Reposted from my steam review.
Mafia 2 Jimmy’s Vendetta is the second DLC for Mafia 2. It’s also the same as the other two DLCs. The first DLC is the Betrayal of Jimmy, an awful DLC which was for PS3, at launch. It really showed the limitation of the Mafia 2 game. There was one additional cutscene, and just am multitude of repetitive missions.
Jimmy’s Vendetta is the same. There’s a slight improvement in that this DLC has achievements, but even that is done poorly.
The first problem with the DLC is it takes free roaming and just keeps the entire game there. You get at most three missions (each has to be completed before you get to the next set of missions). You get a small blurb before each mission and have to complete it. Do that 30 times and you’re done. The problem is there’s no consistency. You play missions that range from shooting all the italians, to shooting all the Irish. Every once in awhile you get a mission to steal a car, and drive it to a garage, which offers almost no challenge, even the timer is lenient.
The problem is none of this is relayed to the player except by a simple screen telling the player what they have to do. Not a story, not a narrative, a simple goal. Your main character doesn’t even narrate anything, which could have helped.
The majority of mission is just “kill everyone’ once in awhile you’ll get a mission to kill three groups of enemies, or blow up different trucks, but none of this changes the flow. Go to a location, kill a target (or everyone) and leave.
There’s not much to really talk about, however there is one thing that should be mentioned. Achievements. While this DLC has achievements, there’s one that deserves special mention. “Drive 1000 miles”... By the time I was done with the game, I drove 88 miles. Over the course of 6 hours. Now assuming there are cars that can break 120, I’d still have to drive for over 7 hours at top speed (Which would be almost impossible) to even get close to this achievement. That’s a grind on top of a grind. There’s a few other achievements that are equally annoying but that one… I mean jesus, 8 hours of driving almost non stop. Has Penn And Teller’s Magic School bus been topped? No… it hasn’t. It’s not that bad, but still, that’s a special level of challenge.
There’s also a score system (as in the other two DLCs) well… if you really need a score system, go for it, but it’s not really necessary for this type of game, and overall, I don’t think it adds anything but another mindless goal. In DLC that’s already pretty mindless, it’s not really necessary.
The only other thing I’d like to mention is the ending. You finish the DLC by killing the two guys you are after, and then you find out, no they weren’t behind the whole thing, there’s a new random person that was running everything. This is someone who isn’t even mentioned before. So you go take them on and… well again you get the same type of mission, kill them and the game ends. That’s it. There’s no big finale, no special ending. Nothing that is out of character for the DLC (But the lack of story is out of character for this game) and it’s over.
Overall I’m shocked that this is released, but more shocking is that it’s rated somewhat positively on Metacritic. This is a horrible excuse of DLC, and honestly I’m ashamed to own it. While I got it as part of a humble bundle, it’s still not worth the time I put into it (about 6 hours). Oh well. I got a few achievements for my time.
.5