It feels an awful lot more like playing Grand Theft Auto III than it does Mafia II or any other open world game made in the latter end of this decade for that matter. For all of Mafia II‘s effort to create a retro vibe, through its recreation of 1940s and 1950s settings, Joe’s Adventures really evokes memories of the early part of this decade through its gameplay. Indeed, the more that I played Joe’s Adventures the less I was reminded of Jimmy’s Vendetta and also the less I was reminded of Mafia II itself for that matter. However, what Joe’s Adventures does get right is much more variety in missions than Jimmy’s Vendetta, escaping some of that game’s often repetitive, often tedious quality. As a result, playing Joe makes this character often seem much more the stoic soldier than Vito ever did, a far cry from his actual role in Mafia II and from sercing as foil to Vito’s persona for that matter. Playing as Joe is a brutal experience watching him in Mafia II, he seemed far less capable of the activities taken on by Vito. Joe himself gets lost in all of this, as the affable ladies’ man really gets his hands dirty in some bloody missions and doesn’t seem too much like the character that I met in the other game.
As a result an opportunity to explore one of the better characters in Mafia II pretty much gets lost in the driving forward momentum of a mission structure that feels only loosely moored by narrative. The text intros that serve as bridges to the more cinematic storytelling are no particular help either they remain too brief and underdeveloped to recall who is who and what is what. While Joe’s Adventures offers a few more additional cut scenes during “more important” missions, these moments of coherence are so spread out that the player easily loses track of who all of these Italian fellows that Joe is consorting with actually are. This is a disappointment, as the game gives the impression that it will clarify some of how Joe ends up allying himself with the wrong guy late in the plot of the main game, which the DLC actually might do.
Unfortunately, the game then lapses into the Jimmy’s Vendetta model of storytelling - no cut scenes and voice acting for awhile, just text to read - as Joe undertakes a series of misadventures with the mob while Vito is in prison. In that regard, Joe’s Adventures begins well with a mission punctuated by cut scenes that explain a bit about what Joe was up to when he heard the news of Vito’s arrest and how he tried to help Vito out of his predicament. By taking on a role of a character of real importance to the plot of the main game and by taking place during a crucial medial point in the main game’s plot ( Joe’s Adventures takes place during Vito’s incarceration in the Mafia II time line), the game seems as though it might serve to fill in some gaps in the main text while spending some time in the shoes of a likeable character. Joe’s Adventures initially promises to provide something different. The game is more a series of side missions than a game interested in telling a story of any sort. With only a loose sense of plot provided by few cutscenes and the aforementioned text-based intros alongside a pretty bland protagonist, the game suffered from redundancy and a bland “arcadey” style ( “ Mafia II: Jimmy’s Vendetta“, PopMatters, 22 September 2010). While many criticized the game for MAfia II‘s lack of “things to do” outside of the main storyline, in my mind Jimmy’s Vendetta laid bare the fact that side missions that may have been left on the cutting room floor to begin with may have been better left there.
Indeed, I have argued that the limitations of Mafia II‘s open world actually complemented its story in many ways by emphasizing the ordered qualities of the life of Mafia soldier, Vito Scaletta ( ” Mafia II: the Boundaries of the Open World Experience”, PopMatters, 30 August 2010). The extremely lean quality of the storytelling in that first DLC was very much to the game’s detriment, as Mafia II‘s strengths lie in its storytelling rather than in its fairly familiar third person shooting/driving gameplay. Also, like Jimmy’s Vendetta, most of these missions are only briefly backgrounded through textual introductions to mission objectives, mission objectives that mostly consist of perpetrating mayhem and violence in this fictional city that is the setting of Mafia II. Like the previously released DLC for Mafia II, Jimmy’s Vendetta, Joe’s Adventures largely consists of a series of more “arcade-style” missions set in the open world of Empire Bay.