The Godfather: The Game

The Good
Anyone who has seen "The Godfather" will tell you how faithful this game is to the movie. Having the protagonist either be responsible for or witness some of the key events of the movie is a great idea, and the cutscenes are are all incredibly stylish. Don Vito, Sonny Corleone, Tom Hagen and pretty much everyone besides Michael looks and sounds like they're supposed to. The shooting segments are much more enjoyable than in GTA or Mafia. The mission design is also great, at least at first, and some of the side missions, like gathering protection money, are very enjoyable.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the game also gets repetitive after a while, and while our hero rises in rank and gathers more and more respect, he still has to act like an errand boy and do everything himself.

The driving is also complete agony when compared to GTA. I know it's the 40's and all, so I didn't expect sports cars and the like, but constantly crashing into parked cars and stupid pedestrians is enough to drive anyone ballistic.

Hand-to-hand combat is also annoying. Who actually thought it was a good idea that you always have to target the enemy while fighting, because otherwise mashing the buttons does nothing. Any situation where there's more than one opponent becomes incredibly frustrating.

Finally, while the pedestrians are somewhat believable, the city just doesn't feel alive. I was't around to see New York in the 40's, but somehow I doubt the game's gray, lifeless blocks depict it accurately.

The Bottom Line
Even if you like GTA-style games and are a fan of the movie, you may want to think twice before picking up this game. Though the first few hours are OK, the game gets steadily worse as you play on, and I was tempted to stop playing many times: after a certain point, it just wasn't fun.

The Good
One of the best features about the Godfather game is the pure satisfaction you get from totally destroying your enemies and building your reputation from the ground up. The game's main objective to make the Corleone family the most dominant family in New York by first driving the other 4 families out of your turf then slowly but surely taking over theirs.

Players have to take over the enemy turfs by slowing taking over fronts then moving on the warehouses and eventually taking over the family's mansion and driving them "out of business". This formula is not only straight forward but also gives a purpose for what you are doing and helps the players feel like they are accumulating respect along the way. When players extort enough businesses, their reputation will increase as well. With a higher reputation players can take over fronts with less effort, making the game effectively easier.

The story in the game is very well done. Your character starts as young boy who watches his parents get murdered and have their business burned right before your eyes. While this intro is far from an original plot device, it sets the stage for a more complex mob story about betrayal, fragile alliances, and much, much more. The story alone will keep the players going for a very long time, thanks to several characters from the original Godfather movie returning for voice work, with exceptions due to recent deaths.

The Bad
Unfortunately, the Godfather game tends to suffer from repetition and gameplay errors that hinder the overall experience. Several business fronts begin to recycle their backdrops, resulting in serious cases of deja vu and getting lost a frequent encounter.

While the game resembles an open world, there is only one objective given to you at a time. While you can extort fronts and kill mobsters till your hearts content, you cannot progress until you complete the story objectives given to you. Since players cannot get experience points without completing story objectives, you really do not have much to do outside of the story.

The player's created character does not see much use and comes off as rather bland. Not only does your character look bland in comparison to the other characters, he rarely has any speaking lines and comes off as the Corleone Family's monkey boy more often than not saying "what does the family need me to do?" It is nice to be loyal but sometimes the game just pushes it.

The game does not do such a great job of giving players the feeling that they are a respected force in the mob, rather than a glorified foot soldiers. Players never get to control other Corleone soldiers and work solo the entire game. While front owners surrender to players faster when they have more respect, this does little to help the progress when players do not have back-up from others and are always doing the bidding of another family member not matter what rank they obtain.

The Bottom Line
The Godfather seems like a perfect game on paper, with an interesting concept, a great license, and some fun moments. And for the most part the game does this for a majority of the time. However, it's when the game briefly stumbles with the recycled graphics, bland main character, and inability to give players a sense of leveling up that it shows its flaws and begins to wane a little. However, the Godfather game is a very enjoyable experience through and through and will keep dedicated players entertained for a long time to come.

The Good
Although it greatly resembles GTA, what sets this game apart from the GTA clones is that it has a very elaborate storyline. It follows the movie very closely, while at the same time, complements it greatly by creating a story told through your perspective. In fact, some questions left unanswered in the film are clarified here (i.e killing Bruno Tattaglia). All in all, it's basically the film with a more complete and thorough storyline. Unlike most GTA clones out there, this one has a period setting: It's set in a fairly accurate portrayal of New York 1945-1950 and has more engaging characters.

The game has a lot of music tracks and cutscenes from the movie, and most of the cast from the film provide the voiceovers (including Marlon Brando, who shot his lines before his death in 2004). The one notable exception is Al Pacino, who refused to take part for reasons unknown. All this definitely reels the many fans of the film and makes it all the more enjoyable.

But the high-water mark of this game is the gameplay. Since this game is set in New York and not in L.A like in GTA, you have far more places to go and more things to do. The primary missions are constitute a much smaller percentage in this game than GTA, since you can go about extorting businesses, seizing rackets, hubs, and shipyards, getting hit contracts and doing favours as well as whacking A LOT of mafiosos. Fulfilling all these objectives requires a lot of firepower, some strategy, bribing some cops, back-up and some luck too. All in all, you'll definitely take days, even weeks, to finish this game and becoming the Don of NYC.

The Bad
Some backgrounds look pretty similar, which can create confusion even if you know where you are and make things a bit repetitive.

Depending on who you're fighting, the AI extends from being very easy to extremely cheap. I.E, the bank guards are a little too easy to take down, but the Barzinis take more damage than a tank and have more brains. Sometimes when you're hiding behind a wall, it becomes tricky to shoot an enemy, as you can end up either switching to another target or blasting to parts of the scenery. At worst, you can even hit an explosive barrel and get iced (That happened to me several times).

A little more realism would've been nice. I can go on violating traffic violations without having a cop pull me over. You can duck, but you cannot jump. Other than that, it stops here.

The Bottom Line
If you're a fan of the movie, then this is the game you've been waiting for! As I've mentioned in previous movie-game reviews, movie-games tend to be mediocre (or worse) exploitations of a franchise, but this one does the 1972 film justice. The game has more interactivity than the GTA games, and you'll be playing even past your bedtime just trying to achieve certain objectives.

I'd say buy it rather than rent it, since this game IS a long one, but a a long road which you'll enjoy all the way!