If you want to know what it’s like to run a crime family, check this game out!

We waited a long time to get our hands on The Godfather II and have spent the past week enjoying the title courtesy of Electronic Arts. Unfortunately, I was not able to extensively evaluate multiplayer gaming with the title considering no one is playing it on LIVE yet. Due to this, Carlos will be evaluating the multiplayer aspect of Godfather II all week and we will attach his thoughts to the review then.

Anyone who talks about this game will certainly try to compare it to Grand Theft Auto IV and Saints Row II. I have seen it mentioned in several magazine reviews already. While a comparison may seem natural, it’s really unnecessary. The Godfather II is a different kind of game and offers us things that you will not find in other sandbox titles. Two elements you will find in this game that are not in other sandbox titles is real strategy and resource management.

The Godfather II may be more important to the future of video games than most of us realize. The blending of strategy, action and resource management made this game a unique experience and I am sure other sandbox titles will borrow from it in the future. In other sandbox titles, there’s really no strategy involved. It seems like in most of them, you simply run around, complete missions and destroy everything in your path without thought. The Godfather II does not feel like that at all. There is quite a bit of action and destruction, but I actually felt like a real crime boss managing a real crime family.

If you liked the original Godfather game, I am almost certain you will enjoy this one, even though the game is much shorter. I beat the game in 16 hours, but did not play any online multiplayer, so that probably would have added quite a bit of time to my experience. The original Godfather game almost seemed too long, and this one seemed a tad short. Some of the shortness was actually welcomed though. It doesn’t take long to travel from one end of the city to the other or to travel from NYC to Florida or Cuba. In the first game, I felt like I spent most of my time driving. In this game, I spent most of my time formulating a strategy to take the other families down.

In the end, this felt like a game that was truly onto something epic, but never really evolved the way I wanted it to. By the end, I was left wanting more. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but I sincerely hope EA decides to continue with the series.

The Good

• This is the first sandbox console game where you truly feel like you are running a crime ring. Electronic Arts has achievement something very noble with this game and I am sure we will see more of it in the future.
• The game follows the movie well and they did a great job blending the side story for your character with the events from the film.
• Recruiting a family was a pleasure. You can recruit guys based on weapon skills, their personality and specialties. Once your family is full, you can also take a guy to the side and wack him to make room for another recruit. I found that this really added to the tru mob feeling of the game.
• The game was unique, entertaining and something I will remember for quite a while. By the time you get to the end, you feel like you really accomplished something. You have also gotten to know your crew by that time and most of the guys I recruited were characters.
• Even though I felt the game was easy, I also felt like I utilized master strategy to breeze through the way I did. The was the first sandbox game I ever played that required me to think a little.
• Control Scheme was perfect.
• Dons View made it easy to keep track of all the action.
• Most of the characters looked like the actual actors from the films. Michael look a little off though…

The Bad

• One aspect of the game that really annoyed me involved taking over businesses. In the game, you can send your men to take over an establishment while you take care of other things. Some takeovers require specific skills to gain entrance to certain rooms. Sometimes, you need to get into these rooms to take over a place. If you happened to send one of your guys with the required skill, you may not be able to take over the business. Several times this happened to me and my entire crew was stuck taking over a place. The only way to fix the problem was to save the game, exit, return to the game, and try to talk to your guy with the skill. You can then add him back to your crew and instruct him to gain entrance. This doesn’t work everytime and was certainly annoying. The ability to call your men off an assignment should have been added to the game.
• The game was simply too short.
• The game was not visually impressive. I felt it was standard for current games, but certainly not one of the best games in this department.
• The Godfather II was simply too easy. While it was challenging at times, I breezed through the game.

Game Tips

• Do NOT lose a crime ring. The game is fairly easy, but can become challenging if you lose a crime ring. The only time I struggled in the game was when I lost a ring, which resulted in losing my bullet-proof vest bonus. When that happened, I simultaneously lost my current battle with another family. Losing my defensive bonus completely changed the game.
• If you can afford it, place the maximum number of guards on your properties. If you do this, you can almost always defend a property by sending just 1-2 of your men to help out. If you don’t maximize guards, you can possibly lose holdings before you even have time to send reinforcements.

This was certainly not an “easy” game to rate. Part of me wanted to give it a 9 for originality and giving us something we really haven’t seen in games before. Another part of me wanted to give it an 8 for falling short in some areas…

Despite the shortcomings, this game was unique enough to warrant a good overall rating. The Godfather II offers some experiences you will not find in any other games.

My Rating: 8.5/10

If you are interested in more game tips and information, I’ll be dropping some later in the day. We also had an interesting chat earlier concerning how long we think games should be. I personally think sanbox titles should be 30-50 hours, but others on the site here thought the 16 was at least better than some of the other games we’ve been playing lately.

What Others Are Saying:

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