Mafia II's release was clouded by confusion over what "open-world" really meant. Some assumed it meant "sandbox," where Mafia II was anything but. Jimmy's Vendetta, the game's first batch of downloadable content offers more of what some had been expecting.

That means no Vito, no Henry, no Joe Barbaro. Instead you're Jimmy, a former mob hitman who, as the title suggests, got screwed over and is now repaying the favor to two gang syndicates, Irish and Italian. Light on story and heavy on gunplay, car chases and destruction, it's a color negative of the more cinematic main game. Can that bring balance to the title overall?

Loved

All About Action: Jimmy's Vendetta is the sequel to the PS3-exclusive The Betrayal of Jimmy, included free with Mafia II. The game is structed "arcade style," which means at the end of each mission you'll get a grade, a point total and a leaderboard position. You're thus encouraged to replay the missions to beat the score, either by racking up more headshots, combination kills, or finishing more quickly. Disappointingly, you can only replay these missions on the difficulty you selected at the beginning. To play on other levels requires starting over in a new gamesave. But there are 34 missions in all, 12 of them vehicle thefts.

Hated

Eats, Shoots and Leaves: OK, so it's all about action. And serving that is a set of missions whose design, at best, can be called "straightfoward," where "bland" might be less charitable but more accurate. Vehicle theft barely involves much more than just picking a lock and driving the car to a location. Occasionally you'll have to shoot someone. The main missions break down to escort protection, asset destruction and kill everyone, the latter comprising the majority of what you do, and eight of the final nine jobs. The game again spreads them at opposite ends of its large map - and of course, the only place you can buy ammo for the game's more effective guns is at Harry's, requiring constant trips to the extreme northwest end of the map to reload. Forcing you to drive all over the map is neither gameplay nor an invitation to explore.

My Kingdom For A Cutscene: Ripped for being too linear in gameplay, Mafia II was at least defended for its cinematic heft. And it uses none of it in Jimmy's Vendetta. You get two scenes, at the beginning and at the end. This makes the "arcade-style" focus of replaying a mission for a higher score the sole point of the game. If you're really committed to that, this package will provide some value for the $10. If you're playing this to extend the Mafia II story or experience, you're going to be racing through these jobs with not much payout other than a couple of paragraphs on a loading screen.

Jimmy's Vendetta is not a set of missions that extends the story of the main game. It's the side missions that should have been included with the main product in the first place. Instead, Xbox 360 and PC owners are paying $10 to get a free roam mode in a game that was touted as open-world, with the implication that meant plenty to do in it. And instead of starring Vito, who has a narrative, acting, and a story I care about, it's all carried out by some smirking Reno pit boss who just shows up unaccountably and who gets next to no narrative treatment.

Everyone's now going to say that this isn't the purpose of Jimmy's Vendetta because it's an "arcade-style" extension to the game. Fine. Some will get into the challenge of replaying a set of stock missions, shaving down the time it takes to complete them, or racking up points, or whatever. But it's a completely off-key successor to a game that, if it had anything going for it, delivered a strong story, interesting characters and well composed cinematics.

Mafia II: Jimmy's Vendetta was developed by 2K Czech and published by 2K Games for the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on Sept. 7. Retails for $9.99 USD/800 Microsoft Points. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Completed the game.

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Crime game Mafia II is getting its second downloadable add-on called Jimmy's Vendetta.

The DLC follows Jimmy, who is described as "the guy the other guys call when they need to finish the job". Jimmy cleans up the messes made in Empire Bay, and the game features 30 new quests that run the gamut of assassinations to car chases.

Jimmy's Vendetta also has online rankings where players can posts points scored with combos and multipliers.

Priced at $9.99/800 Microsoft Points, Jimmy's Vendetta will be released on the PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade and PC on September 7.

UNICO National, the group representing Italian-Americans upset over the portrayal of Italian gangsters in the recently released Mafia II, have scored a win in their battle against 2K Games' mobster adventure. They claim to have unquestionably pooped 2K's launch party.

