THE GOOD: The game play is very good, with new features added that have never been added in past games like talking to people and extorting businesses which is highly addicting.
THE BAD:
The cars are a little slow, especially when there are only about 6 of them. Also, the enemies or police cars are always slightly faster, so you have that disadvantage. It loses the flow of actually following the movie.
SUMMARY:
Following the outstanding book by Mario Puzo and the trilogy of films, The Godfather has took it one step further by adding a video game to complete the addition. As soon as I heard about this, I was excited - but nervous at the same time. Was this going to be a good game? Was it going to be a letdown? Well, let me tell you that it WASN'T. This game had me (and still has) playing all day. It is simply a great game. EA had provided me with a game I couldn't refuse.
The game starts with a prologue. It just tells you the story about your characters background. When your dad gets machine-gunned in a bakery store, you (the son) wants revenge. As Don Corleone, the boss of the family that you will be brought up with, says "Your time will come".
The part that I love - creating your own character. You can give your character a name, and you can even buy clothes with your money, but at the start of the game, you are low on it - don't worry though, you'll get your share with extortion and missions which will be explained. I gave my character the "gangster" look, by giving him a stubble beard and 4 scars on his face. You can even edit the nose, ears and eyes! To edit later in the game, just go to the Tailor Shop or Barbers at the Join the Family menu.
Now, a lot of years later, you are waiting to be found by Luca Brasi, a member in the Corleone family. He finds you getting beat up in an alley. You are the character that you created after the prologue, so you should be able to spot yourself easily, circled by three people. Luca Brasi saves the day and teaches you the basics of fighting, putting your practice to the test, by taking out the bullies. From there, there are several training missions to get the hang of the extortion, shooting and driving cars etc. For now, I'll leave you with the rest of the story, I don't want to spoil the day!
You will need to know a great deal about the families in the game. The Tattaglias are the easiest family to eliminate and fight, but the Barzini are the hardest. To know which family is which:
Brown Coat- Tattaglia family, easiest in the game.
Blue Coat- Stracci family.
Red Coat- Cuneo family.
Green Coat- Barzini family, the hardest in the game.
Each family member has marks or slashes when you aim at them, above the name. This tells you the rank of that member.
If you look at your screen while you are playing, you will see your respect meter and your respect points beside it. When you, say, do a mission, there will be a green bar - that is your respect. If the green goes full, then it will start all over again, and you have one added on respect point. Once you have the respect point, you can also upgrade your fighting, shooting, street smarts, health etc. Just go to the Skills and Upgrades when you press start. There will also be your money as well, to tell you how much you have. If you press select, that will show you your current objective. You will be given a map by Luca Brasi in the first training mission, and, like Grand Theft Auto, it will be displayed as a circle at the bottom left hand corner of your screen. To view the full sized version of your map, press start and go to Map.
Another way to gain respect points is to do various "Execution Styles". This is a very smart thing in the game. If your enemy or pedestrian is low on health, press R2 to "execute" them, and your character will break their neck. Lets just say it's a special way of killing someone. If you are equipped with a baseball bat and the enemy is on their knees, press R2, and you will be able to trap the mobster between your baseball bat and knee, by smashing your knee into the mobsters throat! Yeah, it's a bit like torture, but still, it's very worth it. If you are equipped with a gun, you can press R2 (remember, they must be low on health before you press R2) to blow their hat off when you should the face or, if you are equipped with a Shotgun, you can kick the mobster with his back to the ground and shoot them in the head! If you complete the execution styles first, which I recommend, it will help you as the reward is 100,000 respect points and $100,000. People who have took over businesses and done the executions last, were always in trouble. To find out why, look at the extortion part of my review below.
There are many great aspects in this game including the new blackhand grapple system which allows you to grab enemies and punch them or head butt them etc. You can bring your enemies to their knees and knee them in the face, which just adds to the realism to the game. You can also drag the enemies and swing them to a wall or, if you want the killing to be an accident, you can hang him over a high building ledge and push them off, letting them fall to their deaths. A feature which I like is throwing an enemy or a pedestrian into an oven, which is recommendable for a torturous death. You can also throw an enemy into a glass window.
