The Godfather II

Developer: EA Redwood Shores
Publisher: EA
Rating: M (Mature)
Price: $59.99

By RTEGonline

There are some things in life that just shouldn’t happen such as Cher being allowed to a recording contract, or worse, her actually winning an Oscar award. That is strictly my opinion. I’ve always been highly opposed to game developers being allowed to touch classic films like The Godfather unless they're willing to make the end result something that gamers will never forget. I promise that if you play The Godfather II it a title you will not soon forget for all the wrong reasons.

There is really nothing right with EA’s latest release; The Godfather II. I could start with the graphics, and believe me I want to, but there is so much more wrong with this game. You play as Dominic, a very “important” part of the Corleone family who I’ve never heard of or seen in ANY of the Godfather movies. Dominic is so important that he’s involved in most of the game’s cut scenes with Michael Corleone who is Don of the Corleone family. Michael seems to depend on Dominic a great deal to help him run his family. Michael even demands that Dominic become a Don of his very own family and take over every racket available and make a name for his self. Logically, every Don of a mob family wants his soldiers leaving the family and becoming larger than he is. Anyone who’s actually seen these movies knows already that this storyline is headed down the wrong path. Basically, what you have in this game is a lot of key characters from the Corleone crime family sitting around waiting to get approval from Dominic. This is when it becomes painfully obvious that whoever wrote the script for this game clearly isn’t a fan of the franchise.

GF2 feels like a ride on the world's biggest merry-go-round. The more you play, the more you get the feeling you've seen it all before. One component that was done right is the set of weapons you use. They're pretty impressive and do nice damage based on their levels. The Tommy Gun and Magnum pack a punch and they are my favorites based on their use in the very first Godfather release. The weapons can be assigned to each member of your crew based on your tactical need which is a very nice touch. You also have sticks of dynamite and Molotov cocktail bombs that can be thrown and timed bombs that can be placed and set by Dominic.

All the gun praise ends when in the three idiots that EA calls your “crew” are thrown in. This is where The Godfather II experience finally burns out of control and smashes to the ground. Having henchman that you can control is a nice touch and their guns are extremely useful in a fight. Unfortunately, the key word here is control and there’s a serious lack of it when it comes. Each crew member can have at least one skill that sets them apart from others. Whether it’s Safe-cracking, killing the electricity in buildings, committing arson or smashing down doors each crew member will have one or two of these skills available. You can order them to perform these duties whenever you see fit but that doesn’t mean they are carried out in a timely fashion. When you enter a car they should follow and jump in but even this simple task is comical to watch sometimes as it doesn’t always work. What seems to work fine though is sending them off to defend a racket that is currently being attacked by a rival family. This is probably the only facet of crew commanding that I haven’t had a problem with.

This brings me to the opposition or “Rival Families”. To put it plain and simple, the AI for the bad guys in this game is pretty bad. Your opponents are mindless and can almost always be lured into chasing you around corners where the rest of your crew is waiting with guns in hand. The gunplay is basically point and shoot, and there is really no challenge beyond the number of goons you face in a fire fight. This makes taking over rackets fairly easy and sends the redundancy meter through the roof.

If I had to sum up The Godfather II in one word it’d be “Unfinished”. There are far too many holes in this release to even consider it “Epic” like the movie. The Godfather II movie was probably the best of all the series and to see it go down in flames in the form of a video game is pretty sad. At least if EA attempts The Godfather III, they may fare better because the movie also left a lot to be desired. Please save your money and frankly, don’t even rent this game. Your console deserves better.