Andre' DiMino, spokesperson and man upset by Mafia II, says that the group's protest against the 2K Czech-developed game is directly responsible for the New York launch event being nothing more than "a sparse group of mostly young people."

"I have no doubt our efforts resulted in the Mafia II Launch Party, at the 92nd Street Y's Tribeca Center, being a dismal failure." DiMino continued, "When we first heard about this marketing event only recently, we went into action, using our resolve to challenge an event whose purpose was to mock the Italian American community by promoting the new video game Mafia II."

Alright, maybe not the victory they were originally hoping for—that parent company Take-Two would "halt release of the game and cleanse it of all references to Italians and Italian-Americans"—but no one likes a lame party.

Granted, we didn't attend the Mafia II launch event and "dismal failure" is subjective, especially when it comes to video game launch shindigs, so respond to this claim accordingly.

Morning. The phone rings, I answer. It's Joe, chirping the usual advice. Get dressed and get my gun. I go to the fridge instead for a Master Beer. In the bathroom I flip on the light. I flush the toilet.

None of these actions in Mafia II are from cutscenes, and that is both the novelty and the shame of 2K Czech's long-awaited gangster game noir. Shots and beers are chugged, lights turn on and off, windows open and close, tubs and faucets and the john all run water.

For what purpose? Am I going to hide in the shower and blow away someone from behind the curtain, dripping wet in my suit and hat? Am I going to interrogate a snitch by jamming his head in the commode? Do these things foreshadow any purpose in the game? No, no and no.

Like the staggeringly beautiful architecture making up Empire Bay's landscape, so much of Mafia II's details serve only a cosmetic, background purpose. It's a city that oozes the delightful charm of a richly detailed model railroad. The game's engine, however, steams along a disappointingly short and predictable track that fails all the expectations of depth such features set.

Loved

A Feast For Your Eyes: Mafia II's rich visuals are the game's calling card and provide an inspiration to immerse yourself and even roleplay through the open-ended portions, walking instead of running, buying a beer before you meet your boss. There's no clock on your heads-up display, but there doesn't need to be one: the game's amazing quality of light lets you know the time of day almost to the hour. In the dead of winter you still know it's about 2 p.m. outside the dingy bar where you're supposed to steal a car. In early autumn, you know you've finished a day's work when the action's just beginning. Cars don't just damage, they get snow and grime buildup. Cover, which you'll depend on throughout the game, is nearly always destructible. The sound is perfectly atmospheric. Playing with headphones, many times I thought a far-off siren was coming from my own neighborhood. The immersion this game provides in its set design is both its blessing and its curse, because it leaves you wanting so much more from your experience.

Acting: Rare is the video game whose characters can communicate clearly by facial expression. Those in Mafia II do, through a combination of superb film editing and extraordinarily detailed facial animations. Mob movies depend on subtle and unspoken moments and the ability of this game's rendered characters to meet the emotion of their human actors' lines is a true breakthrough. Vito, the protagonist, gets an award-winning effort from Rick Pasqualone. Games typically get you to care about the main character through the actions you share; I cared about Vito the old-fashioned way, through the acting. Sonny Marinelli's portrayal of Henry Tomasino, who veers from authority to outcast, nearly steals the show and makes you wish the game featured much more of him. Robert Costanza's Joe Barbaro rounds out the trifecta as a versatile character, swinging from violence to comedy relief. The story may get threadbare in spots, but the acting and dialogue are among the best you will ever find in this young art form.

Hated

A Sandbox With No Toys: Mafia II offers very few incentives to explore the open world its spent so much time creating. There are no side missions, like its predecessor. Unlike its predecessor, there's no dedicated Free Ride mode. If you want to explore or raise hell, you must do it before you trigger a mission at the beginning of a chapter, or after the job's over. The narrative does its best to discourage this, as nearly everything begins in the morning with an urgent phone call ordering you to a meeting spot immediately, and ends very late at night. You will make more than enough cash on missions themselves, and pick up plenty of useful weapons and ammo from the guys you kill, to make the game's barebones side tasks - robbing stores and stealing cars - utterly pointless. The saddest wastes are features like Empire Bay's replicas of the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, Yankee Stadium and the Brooklyn Bridge, whose pedestrian walkway is traversable. Such detailed renderings would seem to beg for a sequence set in or atop one, and yet all of the iconic settings in this world are ignored by the story.

