Played on:
PS3
The Godfather is one of those franchises EA was really counting on. The first game was released back in early 2006 on Xbox and PS2, and it borrowed quite a bit from Grand Theft Auto. It immediately went on to at least partially disappoint just about everyone, even as it was ported to the current gen of consoles. Despite having some new voice work by none other than Marlon Brando before he passed - and the likenesses and voice of many lovable characters from the trilogy - the first Godfather game simply didn't live up to standards.
But which standards are we talking about? For a game that knocks off GTA - there have been quite a few largely-hyped disappointments in this area - it was pretty good compared to its peers. For a major EA-made title, it was a little below par for the time. But for fans of the films, it was a very frustrating experience. Al Pacino wouldn't let EA use his likeness as Michael Corleone, and for movies that were so focused on characters, the game seemed to have little character of its own. But that EA team has been at work for a while, and now they're coming back to present us The Godfather II.
The first impression you'll likely get is that the developers have learned very few lessons from the first game. There's still no Al Pacino, so Corleone here is played by someone who - under threat of lawsuits and the like - intentionally looks and sounds nothing like Pacino did. And EA repaid him for his refusal to work with them by almost writing Michael out of the story of this second game, giving control of the Corleone family to your character, Dominic, instead. You'll become the boss, and you'll get both high- and low-level perspectives of pushing out other mob families, controlling fronts that hide criminal businesses, creating monopolies through violence and intimidation, and laundering your money through legit stores.
The big change in focus here is that you'll really get to take control of the family, right from the start, and will get plenty of high-level strategic choices. You'll have to manage your cash by upgrading your crew's abilities, guarding your storefronts, maintaining a stranglehold on various rackets like prostitution or gambling, and more. You'll also to have to hit the other families in the wallet by shutting down their own monopolies and taking out their big earners. Overall, it's a good system, and it's one that the game eases the player into nicely.
But the bad part about this is that you'll eventually be juggling events going on in three cities at once. After a very brief tutorial in Cuba, you're whisked off to New York and eventually head to Miami and then back to Havana. While it's nice to see a change in scenery, the hassle of driving to the airport to defend a business yourself means you'll likely just send some of your made men to defend instead. While it's nice that you can then focus your own efforts on taking on new challenges rather than going back to reinforce fronts you're about to lose, it might have been nicer for the game to - just for once - not make us drive ourselves. In this case, hitting a button to instantly travel directly to the location in question would have been handy. Still, either way it does seem silly to send anyone from Florida - including your own self - all the way up to New York on a plane to fight off another family at some restaurant. There are no easy-fix choices here, and it shows that the overall idea of having three cities, ones that aren't adjacent to each other, all vying for your constant attention is just bad design. Well, it is for The Godfather II, which is still supposed to be primarily an action game.
The other source of frustration is in your personal role. Maybe it's just that GTAIV has raised our standards for how action in a free-roaming game should look, feel, and play out - but combat in The Godfather II isn't exactly impressive. Oh sure, the "puzzle" that a situation presents - how can you squeeze more money out of a prospective racket by pressuring the owner - is interesting. You might have to smash his stock, hassle his customers, point a gun in his face, or threaten to push him off a ledge, and the developers do a good job of making it fun, rather than frustrating, to find out. (Also, taking out made men in an enemy family must be done a certain way, and those methods are generally good too.)
But all too often you will find yourself in a plain old firefight, with guns blazing all around you, and it really feels like this is just not the kind of game the developers are really comfortable making. Guns feel weak, enemies take too many shots to finish, and there's a lack of attention to detail that gets frustrating. For example, why can I only execute someone with the regular "pistol" and not the .357 Magnum I've also got? Is there some kind of special execution ammo that only one of these guns has? And while I'm harping on goofy stuff in this game, how about the time when I, the Don of the Corleone family and ruler of almost all organized crime in New York City, had to walk up to some guy in the street to do a favor for him? Even more ridiculous was when he asked me to set fire to a business that I had just taken over in exchange for telling me the signature way I had to kill an enemy made man.