To follow from the fighting, let me tell you about the shooting and weapons. You start of with pretty much cheap, but good guns. Don't worry though, because advancing in the game lets you buy Level 3 Upgrades, which are upgrades to your gun. They cost a lot of money though, $450,000 for the "Street Sweeper Shotgun", which can kill the Barzini family in two shots. The normal Shotgun, however, can only kill the Barzini in 3 or 4 shots. It's worth it, while infiltrating and blowing up rival compounds (which, again, will be explained in detail later). To upgrade your weapon, or even to buy a new one if you're running out of ammo, simply look for Black Market Dealers that hide around the back alleys. They like to stay well hidden, so YOU need to find them. You can find them on the map easily: they are a black diamond shape. Also, you can shoot people in the knee, which sends them on their knees, you can shoot them on their weapon shoulder, to disarm them, which helps a lot in the later missions. Or if you don't want to waste any ammo, you can shoot them in the head and they will die instantly. Weapons play a huge part in the game and some of the weapons that I will name are:
Tommy Gun
.38 Snub Nose
Magnum
Long-Barrel Shotgun
Molotov Cocktail
Dynamite
Bomb
Now for the transport. I was disappointed with the amount of cars in the game, only about 6 of them. The fastest car is the only one I use, but it can get easily damaged, so when I break into rival compounds, half the time I get blown up! They are pretty slow, and the fastest car really isn't that fast. That is probably the only major letdown in the game. Another thing is, in Grand Theft Auto, when your car was about to blow up, you could just run out and you couldn't care less. In The Godfather: The Game however, you SHUT THE DOOR when your car is about to blow up. It is very frustrating and annoying, but as long as you're a careful driver (unlike me), you will be able to have no worries about this. There are several "ramps" in the game and I seriously don't know why they put them there as your car can't even flip over or even flip on it's back. When you get a chase from the cops or enemy cars, their car is always SLIGHTLY faster than yours, so it becomes a challenge and it really does get a little annoying. As long as you stay out of trouble, this won't happen.
Speaking about the police in the game, they can be bribed. This helps you when you want to eliminate a few mobsters, just bribe a police chief for only $300, and they will look the other way for a while once you do your job. Do it quickly though, it doesn't last forever. To win a MOB WAR against another family, you can bribe an FBI Agent or G-Men, which can be found in the basements of churches. To start a mob war, simply keep shooting rival families and your Vendetta level will go up. There will be a timer (48 minutes). If you successfully bribe an FBI Agent or blow up the family compound, you will win the mob war within the time given.
Now for the fun part - extortion. This is highly addicting to me, you simply go in a shop, extort the owner to let him pay for the Corleones each and every week (hey, you'll get your share too, don't worry!) and sometimes, they unlock another door which leads you to a Racket. Give the Racket owner some money, and you and the owner will give you his share of the money to you. You have the extorting meter, if it goes past the green line, then you have done enough, but don't push too far or else they won't pay you. So watch out for the red line, you don't want to go past that. Taking over businesses is part of 100% completion.
The last thing, which is the lasting appeal. How long do you think The Godfather: The Game will be? Well, I'm still going for 100% still, I've done the story missions (which is around 6-8 hours long) and I'm just taking over family compounds. I've still got a long way to go yet, I need to do Hit Contracts, collect film reels, (which gives you a film clip from the movie to unlock. You can also unlock a film clip after each mission.), extortion and a whole load more.
My advice is to buy the game. Don't rent it. Some people say that they drifted away from it because there was nothing to do once you were Don of NYC, this is true, but still, I like to play the whole thing all over again. If you're a true Godfather fan, don't hesitate and buy it, if you're not, shame on you. This game has features that I never thought off adding into the game. It's worth it, I'd say.
My verdict - 8/10
Neoseeker verdict - 4/5
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