Empire Bay 911: The cops in this game are as trivially useless as its toilets. Their AI is just plain bad and easily fooled. I was robbing a gas station and a squad car plowed into the pumps, killing everyone except me. Their tendency to ram is easily exploited and they rarely recover from a wreck in time to continue the chase. When your car is wanted, cops pass by too quickly on the road to fill up the light blue suspect-o-meter, or whatever it's called, that triggers a pursuit. I don't think anyone ever noticed me picking a lock to steal a car. Speeding tickets are easily outrun in most vehicles, especially if you've paid the nominal fee to upgrade the engine. Running red lights, a no-no in Mafia I, gets you only a scolding from Joe if he's riding shotgun.

Action, Packed Loosely: There is a colossal amount of interstitial time spent either on boring tasks or watching cutscenes. There is a ton of mundane, non-chase driving as a lot of the mission points are scattered throughout the map, whose navigation never seems to guide you to the freeway. The worst example of Mafia II's imbalanced design came in a chapter in which you're tasked to warn someone of an impending hit. I timed it: 7:40 combined cutscene time, 8:49 combined driving time (three minutes of that was rushing to the scene, but there was no pursuit), and just 44 seconds of action trying to help the guy escape. The amount of interactive time spent on setup is simply too high for a game this short - especially when the guts of your rise in the mob, as a skullcracking soldier and a dope dealing renegade, are literally condensed to cutscene montages. You sell cigarettes off the back of a truck in this game; couldn't one more hit, one more drug distribution job gone wrong, be included in a mission set that's largely templatized in the first place?

*Spoiler warning - plot cliches about to be spoiled*
Played Out Again, Sam: The first six chapters of this game are very well written - perhaps a bit fast paced, but still believable and compelling. And then, once you get out of prison, the game makes every grab it can for the low-hanging fruit of the mob genre. Joe, your fat Fred Flintstone of a gangster friend, plainly defines the screenwriting failure of unearned emotion. Of course he loses it when a hanger-on character, who has maybe five lines, gets killed on the game's major hit. Of course one of your associates is the FBI rat. Of course there's a late betrayal. Of course there's a reversal of that. The game's ending is plainly written to account for either a sequel or DLC, but even then it's nothing more than a shoulder-shrug that makes you wonder why this supposed buddy crime story was worth telling.
*End of spoiler*

Mafia II is eminently beatable in a single sitting, and its achievements and trophies can be plundered in the span of a rental. With no multiplayer - not saying there should be any for this type of game - I simply can't see Mafia II as worth the full fare. It would take a lot of DLC to get this game to a satisfying length. PS3 owners do get a free game extension - "The Betrayal of Jimmy" - that provides some structured-yet-open-ended mayhem that crime sandbox fans expect. Another extension, "Jimmy's Vendetta," is due for both consoles and PC in the fall. It probably won't be free.

There may be nothing broken or dysfunctional about Mafia II, but it falls well short of expectations built by three years in development and a seven-year-old hit. It's hard to shake the feeling that 2K Czech built six awesome chapters expecting to provide a game twice or three times as long as this, then had to condense it when someone cracked the whip and said finish up.

Many will marvel over the game's visual polish, destructible and interactive environment, and it is indeed impressive. But this is a mob game. I'm here to steal money and whack people, not flush the john and turn out the lights.

Mafia II was developed by 2K Czech and will be published by 2K Games for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC or the Wii on Aug. 24. Retails for $59.99 USD. A copy of the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Finished the game's singleplayer campaign mode and replayed several missions; played the free DLC included with the PS3 version.

