The Godfather: The Game

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.