Will gave the single-player aspect of Godfather II a good review but, personally, it doesn’t stack up and it’s the most evident when you hit the online pavement with your made men.

The good thing is that the controls translate better to the online portion of GII, but being functional doesn’t make them good either. Guys don’t take twenty shots before they go down anymore and the lame lock-on system plays no role in multiplayer, but the lack of a melee button stings when you run out of ammo. It has nothing on first-person shooters — let alone the third-person shooter genre owned by Gears of War.

It’s too bad, because the multiplayer modes seem intriguing at first — abilities play a role in getting around the levels and “Don Mode” wagering can grant you easy money — but devolve simply because the shooting game play is no more than serviceable. It doesn’t help that the four modes add little variety besides adding a safe to crack in the middle of the level or something to burn.

Like Call of Duty and, more recently, Killzone 2 before it, you can earn “Honors” within the game to level up your character but, really, the campaign is easy enough with your basic skill set and once you’ve completed the story there’s no reason to go back.

Worse yet, the game ships with a paltry six levels on the disc and none stand out. Even so, they are ripped layouts present in the different businesses you take over in single-player. Thought getting around was tough by yourself? Try getting around in the unnecessarily convoluted levels when you’re getting killed after two shots and missing “abilities” to go through walls or fences.

About the only redeeming qualities to Godfather II multiplayer is that, at the time of this writing, it has a good community going that shouldn’t make it hard to find a game at peak hours. Also, it’s nice to see the graphic executions made it into the online game — teabagging is built in! If, for some reason, you loved the main game you’ll dig into multiplayer for a few more hours but don’t expect it to replace Gears or whatever shooter regularly spins in your system.

Single-Player Review

The best part of the “Godfather” movies have always been the stories told and the violent bullet-ridden scenes were just icing on the cake. EA took that formula and flipped it on its head for Godfather II as you start off with a story for a few hours then asked to go play what boils down to GTA: San Andreas turf wars for 12-15 hours. They give you “Don’s View” that is solidly implemented but is just a clever guise to you doing the same missions over and over. Sandbox fan or not, this is an offer you CAN refuse.

Score: 7/10