It's not exactly the Rock Band 3 tracklist reveal, but Mafia II's period-piece bonafides aren't limited to the set direction and costumes.

In the game, due on shelves Tuesday, you get three radio stations in your car. Empire Central plays the era's mainstream hits; Empire Classic is an oldies station (relatively) and Delta Radio is blues and jazz. Following is the full soundtrack, one song you might recognize as belonging to the original Mafia from 2003, set some 20 years before. Its inclusion in Mafia II is for deliberate reasons.

• Did You Ever Love A Woman - "Gatemouth"
• After the Lights Go Down Low - Al Hibbler
• Count Every Star - Al Hibbler
• My Bonnie Lassie - Ames Brothers, The
• Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy - Andrews Sisters, The
• Rum and Coca Cola - Andrews Sisters, The
• Straighten Up and Fly Right - Andrews Sisters, The
• Strip Polka - Andrews Sisters, The
• There'll Be a Hot Time in the Town of Berlin - Andrews Sisters, The
• Victory Polka - Andrews Sisters, The
• Money (That's What I Want) - Barrett Strong
• Sing, Sing, Sing 3:00 minutes - Benny Goodman
• Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley & His Comets
• 900 Miles - Billy Merman
• Springtime in Monaco - Billy Merman
• By The Light Of The Silvery Moon - Bing Crosby
• I Haven't Time To Be A Millionaire - Bing Crosby
• I've Got A Pocketful Of Dreams - Bing Crosby
• Pennies From Heaven - Bing Crosby
• The Pessimistic Character - Bing Crosby
• Bo Diddley - Bo Diddley
• Who Do You Love - Bo Diddley
• Not Fade Away - Buddy Holly
• Rave On - Buddy Holly
• That'll Be The Day - Buddy Holly
• Everybody Eats When They Come to My House - Cab Calloway
• Happy Feet - Cab Calloway
• Speedoo - Cadillacs, The
• Mr Sandman - Chordettes, The
• Nadine - Chuck Berry
• No Particular Place To Go - Chuck Berry
• Framed - Coasters, The
• One Kiss Led to Another / Brazil - Coasters, The
• Sh-Boom - Crew Cuts, The
• At The Hop - Danny & The Juniors
• Ooh Baby Ooh - Dave Appell
• Ain't that a kick in the head - Dean Martin
• Let It Snow - Dean Martin
• Return to Me - Dean Martin
• That's Amore - Dean Martin
• Baby It's Cold Outside - Dinah Shore
• Buttons and Bows - Dinah Shore
• That'll Get IT - Dixon Flloyd
• Belleville - Django Reinhardt
• You're Driving Me Crazy - Django Reinhardt
• Makin' Whoopee - Doris Day
• Cannonball - Duane Eddy
• Forty Miles Of Bad Road - Duane Eddy
• Movin' N' Groovin' - Duane Eddy
• Rebel Rouser - Duane Eddy
• It Don't mean a thing - Duke Ellington
• Summertime Blues - Eddie Cochran
• C'mon Everybody - Eddie Cochran and Jerry Capehart
• Good Little Bad Little You - Edwards, Cliff and his hot combination
• All I Have to Do is Dream - Everly Brothers, The
• Ain't that a Shame - Fats Domino
• The Fat Man - Fats Domino
• Come Softly to Me - Fleetwoods, The
• Jezebel - Frankie Laine
• Why Do Fools Fall In Love - Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers
• Clarinet Marmalade - Frankie Trumbauer & His Orchestra
• Riverboat Shuffle - Frankie Trumbauer & His Orchestra
• Rock Around the Clock Singer - Hal Singer
• Smokestack Lightnin' - Howlin' Wolf
• Pachuko Hop - Ike Carpenter Orchestra
• Inflation Blues - Jack McVea
• Rags to Riches - Jackie Wilson
• My Guardian Angel - Jimmy Breedlove
• Beatin' The Dog - Joe Venuti & Eddie Lang
• Goin' Places - Joe Venuti & Eddie Lang
• Stringing The Blues (V.2) - Joe Venuti & Eddie Lang
• Boom Boom - John Lee Hooker
• Come On And Stomp Stomp Stomp - Johnny Dodds' Black Bottom Stompers
• Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition - Kay Kyser
• Auf Wiederseh'n, Sweetheart - Les Baxter
• I Cant Lose With the Stuff I Use - Lester Williams
• Keep a Knockin' - Little Richard
• Long Tall Sally - Little Richard
• Lucille - Little Richard
• Choo Choo Ch'Boogie - Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five
• Ain't That Just Like a Woman - Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five
• Caldonia Boogie - Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five
• Friendship - Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five
• G.I. Jive - Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five
• Open the Door Richard - Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five
• Ration Blues - Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five
• That Chick's Too Young to Fry - Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five
• What's the Use of Getting Sober
• (When You Gonna Get Drunk Again) - Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five
• Che La Luna - Louis Prima
• Oh Marie - Louis Prima
• Pennies From Heaven - Louis Prima
• The Closer to the Bone - Louis Prima
• When You're Smiling - Louis Prima
• Got My Mojo Working - Muddy Waters
• Mannish Boy - Muddy Waters
• Gangster's Blues - Peetie Wheatstraw
• Happiness is a Thing Called Joe - Peggy Lee
• Why Don't You Do Right - Peggy Lee
• The Peanut Vendor - Perez Prado
• Manhattan Spiritual - Reg Owen Orchestra
• Come On Let's Go - Richie Valens
• Stood Up - Ricky Nelson
• Donna - Ritchie Valens
• Mambo Italiano - Rosemary Clooney
• Don't Let Go - Roy Hamilton
• You Can Have Her - Roy Hamilton
• Held for Questioning - Rusty Draper
• Let The Good Times Roll - Sam Butera & The Witnesses
• Teen Beat - Sandy Nelson
• I Put a Spell on You - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
• Java - The Big Bands Moonglow
• Tequila - The Champs
• Maybe - The Chantels
• Honey Love - The Drifters feat. Clyde McPhatter
• Ling Ting Tong - The Five Keys
• In The Still Of The Night - The Five Satins
• Chow Mein - The Gaylords
• The Best Things in Life Are Free - The Ink Spots
• Book of Love - The Monotones
• The Dipsy Doodle - Tommy Dorsey
• Mercy Mr. Percy - Varetta Dillard

