The Godfather II Review
Back when the current generation of consoles were still dubbed 'next gen', EA dared to release a game based on one of the highest rated movies of all time, The Godfather. The game fared reasonably well and offered the novelty of being one of the first open world games available on a Xbox 360. It shouldn't be much of a surprise that EA returned with a sequel based on The Godfather part II they've taken the focus a little more towards strategy to set itself apart from its open world brethren. The main premise is the same, you control a mobster who's tasked with shaking down store owners for protection money while eliminating the rival families.
Unlike the first game, you won't have to crawl your way up from the bottom. Instead, the protagonist, Dominic, assumes the role of Don of New York during the prologue. This provides you with the opportunity to manage other "made men" that you choose to recruit. The previous game didn't differentiate itself too far from other open world games except that you'd be taking over businesses rather than territories. But Godfather II brings in basic 'stay' or 'go' squad mechanics as well as the "Don's View" where you'll take tactical control over the 1960's cites. The squad mechanics are about as basic as can be, no groups, waypoints or selective targeting, just simply the ability to tell every guy to go to a visible location or return to your location. The "Don's View" gives Godfather II the bulk of its originality in having to keep your businesses defended, hire guards and send your men to defend and attack. While it may be Godfather II's unique feature it isn't particularly deep. There's no micro managing store prices or equipping guards, just simply hiring, attacking and defending. Of course you have the run and gun 3rd person action, carjacking, side missions and police chases along with the rest of the usual malarkey that comes in the 3rd person sandbox game in a box template.
The "Don's View" allows you to order around your men but first you have to put together your team. To begin with, you're limited to a single guy, but by the end of the game you'll have up to seven "made men" in your family. Although you'll only be able to choose up to three of them to follow you at any given time. Not every family member is equal, although EAs words about how each man has his own back-story and personality far-fetched are a gross overstatement. Each man does have their own skills and competence with weaponry. Additional talents can be taught to your men by promoting them into a free slot, however if you want to add to their weapon skills then you'll have to take your man online and earn points to level him up. Other advancements such as accuracy and power can be purchased for both yourself and any "made man", while upgrades to weapons must be found hidden around the map. There's plenty of other things to unlock, such as using your men to crack every safe or perform every execution kill, but it becomes a real chore which suite well with the other gameplay elements.
The first Godfather game kept things rather simple: walk into a store, rough up the guy behind the counter and walk out a little richer. The addition of Godfather II's complexity has sadly subtracted a large portion of the fun. A big problem is that the levels appeared to be designed by someone with a deep latent hatred for humanity. Areas aren't just mazes, they're also terribly impractical. Somehow it seems that there is construction everywhere and you'll find small objects meticulously placed in order to impede progress. One warehouse had its stairs blocked off so you had to walk around the entire building just to reach a raised level that would otherwise only come up to your knee, as sadly no member of the mafia can jump and can only vault over very specific (and random) objects. Once you've taken over one of these warehouses there isn't much to do other than retrace your steps back out, throw in some guards, travel to the next target and repeat the whole process over again with another property, Things get mixed up a little if another place comes under attack but don't worry, just send all your men off to defend it. The difficulty and imbecile AI do little to aid or impede your progress. You can use your followers to take a few shortcuts through a building by having them knock down a door, pick a lock or a fence, but as you're not given any hard clues as to what direction you should actually be heading, you occasionally take a shortcut and then unintentionally backtrack to where you started. The AI doesn't do much to help you navigate and their powers of teleportation do more to confuse matters than anything else. You needn't take over these places yourself though as you can use the "Don's View" to assign your men to attack a property, however, this can take some time and occasionally fail to succeed. Sometimes you'll have to enter a property, kill all the guards and then send in your men to try to find a way around the building while you busy yourself with another medial task.
Even though the game is based on one of the most prestigious movies of all time, I wouldn't like to say that the story is an epic roller coaster of adventure, because it isn't. Despite the source material, the storytelling of Godfather II just isn't as strong as it should be. Characters feel very two dimensional in both the choice of dialog and expressive animations. The voice work however is generally good and happily includes Robert Duvall reprising his role as Tom Hagen. The story doesn't try hard to follow the movie and instead treats it as a loose source of inspiration. There's not a whole lot of twists, turns and surprises although a few events such as coercing favors with a senator are both fun and memorable, but it's sad to see that be the exception rather than the rule.
Even without a close following of the Godfather movie, you still feel a connection to it through the audio. The instantly recognizable Godfather trumpet theme appears in several audio tracks and is as memorable as ever. The rest of the audio is mostly okay despite a few bazaar exceptions. Getting knocked slightly by a car and the accompanying sound effect sounded like a pistol firing. The first Godfather game was criticized for its weak graphics and while Godfather II offers substantial improvements, it hasn't managed to keep up with the curve of recent games in terms of visual detail and animation. The 3D effects on the radar and "Don's View" are nice touches, however, the robotic and awkward movements of some of the main characters fail to make the scenes feel believable. The city itself feels rather drab and repetitive although the three locations: Miami, Cuba and New York do feel and look very different from each other they aren't much to behold and definitely aren't something you'll choose to spend a lot of time exploring.
Multiplayer has some original variations of previously seen multiplayer modes. The most unique option of these is the choice of being able to play Don Vs Don with other human players under your command. The Don mode gives you an overhead view of the action while you order your men to 'attack this', 'capture that', 'blow this up' and you can even put your single player money on the line and offer a percentage to each player that joins your side. Back on the ground your underlings have brought in characters from their single player games along with their skills and they can use these men to earn points along with their money to upgrade weapon skill. The "safe cracker" game mode behaves a lot like a regular "capture the bases" mode except that your man must have the ability to crack a safe to be able to take a 'base'. Fire starter is a little more unique, if you have the arsonist ability you can start fires at specific points and try to rack up combos to increase your teams score while you dodge the bullets from the non arsonists in the other team. Even if you don't have the correct abilities you can still help out by using what abilities you have to heal or cut a path towards your objective, sounds like a lot of fun, right? Well, sadly, no. The multiplayer lobbies themselves appear to be suffering some issues that caused a lot of game kicks before they went down entirely, Even if you fight through a lobby there's often too many chiefs and not enough Indians and most people seem to be either choosing Dons or some matches have Dons disabled entirely. Then there's the multiplayer itself which feels rather mindless. The strong suit of these types of 3rd person games has never been on foot gun play localized to a small area of the map and despite the interesting game modes, when you get down to it, the action itself just isn't a lot of fun or particularly satisfying.
Godfather II tries hard to set itself apart from the competition, however, the unique features feel somewhat undercooked in almost every area. Corners have been cut, sacrifices have been made and the finished product is lacking the real finish it deserves. There is some fun to be had in Godfather II, but its repetitive nature and the fact there there is little to do will leave you wondering about the game that could have been.
