The Godfather II Review

TheRockNRolla

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Apr 9, 2009
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Godfather, a cinematic masterpiece. Godfather II, not so much of a masterpiece in anyway, shape or form. As a matter of fact, it's an unfinished, disappointing, disaster brought to you by the guys over at EA.

You play Dominic, an important figure in the Corleone family. So important, Michael Corleone just promoted him to the Don of his very own branch of the family. The game starts off with the tutorial that takes place in Cuba, then find yourself in a New York city, that looks nothing like the Big Apple from the first game. Here, you'll begin to build your family with hand-picked soldiers and start making a name for yourself by taking down the competition. You'll also get to travel to Florida and Cuba, where you'll find yourself doing the same things, over and over again. If you've seen Godfather II, you'll see a few of the scenes from the movie. The lack of dialogue between Dominic and rival dons makes taking down rival families less satisfying, which is only worsened by the games anti-climactic ending.

Did you play Assassin's Creed? Well, imagine Assassin's Creed, but, with God Father II painted over it, minus the fun parkour. You'll find yourself doing the same things over and over. While the gameplay features some interesting concepts, it falls flat on it's face. No matter how many guards you hire for your businesses, it's best to just drive across the map and defend them yourself. You can send your own soldiers to do your dirty work, like bomb businesses but, why bother when taking down a business takes five whole minutes? You'll even pick up some neat little upgrades doing so. Both the friendly and enemy A.I. lack any real form of intelligence. The game tries to defeat you with an over-whelming amount of weak, cannon-fodder. Your hand-picked soldiers will stand in the line of fire, run out in front of cars, or occasionally just run circles around your get-away vehicle because the game thinks he can?t get in, along with a plethora of stupid things your crew will do. The only way to upgrade your crew is to take them online and play the poor multiplayer, or kill them and hire some new, worthless mobsters.
As you build your family and businesses, rival soldiers, capo's and under bosses will attack you. In order to stop the attacks, you need to do repetitive favors like killing a guys ex, or smashing up a store for people. Then, you need to hunt the rival families men down, and kill them a certain way. When a family loses all it's businesses, it'll retreat to it's compound, where you'll be met with an over-whelming force of mobsters. When you blow up the compound, that family is permanently eliminated. This is all neat and fun the first time you storm a business, or kill a rival families under boss by executing him with a magnum, but then it drifts towards a tedious task, that is done a lot faster by just waiting and storming their compound to finish all of them in one go.

There are also plenty of bugs in the game, like sound glitches and NPC?s that may disappear, making it impossible to accomplish certain objectives. Your crew may occasionally get stuck inside an enemy compound and end up dead in the explosion. Godfather II may register some rival mobsters as dead, yet they'll still come back and attack your businesses from the grave. The dated graphics have serious pop-in issues. An entire city will magically pop up in the horizon, first as an ugly orgy of gray or black blocks. Some of the celebrities lend their voices to their recreated characters, but the game lacks the greatness of Al Pacino. That being said, Carlos Fero doesn?t do a bad job voicing Michael Corleone.

Let?s forget about the forgettable story, dated graphics and the repetitive, unfinished gameplay. For a free-roaming game with 3 cities to visit, it?s incredibly short. You'll probably beat the game in 10-15 hours, depending on how you play. 15 hours max, if you do everything and you'll more than likely unlock all the achievements on the way towards the game's unsatisfying ending. Also, once you complete the main story, there's nothing to do afterward, except drive around and watch the scenery pop-in to view. Godfather II is not challenging in the least, it's broken and repetitive. If you absolutely feel the need to play it, rent it or buy the first.

Godfather II gets 2 dead Capo's out of 5
 

Mekado

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And i was looking forward to play this :\ i thought they'd do it like the first one, but better...

Is the "strategic" element any fun (the don's view?) or it's as boring/stupid as the friendly AI ?
 

TheRockNRolla

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The problem is, there's nothing strategic about it. You can see all the businesses in the city, then you can either send your men to defend a place that's under attack, send a man to bomb it, or send some men to take it over. There really isn't any strategy involved.
 

Mekado

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The infamous SCAMola said:
Eh, is it really that surprising? First one sucked, this one sucks too.

I'll just wait for Mafia II.
The first one was decent imo, there was something missing and it's definitely no Mafia like you said but it was decent, if a little underwhelming...
 

sebar nl

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Feb 10, 2009
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The infamous SCAMola said:
Eh, is it really that surprising? First one sucked, this one sucks too.

I'll just wait for Mafia II.
I liked the first one :/

EDIT: and nice review btw.
 

ElephantGuts

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Jul 9, 2008
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I agree that I'm very dissapointed in Godfather 2. The first one was good, so obviously I had high hopes for the sequel. But...

Ah well. I'm still waiting for Mafia 2, though I never played the first. Was it good?