The Godfather
II
is the second attempt of EA to
successfully transfer the acclaimed
movie series to the video gaming
world. This time EA pulls it off.
They don’t pull it off by much, but
they do pull it off. