The flaws don't much get in the way of the fun, but they're there
Pros
Cons
Godfather II for the most part builds upon what I enjoyed about the first game, but it also strips away some other things too.
For starters as in Godfather I you start the game by creating your character.
Godfather I had a large variety of different clothing you could by, large variety in hair styles, hell large variety in customization in general.
Godfather II, sadly, does not.
Only three or four items in each clothing category, with perhaps one of them being any good.
Character customization is limited to slight facial tweaking, body weight tweaks, a choice from a very limited selection of hair styles. The glasses section in particular is disappointing.
I was hoping to more or less remake my character from the first one.
Awesome pinstripe suit. Scar across his left eye. And reading glasses.
The pinstripe suit in this game doesn't look so awesome. Theres no scars or other facial anomalies to add. And the only set of appropriate glasses there look cardboardy, they all look cardboardy. Perhaps my memory fails me but I remember the reading glasses from GFI to look well, like glasses. Not cardboard cutouts. I expect that lack of quality in character props from a WWE character creator, but after playing the first Godfather game I expected a certain amount of quality from the character creation and it came up quite short.
While the first game ended with you becoming the Don, that's pretty much where you start in this game. With the position you get the Dons View. Which is pretty much a map of whatever city your in, with it's various rackets and whatnot laid out. You can see how well they're guarded. How well your own stuff is guarded. Hire additional guards, if necessary.
Upgrade your families skills.
Yeah, your family.
During the coarse of the game you'll recruit some folk to your fedora wearing posse.
Four soldiers, two capos and an under boss.
You can keep three guys on you and send the rest out to take over and/or guard your stuff.
All the characters have a specialty, such as Arsonist, Safe cracker or Engineer and they all have abilities that make it easier for you to infiltrate the various businesses so you can extort them and get a larger income.
It generally pays to have a balanced team but usually theres more then one way to get in a building and theres only a couple of times where you absolutely must have a specific specialist with you to proceed.
They also of course help you out in combat, which is satisfying enough.
Theres a cover system, but few places I've found actually let you use it.
Rather instead you're often ducking behind low objects and you'll automatically pop up to shoot when you go to shoot. It's perfectly effective. I didn't find myself wishing I could stick to every surface.
The game uses a lock on system so I won't say theres a terrible lot of skill involved in the shooting up of bad guys but it's still incredibly satisfying to do so.
With each shot comes a significant amount of blood splatter.
Not enough to put Mortal Kombat to shame or anything, but still quite a surprising amount.
Especially when you do execution moves, which speaking of Mortal Kombat - would be equivalent to that games fatalities..
For example with the Tommy Gun you can stick it in a dudes mouth and pull the trigger, sending blood splattering everywhere. Theres quite a variety of ways in which to maim guys, all of which I've found to be quite satisfying. Whether you have them on their knees and are kicking them in the face or have a shotgun presses against their temple before pulling the trigger and turning their heads to mush, it's all quite good.
There are a few problems with the game though.
It doesn't look so hot.
I'd go as far as saying that in many areas it doesn't even look as good as the first one: Citing the neat look spectacles of #1 against the cardboard cutouts of #2 once again as being a pretty good example of that. I don't think it's so bad that it's a major detriment but I've had people come in see me playing it and ask if I were playing a game on the original Xbox. Yeah.. No. I'm not.
Sure does look like it in spots though.
Building layouts are a bit samey.
You've taken over one bar you've taken them all over, pretty much.
Once again it isn't too detrimental to the experience. I enjoy the act of taking stuff over enough that I can get over the fact I'm essentially taking over the same spots over and over again, but a little variety would've been neat.
I wish I could comment on the games multi player and online capabilities but I can't.
At least the most i can say about the online capabilities is that it doesn't seem to be online capable. In the past week or so I've had it I think I've managed to try getting an online game going at least once a day and EVERY TIME I've dropped out or the folk I've connected too have dropped out. There were a couple of instances in which I couldn't even get to the online menu.
Perhaps it's fixed now. Perhaps they'll fix it soon.
But by that time I'll probably be done with the game.
If you enjoyed the first game I'd think you'll enjoy this one too.
The light strategy elements at least mix things up for a bit.
If you didn't enjoy the first game then sometimes worse visuals, a shoddy online mode and a fancy map won't help you enjoy it any more.
Regardless of the flaws though I am still enjoying the game a great deal.
Like I said, the flaws are there but I personally haven't found them to be too detrimental to the experience.
- Light strategy elements improve what would otherwise be a rehash of the first game.
- Executions are satisfying.
Cons
- I don't consider myself a graphics whore, but GFII's visuals do look somewhat dated.
- Building layouts are reused with very little change, making the taking over of businesses and rackets somewhat dull after awhile.