Next week, gangster game Mafia II goes on sale. You might be looking for a primer — something to get you into the mood. You might want to revisit some old favorites. Here are ten classic gangster flicks.

These are not the ten best gangster flicks, but they are ten great ones.

(Note: The list does not contain heist flicks like Rififi or Reservoir Dogs as heist movies deserve a top ten list of their own. Also, Pulp Fiction wasn't mentioned because like early Godard movies, it may have hoods or gangsters, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's a gangster movie.)

The Godfather I
Interesting to note that the word "mafia" does not appear in the film.

GoodFellas
Based on the book Wiseguy, the title was changed to GoodFellas because Brian DePalma had made a movie (a bad movie) called Wise Guys in 1986. The real Henry Hill was arrested in last December for disorderly conduct.

King Of New York Christopher Walken at his best.

Little Caesar
This picture made Edward G. Robinson a superstar. In the early 1970s, Paramount Pictures wanted Robinson to star in The Godfather, but Coppola ultimately gave the role to Marlon Brando.

Le Samourai
Jean Pierre Melville was the king of French crime films. Le Samourai shows why.

Miller's Crossing
Is the Coen brothers' best film? Perhaps.

Once Upon A Time In America
Sergio Leone's final film, Once Upon A Time In America follows Jewish-American gangsters over the course of several decades. For the original American release, the movie was butchered in the editing room. Restored versions are now available.

Scarface: The Shame of a Nation
Produced by Howard Hughes and directed by Howard Hawks, Scarface was one of the most violent films of its day. It later served the basis for the 1983 remake, starring Al Pacino.

