Most video games based on movies are garbage. They are generally some cheap, hackneyed cash grabber that gets released at the same time as the film, with obvious minimal production effort. The first Godfather game did not fit this mold – mainly because the film had already been out for over 30 years. It was an attempt at recreating art. It was something that did not have the deadlines and pressures of a parallel release with the cinema. Because of that, it turned into a solid product that worked a new storyline into a classic tale that everyone has heard. This was good, because it had big shoes to fill, and the developers realized this.

Straight up, I’m going to color my critique by saying I was a huge fan of the first Godfather video game – if that isn’t already apparent. I first played it on Wii, then re-purchased it on the 360 to play through again. There was tons to do, the story was acceptably true to the movie, and the gameplay was a blast. Given the success of the title and its critical praise, and the fact there are two other movies in the Godfather series (I know, you pretend the 3rd one doesn’t exist), a sequel was inevitable. A few months ago, it came out.

Gamefly finally got it in stock and shipped it my way, and here we are.

The story opens up a few years after the first game. Your first game character gets sniped (not a spoiler) and you head to New York to regain control of the city as a new fellow. Right away, Michael Corleone gives you a family and makes you the boss. My issues with the game started here. In the first release, you spent your entire time working up the ranks of the Corleone family to become Don. In this game, you’re a Don right away. You get a crew, you almost immediately have access to a full arsenal of weapons, and your crew members can take care of things for you that you don’t want to handle. Right away, a lot of the things you worked for in the first game were just handed to you.

So you’d think with that being the case, there ought to be different things you have to work towards instead – right? Sort of. Here’s the rundown of how the game works:

There are a few cities, but you start off in New York. You have family members that you gain and promote throughout the game. The ability to add more family members or promote people to Capo, etc. come automatically as you go through the story. Each character in your family has a specific skill (engineering, muscle, demolitions, arson, lockpicking, medic) which help you break into buildings, steal stuff, and otherwise survive. They also have all the standard skills like shooting, intimidation, health, and so on. All these skills can be upgraded with money as you move on. The game claims you have to be wise with your upgrades and choices, but you don’t really. Eventually, you’ll have a family member with every available skill. If you need a skill from someone not currently equipped in your crew, you can just swap them out on-the-fly, use their skill, then send them back – so long as they’re not off doing something else.

The structure of the game is much like the first. There is an overarching story, and inbetween tasks you go around extorting shops, taking over fronts and bombing compounds. There are less of them than in the first game, and they are pretty easy to take over. After you take control of a place, you have to equip it with guards, which costs you money. These guards protect the place if a rival family attempts to take it back. You can also deploy your family members to a place if it’s under attack, because they are stronger than anyone. You aren’t able to use a family member in your active crew if he’s off defending a location, but that’s no big deal.

Family members who die or get arrested are taken to their respective facilities for a certain amount of time until released, during which they can’t be used. Unless, of course, you have a favor to get them out…

Like the first game, you can do favors for people to get perks. These include getting people out of jail, out of the hospital, set up a sting on a rival family member, etc. Unlike the first game, you can use them at any time, which is handy. Unfortunately, this game is so much easier than the first one, you’ll hardly ever have to use them. I played for about 8 hours and had already taken down two rival families completely before I used my first favor.

The map system is pretty awesome. It’s three-dimensional and is the main control point for the game. Without going into boring details about a map you can’t interact with via text, it’s well designed and the hub for everything you do.

The story doesn’t follow the Godfather II film as closely as the first one did the original. It’s an interesting reimagining of the tale, but doesn’t do it a lot of justice. If you never saw the movie, you’d know nothing about it after playing this game.

Overall, the game is easy. It is made simple by the fact you have a strong crew with you at all times right from the beginning, the AI characters are weak, you are given lots of weapons and ammo way too quickly, upgrading skills is tactless and the design is fairly simple. Dying or getting arrested have no consequence aside from relocating you somewhere on the map. It very much feels like a totally different game from the first Godfather instead of a sequel. It is also short – after my first 2.5 hours of play, the progress tracker said I was 20% done. That is pretty quick for a free-roaming task-based TPS.

My biggest gripe is that families don’t get as extraordinarily pissed off at you the way they did in the first. In Godfather I, if you took over a number of rival family businesses, that family would make it nearly impossible for you to accomplish anything else unless you paid off an FBI guy and turned down the heat. You would be constantly paying off cops and Feds to lose family heat and get some peace. That just doesn’t happen in this title.

Another bummer is that some family upgrades rely on your accomplishments in online play. This sucks for people who don’t pay for LIVE, or for those who just don’t want to play online. You can still upgrade these family members – if you come across someone in-game who has better attributes than one of your current guys, you can kill him off and recruit the new one – but you also lose any stats you’ve paid to upgrade for that guy.

Now that a lot of bitching is out of the way, let me say that this is still a fun game. It’s worth putting down a few bucks, and worth playing. Most of my criticism has come from comparison, which is justified as this is billed as a sequel. Even some of the things that have been addressed as negatives, like sending your crew members to defend a place when it is being attacked, are cool at the same time. It adds an element of RTS to the game – but takes away the sense of urgency and protection from the first game, where you’d have to physically drive to and defend a place yourself.

There is a nifty new method of taking down rival family members that goes beyond simply destroying their compound. You are able to view the family tree of each gang, and each member has to be killed in a certain way. As you wander the world, you’ll come across people who need favors in exchange for a “kill condition.” If you do the favor for them, they’ll tell you a certain method by which a rival family member must be taken down. Some need choked, others need hit with a bat, some need sniped, and a few even need killed by being hit with a bottle. Kill the family member in the correct way, and he’s down. If you take them out before attempting to blow up the compound, it’ll make that effort easier. It also serves as one more string of tasks that are available to complete. Unfortunately, the downside is that you aren’t required to do them. If you go blow up the compound without the individual family takedowns, they’ll all be dead, and that’s that. There isn’t much of a reward for hitting them all individually.

All in all, if you were a fan of the first title, you’ll be left wanting when you play this game. That said, it’s still worth playing. Definitely worth a rental, or if you can find a used copy somewhere, pick it up for a few bucks. It’ll entertain you for a while, as long as you don’t expect too much complexity or difficulty. If you’ve played the game, let me know your thoughts.

Tags: godfather 2