- Difficulty connecting and staying connected to online games
- In comparison to the first game, the character creator is somewhat lacking.
- Before playing the first Godfather game I knew nothing of the franchise.
- Heck even after playing the game I'd say my knowledge about it isn't so hot.
- But regardless I enjoyed the first Godfather game.
- The lack of familiarity with the characters and events might've I don't know, perhaps ruined it for me somewhat - but it was a good open world game and extorting businesses was fun.
Godfather II for the most part builds upon what I enjoyed about the first game, but it also strips away some other things too.
For starters as in Godfather I you start the game by creating your character.
Godfather I had a large variety of different clothing you could by, large variety in hair styles, hell large variety in customization in general.
Godfather II, sadly, does not.
Only three or four items in each clothing category, with perhaps one of them being any good.
Character customization is limited to slight facial tweaking, body weight tweaks, a choice from a very limited selection of hair styles. The glasses section in particular is disappointing.
I was hoping to more or less remake my character from the first one.
Awesome pinstripe suit. Scar across his left eye. And reading glasses.
The pinstripe suit in this game doesn't look so awesome. Theres no scars or other facial anomalies to add. And the only set of appropriate glasses there look cardboardy, they all look cardboardy. Perhaps my memory fails me but I remember the reading glasses from GFI to look well, like glasses. Not cardboard cutouts. I expect that lack of quality in character props from a WWE character creator, but after playing the first Godfather game I expected a certain amount of quality from the character creation and it came up quite short.
While the first game ended with you becoming the Don, that's pretty much where you start in this game. With the position you get the Dons View. Which is pretty much a map of whatever city your in, with it's various rackets and whatnot laid out. You can see how well they're guarded. How well your own stuff is guarded. Hire additional guards, if necessary.
Upgrade your families skills.
Yeah, your family.
During the coarse of the game you'll recruit some folk to your fedora wearing posse.
Four soldiers, two capos and an under boss.
You can keep three guys on you and send the rest out to take over and/or guard your stuff.
All the characters have a specialty, such as Arsonist, Safe cracker or Engineer and they all have abilities that make it easier for you to infiltrate the various businesses so you can extort them and get a larger income.
It generally pays to have a balanced team but usually theres more then one way to get in a building and theres only a couple of times where you absolutely must have a specific specialist with you to proceed.
They also of course help you out in combat, which is satisfying enough.
Theres a cover system, but few places I've found actually let you use it.
Rather instead you're often ducking behind low objects and you'll automatically pop up to shoot when you go to shoot. It's perfectly effective. I didn't find myself wishing I could stick to every surface.
The game uses a lock on system so I won't say theres a terrible lot of skill involved in the shooting up of bad guys but it's still incredibly satisfying to do so.
With each shot comes a significant amount of blood splatter.
Not enough to put Mortal Kombat to shame or anything, but still quite a surprising amount.
Especially when you do execution moves, which speaking of Mortal Kombat - would be equivalent to that games fatalities..
For example with the Tommy Gun you can stick it in a dudes mouth and pull the trigger, sending blood splattering everywhere. Theres quite a variety of ways in which to maim guys, all of which I've found to be quite satisfying. Whether you have them on their knees and are kicking them in the face or have a shotgun presses against their temple before pulling the trigger and turning their heads to mush, it's all quite good.
There are a few problems with the game though.
It doesn't look so hot.
I'd go as far as saying that in many areas it doesn't even look as good as the first one: Citing the neat look spectacles of #1 against the cardboard cutouts of #2 once again as being a pretty good example of that. I don't think it's so bad that it's a major detriment but I've had people come in see me playing it and ask if I were playing a game on the original Xbox. Yeah.. No. I'm not.
Sure does look like it in spots though.
Building layouts are a bit samey.
You've taken over one bar you've taken them all over, pretty much.
Once again it isn't too detrimental to the experience. I enjoy the act of taking stuff over enough that I can get over the fact I'm essentially taking over the same spots over and over again, but a little variety would've been neat.
I wish I could comment on the games multi player and online capabilities but I can't.
At least the most i can say about the online capabilities is that it doesn't seem to be online capable. In the past week or so I've had it I think I've managed to try getting an online game going at least once a day and EVERY TIME I've dropped out or the folk I've connected too have dropped out. There were a couple of instances in which I couldn't even get to the online menu.
Perhaps it's fixed now. Perhaps they'll fix it soon.
But by that time I'll probably be done with the game.
If you enjoyed the first game I'd think you'll enjoy this one too.
The light strategy elements at least mix things up for a bit.
If you didn't enjoy the first game then sometimes worse visuals, a shoddy online mode and a fancy map won't help you enjoy it any more.
Regardless of the flaws though I am still enjoying the game a great deal.
Like I said, the flaws are there but I personally haven't found them to be too detrimental to the experience.
