Mafia: The Old Country – Man of Honor: The Mafia Game Finally Added More Crime
- Niels Gys
- 15 hours ago
- 5 min read
Quick Verdict
Mafia: The Old Country – Man of Honor launched on August 14, 2026 as a $9.99 expansion adding two new story chapters, young Ennio Salieri, new weapons and vehicles, and most importantly, a fresh pile of criminal work for Free Ride.
And that last bit matters.
This isn't merely two extra chapters stapled onto The Old Country while 2K shakes a collection tin. Man of Honor adds repeatable jobs involving stealing valuable vehicles, hijacking trucks carrying expensive cargo, hunting hidden loot caches and assassinating targets, alongside tougher combat encounters and races.
For a game about the Mafia, that's an encouraging development: the expansion appears interested in letting you actually do more Mafia things.
It is too early for a proper verdict on whether those jobs have enough depth, variety and longevity to justify the $9.99 price. But what's actually launched is considerably more interesting than a glorified story epilogue.
Done with Sicily? Los Santos is currently committing financial crimes at industrial scale. The GTA Online Weekly Grind tells you exactly what’s paying, what’s discounted, and which activities deserve to be left face-down in a drainage ditch.
What Is Man of Honor?
Man of Honor takes Enzo Favara back to winter 1905, during his early days as a made member of the Torrisi crime family.
The expansion contains two new narrative chapters, bringing Enzo together with Ennio Salieri long before Salieri became the Don familiar to anyone who's spent enough time in Lost Heaven to develop an instinctive fear of vintage automobiles and men named Paulie.
The pair are settling scores and chasing what 2K describes as a potentially life-changing score.
That alone makes the story interesting for Mafia devotees.
But CRIMENET's eyebrows really start moving when you leave the narrative chapters behind.
Because Man of Honor also expands Free Ride.
And this time there is actual criminal employment.
Salieri Has Jobs. None Involve Deliveroo.
Salieri operates from a smuggling warehouse and hands out new repeatable assignments.
One job type has you searching for hidden caches of valuable loot.
Another sends you after valuable vehicles, which must be stolen and returned. Parked cars have therefore completed their natural evolutionary journey from transport to unattended revenue.
Then there are trucks carrying fragile, high-value goods.
Steal the truck. Protect the cargo. Deliver the merchandise.
It's organised crime boiled down to its essential ingredients: theft, logistics and praying nobody introduces the suspension to a stone wall at 70 kilometres per hour.
There are also stealth assassination jobs, harder combat encounters and races, plus additional activities including destroying enemy sulphur trucks, collecting wanted posters and completing stunt jumps.
Completing these jobs earns Dinari, which can then be spent on equipment and vehicles.
That's important because it gives the Free Ride expansion something the Mafia fantasy desperately benefits from: a criminal loop.
Commit crime. Get paid. Buy useful things. Commit better-equipped crime.
Civilisation spent thousands of years inventing banking and somehow Salieri has reduced the entire economy to four steps.
The Criminal Fantasy Looks Stronger
The Old Country was already unmistakably a Mafia game, but much of its criminal fantasy lived inside a tightly controlled linear story.
Man of Honor pushes some of that fantasy outward.
You're not simply watching Enzo belong to a criminal organisation while missions funnel him toward the next dramatic shootout. Salieri's Jobs make theft, assassination, illicit cargo and valuable loot the objectives themselves.
A game can call you a gangster all it likes. If your average working day consists of following waypoints and shooting whoever the plot has declared inconvenient, eventually "Mafia" becomes an extremely elaborate employee dress code.
Here, the expansion is at least giving criminal activity more mechanical weight.
There's also a potentially significant score at the heart of the new story. How elaborate that becomes remains the interesting question. Nothing currently establishes Man of Honor as some enormous Payday-style heist simulator with planning boards, crew management and seventeen different ways for Gary to forget the getaway car.
But robbery is clearly more than decorative wallpaper.
Before handing 2K another tenner, meet the body underneath the DLC. Our Mafia: The Old Country review breaks down the gorgeous gangster fantasy, the brutally linear campaign, and whether Enzo’s original Sicilian career was actually worth joining.
There Are New Toys Too
Man of Honor adds three guns, three knives and five Charms, alongside additional outfits, cars and horses.
The more interesting additions aren't merely different numbers wearing wooden handles.
The Rimbalzu throwing knife, for example, can ricochet from one enemy into another during stealth kills.
Which is wonderfully excessive.
Most people confronted with the engineering challenge of stabbing two men would simply bring two knives. The Sicilian solution apparently involved inventing murderous geometry.
New equipment also feeds naturally into the expanded Free Ride structure. If criminal jobs are going to remain interesting beyond their first completion, rewards need to feel useful rather than becoming a museum collection of increasingly expensive trousers.
Whether Man of Honor gets that progression balance right will matter enormously to its longevity.
So, Is Man of Honor Worth $9.99?
There isn't enough evidence yet to give you a responsible yes or no.
That's the one question launch day cannot answer properly.
We know the expansion contains two story chapters and a meaningful batch of additional Free Ride content. We know the criminal jobs are real playable activities rather than bullet points written by a marketing department after three espressos.
What isn't established yet is how substantial those chapters are, how much variety exists across the repeatable jobs, how quickly repetition arrives, or whether the new criminal economy gives Free Ride genuine staying power.
Those are precisely the things that determine whether $9.99 buys a worthwhile expansion or a very pleasant Sicilian weekend.
So don't mistake this for a final buying recommendation.
Not yet.
What Man of Honor Gets Right Immediately
There is nevertheless one decision here worth applauding already.
More Mafia should mean more organised crime.
Not merely more gunfights.
Not another gorgeous countryside drive followed by somebody explaining loyalty shortly before becoming ventilated.
Crime.
Stealing things. Moving illicit goods. Assassinating people. Making money. Building access to better equipment. Working for criminals because you are, and this really shouldn't require a committee meeting to establish this, a criminal.
Man of Honor understands that distinction.
Whether those systems have enough depth to transform Free Ride remains to be seen, but the direction is exactly where The Old Country should be heading.
If you want the broader picture before deciding whether to return to Sicily, our Mafia: The Old Country review digs into the base game's magnificent atmosphere, linear gangster story and the places where its gameplay doesn't quite live up to the fantasy.
This Week in CRIME is CRIMENET’s weekly underworld briefing: GTA money worth stealing, new crime, villain and horror games worth knowing about, industry catastrophes requiring public humiliation, and our best new investigations. Get This Week in CRIME delivered before somebody respectable gets involved. If CRIMENET has already saved you money, time or one catastrophically stupid purchase, there’s also Ko-fi for slipping a few notes under the table.
Launch Verdict
Man of Honor is worth watching closely, especially if you wanted Mafia: The Old Country to give you more actual criminal work outside its linear campaign.
The two new story chapters and young Salieri are the obvious headline attractions, but the expanded Free Ride jobs may prove more important. Vehicle theft, valuable cargo, assassinations, loot caches and criminal rewards give the Mafia fantasy more room to exist as gameplay rather than simply narrative.
Whether that makes the expansion worth $9.99 depends on depth, repetition and longevity, and launch day hasn't had enough time to answer those questions without resorting to clairvoyance.
But the premise has cleared the first hurdle.
The Mafia game has added more crime.
It sounds absurdly obvious when written down.
Which rather explains why we're pleased.
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