of the more unsavory aspects of Mafia II that were otherwise obscured by a good yarn that tugged you along from goal to goal. I could forgive some hang ups with the gameplay just to see what was in store for Vito Scalletta around the next corner. Jimmy, on the other hand, I couldn’t care less about – vendetta or not. The bottom line is that if you played Mafia II for the story and not the gameplay, then you might want to hang onto those MS Points.

Our Score:

Our Recommendation: