Review: The Godfather II (360)

Right, have we got the same opening paragraph as every other review on the Internet? Good now we can get on with it.

Gamestyle was mildly surprised by Godfather II, we were expecting another half-arsed GTA-alike that the industry seems to churn out every now and then, but honestly, it actually stands out from those other games, but technical and general presentation problems,along with repetitive missions stop it from being more than just above average.

The game follows the story of custom created character Dominic, the new Don of New York after Aldo, the protagonist from the original Godfather game, is gunned down during the Cuban revolution.  Just as soon as he is killed his criminal empire is beset on all sides by rival families. So it’s up to Dominic  to sort them all out again and remind them why the Corleone family is in charge, while also expanding the operation to other cities as well.

The main goal of Godfather II is to take over your rival’s businesses, doing favours for members of the public, and then ultimately, driving your enemies out of town. The main way of doing this is by going to a business run by an enemy, then threatening the owner until they bow to your will. It’s a nice idea, which is why it was carried over from the first game and works quite well. When threatening an owner you can beat them, and depending on the context, hang them over ledges, slam their heads into tables, etc.  The melee system is good and looks quite visceral when you can do things like break a guys nose on your knee or strangle him to death. Do this too much however and the owner will die, forcing you to come back  later when they've (somehow) resurrected. If you do take over, watch out, your rival will try and take the turf back so you gotta protect your new racket by posting guards. You can (and must) also recruit people in to your family to do specific tasks which you need them to do in order to a complete a mission, such as a demolition’s expert for bombing buildings or blowing down walls for quick (if not exactly stealthy) entrances, safecrackers for robberies, engineers for taking down security measures and so forth.  How do you know when to attack a business? Or upgrade your henchmen? Or know how many guards are at a racket you’re going to attack? Or where to find more people to do favours for? You use the Don’s View

The Don’s View is the tactical element of the game, and is what makes it stand out against other sandbox titles. Essentially it’s the pause menu but it has a isometric display of your current city and it shows where your s and rival rackets are, along with how many guards you’ve posted or they've posted at their locations, where you can find new members to recruit to your family and so forth. Here you can also upgrade your henchmen to improve their skills, or even send them to deal with an enemy attack. It adds a new layer of strategy to the game and means you have an easy way to keep track of the cash flowing in from your rackets and out to your expenses.

The first negative aspect that you’ll notice are the graphics and how unrelentingly bland they are. Character models, textures, environments inside and out, everything just feels dull and lifeless, which is not what you want from a sandbox game since it’s supposed to be representing a vaguely bustling city. However when it takes you five minutes to find a car because suddenly the streets are empty like some sort of 1960’s version of Silent Hill the illusion is broken. Sound fairs far better with a decent soundtrack and meaty weapon sounds, though the voice acting can at times be just terrible. Danny Jacobs, who provides the voice of Jewish mobster Hyman Roth, sounds so dull and wooden there were times where we stared at a wooden desk to give the voice a more appropriate face. Animation is slightly odd as well, with Dominic’s default walking speed animation seem rather mincing for someone who beats people to death for a living.

The game also has  more than it’s fair share of bugs straight out of the box. There have been cases reported of getting stuck behind or too objects, although these seem to have been fixed with an update on the Xbox 360 version at least. A shame nothing could be done about the atrocious enemy A.I. Who can't seem to find you if you’re standing 5 feet away, and the lack of challenge this presents along with the generously rechargeable health, makes the game very easy. Add to this the fact that you can upgrade your men which makes the lack of challenge even less of an issue, and it makes for a comparatively  short game.

Then there’s the multiplayer portion of the game, which probably won’t be the next big thing on Xbox Live . There’s currently four modes for up to 16 players, Safecracker Team Deathmatch, Firestarter, and Demolition Assault, which are all pretty explanatory. Steal the other teams stuff, kill them, set fire to their stuff and blow their stuff up, respectively. There’s only really two  significant things about the multiplayer, the first being that all money and skills earned in multiplayer carry over to the single player game, which is nice. The second is that in multiplayer, one person on each team plays as the Don, who doesn't play on the grounds, but flies around in a quasi-Don's view and depending on your team’s performance, can upgrade armour, lay traps for the opposition and so forth. Sounds nice in theory but it when you are the Don it gets boring watching other people shotgun people in the stomach.

Godfather II stands out in the sandbox genre because of the Don’s View but it’s the only thing that really does.  Everything else can be discarded, but if EA can take the Don’s View and put that in a game with more technical proficiency, we’ll be buying.

Rating: 5 / 10

Words by Garry Webber