When I was talking to a co-worker about my thoughts on The Godfather II, the initial point of discussion was over my disappointment with EA's decision to allow the player to choke the life out of everyone except the various prostitutes that populate the game world.
His reasoning as to why they were excluded was that choking a topless hooker to death would be deemed sexual violence instead of being viewed as merely a way for me to conserve ammunition, and this would have lead to all sorts of censorship issues.
Now, this conversation was important to me for two reasons. The first being that the speed with which my colleague linked choking with sex means I no longer plan on introducing him to my sister and the second, more important reason, being that it made me realise that as unpolished and repetitive as The Godfather II is, I still had a blast playing it.
The Godfather II is primarily a sandbox game where your goal is to use force and intimidation to extend the power and influence of the Corleone crime family. The way you do this is by taking your crew (consisting of yourself and up to three others) and assaulting the various enterprises that dot each city, and ultimately force the owner to pay you protection money. This money is used to pay for guards to protect your turf and to upgrade the your soldiers. By gaining territory, rival families lose theirs, and once they no longer have any protection money coming in, you are able to assault their compound and wipe them out. You repeat this process until all the threats to your empire are defeated.
The way you manage your family is via the 'Don's view' menu system. This overview allows you to see each city you have visited, and the turf you can control in each. Colour coding lets you quickly assay each area to show you who the major players are. A closer look gives more detailed information as to what exactly each business is, what perks come with each crime ring, and the amount of guards that are at the location. You are also able to view and upgrade your soldiers, send them on missions, or change who is currently accompanying you.
Who you have with you is important because as well as being able to walk through the front door and fight your way to the owner, each location has various weaknesses that your fellow sociopaths can exploit, be it cutting through fences, cracking safes or punching down doors. These abilities allow you alternate routes into each area, meaning you don't have to fight your way through 30+ guards before you get your intimidation on. It is shallow, but certain talents do allow you some minor strategy in disrupting other crime rings, as we mentioned in our video preview
The combat system is pretty standard for a sandbox game, it's a so-so lock on and a Gears of War-lite cover system which works for what it is. There is however a complete lack of difficulty due to the dense enemy A.I, which means the only time you die is when you get low on ammo after rushing a dozen guards, or try to set everyone up for an execution kill.
The multiplayer isn't anything exceptional. There is really only one neat concept here, and that is that you use members of your crew to play online, and money and experience they collect can be used in the single player campaign. The problem with this is that the multiplayer games themselves take place on terrible maps, and really just exposes how simple the combat is. The reason to push through multiplayer is to upgrade your soldiers, but as the single player isn't a challenge, that isn't really all that necessary.
Apart from the massive public awareness for the Godfather films, the other reason to license them is that EA could offer players the opportunity to partake in one of the greatest American films of all time. All the major characters from the film are present and your character, Dominic, a new Don (although technically he would be an Underboss) is out to put an end to the rival organisations that threaten the Corleone family.
Although the film is punctuated by moments of sweet action and violence, The Godfather Part II is a film that is driven by emotional drama, something that is completely absent from the video game. The stiff animations and the dull cow-eye characters fail to engage, causing the poorly acted dialogue scenes to become a chore to be rushed through, or avoided for as long as possible.
I never expected the plot to hold a candle to that of the film, but by tying the game to the story of Michael Corleone, the player has to partake in a tale that has been reworked to drive to the narrative, but ends up being very boring and more generic than the license deserves.
The game world has the look and feel of a product that was rushed, with bland art design brought to life by thrifty model work. Other than a few cool songs, the sound design feels just as lacking. The Godfather II looks and feels like a title that has been ported from the original Xbox.
Despite being repetitive to a fault and beyond easy, as I mentioned earlier, I had a blast playing The Godfather II.
There is something enjoyable about acquiring territory and mowing down waves of hired goons before impaling their faces on baseball bats. I knew the game had flaws but none of them really impeded my ability to revel in what was on offer, and every time I quit the game due to the boredom that the repetitive tasks created, I wanted to jump back in and get my murder on. At about ten hours long, it's worth a rent if you enjoy extreme cartoon violence.
