The Godfather II

"The Godfather 2: An offer you can't refuse"

Here I am in Cuba with a bunch of my family members and friends. We're having a party celebrating a bunch of recent successes and all hell breaks loose. Bullets are zipping by, things are exploding everywhere and to top it off members of my family are being killed. Fight or flight is probably what comes to mind in your average person's thought process. But not me. I'm not average. I'm a Don and fighting is my only option. I must break those who sought to break me and my family. My business is murder, extortion, money and power. So I grab my pistol, make sure it's loaded and take aim. One shot, one kill.

Welcome to the world of "The Godfather II".

I had a lot of fun with The Godfather II. The one thing about this game that makes it so much more enjoyable for me than your typical sandbox game is the story. It's so much easier for me to dive right into the characters because I know the film and its history. I know the Corleone family. I know Marlon Brando, Al Pacino and James Caan. It was easy for me to get lost in my character in the game because I wanted to be a Don. The Godfather II spins a very intricate web of originality with its story that definitely satisfied my thirst of film consistency and respect coupled with video game fun. It was a hell of a lot of fun playing Dominic, becoming a Don and starting my own crime family.

You start the game out on a mission for revenge; the ultimate payback. Someone very close to you was gunned down in a Cuban airport. It's time to may them pay. And pay they will at the hands of your own family. The Godfather II allows you to build your own family. You build your family from the ground up starting with Soldiers. Keep an eye out on your best Soldiers because those are the ones you'll want to promote the best within your family. Promoting involves taking a Soldier amd making them a Capo or Underboss.

Each of your Soldiers carries a set of unique skills. This allows you to loosely play the game the way you want to play it. It doesn't allow you to completely control the way you play but you can create your own strategy with different sets of Soldier types. There are Arsonists, Demolitions experts, Medics, Bruisers, Safecrackers and engineers to choose from. You don't have to worry much about which specialty you initially decide on because as you progress through the game, you'll have an option to double or triple up on the specialities. Using the promotion system in the game, you can promote a soldier to a Capo and give him an additional specialty so he could be an Arsonist and a Bruiser.

Once you start your family, you'll have to get to the mission at hand which is taking over rival families and extending your reach over the city. You have to intimidate, kill and extort your way to the top. You do this across New York, Florida and Cuba. There are all types of crime rings to take advantage of as you can imagine. Diamond smuggling, gun running, prostitution and gambling are the norm. For those of you not aware, this game is M rated so expect some hard language and boobies throughout.

The gameplay is rather simple. You'll have no problems navigating the streets or causing massive amounts of murder. Executions are back and as brutal as ever. They're done with a simply click of the Right stick. Each weapon has an execution and it really never got boring. My favorite has to be the baseball bat. I'm surprised that I chose the bat given the number of weapons in the game but it was my favorite to use for execution. Try it. Trust me. You can still aim at different parts of the body to make them limp or crawl for mercy before finishing them. Shooting kneecaps was fun.

One of the more impressive things of the game was the Don's View. The Don's View is a 3D representation of your entire empire and the things you control in the city. It's a link to your family, rival families, your businesses, corrupt officials you have in your back pocket and pretty much everything else. You can plan hits on rival made men, bomb enemy rackets, send more guards to defend your rackets and upgrade your family attributes. I loved it. I spent a lot of time just increasing the number of guards at my strip clubs or bombing those places I didn't control. It's also very useful in plotting a course of action on contract hits or compound raids. You can usually take out a Capo, sabotage an establishment, and kill someone for money all on the same corner.

If there's one thing to criticize the game on, it's the repetitiveness of it all. An example of this is doing favors throughout the city to get information on a kill condition for a made man. Each made man in a rival gang has to be killed in a specific way (a kill condition) and you have to do favors for people in the city to get this information. You'll see these people scattered throughout the city with a key icon above their heads. Talk to them and they'll give you instructions on what to do to get the kill condition. It was always a mixture of killing someone, beating them up or smashing/stealing property. Most of the time, if you've been a good Don, you'll already own the property you're smashing up or stealing from so that makes it easy.

There wasn't much variety in this at all. It would've been nice to mix it up to a dozen different ways to carry out a mission but there were really only a handful of scenarios to go through. Once you decided to do a favor, you were given the same song and dance. Kill them, beat them up, steal something or smash up some property. Even extorting and taking over businesses had little variety. Each racket (or business) has an owner that you have to intimidate in order to control. You have to find a weak spot (or not) and pressure them to give control to your family. Push them too much though and they fight back but the instances were rare. Usually just punching a guy around got the job done or pointing a weapon in their face.

Be careful about committing crimes in view of the public. Everyone is a potential witness and Johnny Law will definitely come running if you stay in a hot spot too long. If there's a witness, you'll see a red eye above their heads. Take them out or leave the scene. You'll also notice a yellow or red circle on the HUD identifying the patrolling area. Once the yellow circle turns red, you're in trouble and police are probably already shooting and hunting you down.

Most of what you'll do in The Godfather II is done during the first few missions so if you're not into it after controlling New York, then chances are you just won't be into it. Blowing up the Rosato compound is just like blowing up any other rival family compound. Taking over the La Mason Rouge in New York isn't too different from taking over a construction business in Florida. I didn't have an issue because I think I subconsciously want to be a Don so controlling New York and Florida was a dream. But for those of you without a personal interest in repeatedly cracking safes or executing mobsters, you may find issue with the repetitive nature of the game.

Visually, The Godfather II isn't going to win any awards. I would imagine that EA wasn't out for any technical milestones. The vehicles in the game weren't particularly great on the road. They did have damage though so if you have a wreck, you'd see fenders and windows shattering. The character models, environments and population were all pretty bland. I ran across numerous oddities including falling off buildings while walking. I did have fun with choosing my apparel and mixing thing up with my family attire. Changing your family's appearance at a whim came in handy when I wanted to feel like I had to get a quick plastic surgery job.

Final Verdict:

Being the Don never felt so good to be honest. I played the first one non-stop for a week or two so I had high expectations going into The Godfather II. I was impressed with the story and how it all mixed in together with the films. It was really like living a dream or taking part in my very own Godfather movie. I finally felt like I was a Don. There aren't many games that have a compelling story that you want to follow. The Godfather II does story and it does it well. It also allows you to finally act out what it is to control an empire from start to finish.

There are some issues with the game and the variety in which you are allowed to ultimately play it. Did it stop me from enjoying it? Nope. But it may just put some off who are not into repeating things. What The Godfather II does make you repeat though, it make you repeat it in a fun way.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/13/09

Game Release: The Godfather II (US, 04/07/09)