White Heat
James Cagney, star of The Public Enemy, turns in a stellar (and bat-shit insane) performance in White Heat. "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" is one of the most famous movie lines ever.

The Untouchables
Sporting an all-star cast, The Untouchables was directed by Brian DePalma, written by David Mamet and scored by Ennio Morricone.

There are video games that track the calories you burn while playing them. There are games that count the number of virtual miles you race in them. Mafia II tallies how long you "read" its in-game Playboy centerfolds.

I played a press demo of Mafia II several weeks ago and poked around in the game's menus. Like many other games, it has a statistics screen that shows how the player's in-game actions are being tracked. Adjacent to a standard line about how many hours and minutes the player has experienced in Mafia II is the Playboy timer. That timer tracks the number of hours (!) and minutes the player spends looking at Hugh Hefner's magazine.

Fifty centerfolds originally printed in the magazine in the 1950s (and maybe 1960s; I'm not sure) are included in the game as collectible items. They can be viewed full-screen, surely to provide a sense of historical authenticity to the game's vintage mobster milieu.

The downloadable demo for Mafia II currently available for home consoles doesn't include the stats display, though it does include five centerfolds. We'll know if the feature made it into the final game when it ships next week.

If the future of video games may involve counting even the real toothbrush strokes you make, who is ready for their Playboy consumption to be tabulated too?

UNICO National, a group that represents Italian Americans, has lodged a protest with publishers Take-Two over the portrayal of the Mafia in upcoming game Mafia II. Because, you know. The mafia are portrayed as Italian Americans.

Andre' DiMino, president of the group, says the game is "racist nonsense".

"Why would Take Two foist a game on their targeted audience of young people wherein they will indoctrinate a new generation into directly associating Italians and Italian-Americans with violent, murderous organized crime, to the exclusion of all of the other 'mafias' run by other ethnic and racial groups?" he says.

"Take Two is directly, blatantly and unfairly discriminating and demeaning one group to the exclusion of all others. We are demanding they halt release of the game and cleanse it of all references to Italians and Italian-Americans".

Of course, DiMino hasn't played the game. Nor does he seem to be aware the game's name is "Mafia II", not "Yakuza II" or "Triads II". He also seems to be unaware that the mafia are a bunch of Italian Americans, which is surprising considering his role as head of a group of Italian Americans.

Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick really didn't even need to respond, but he did, issuing a statement that read:

Mafia II tells a compelling story about organized crime in America — a subject that for decades has been featured in movies, television shows and novels. Neither UNICO nor any other organization purporting to represent Italian-Americans has seen or played Mafia II.

At Take-Two, we balance our right to free expression with what we believe is a thoughtful and responsible approach to creating and marketing our products," he continued. "Mafia II is M-rated in accordance with our industry's strict standards. It is specifically not targeted toward young people.

We will only release a title that meets our standards: as art, as entertainment and as a socially responsible product," Zelnick concluded. "We aim to distinguish creative and compelling story telling that advances artistic expression from subject matter that gratuitously exploits or glorifies violence or stereotypes. I fully and completely stand behind our creative teams and products, including Mafia II.

Italian-American Group UNICO Takes Issue With Mafia II, Take-Two Responds [Gamasutra]

Nolan North, the real world voice of Uncharted's Nathan Drake, Shadow Complex's Jason Fleming and Assassin's Creed's Desmond Miles is in a lot of video games. But it may be Mafia II that has the most North you've ever heard.

North, whose credits include Call of Duty: World at War, White Knight Chronicles, Gears of War 2, Alpha Protocol and dozens of other video games, cartoons and TV shows, also has a role (or two) in the new Mafia game, as spotted by YouTube user "chriskent101."

Try the recently released Mafia II demo for yourself and see how many Nolan Norths you can spot!

Mafia 2 - Nolan North Talks to Nolan North [YouTube via Christian Nutt]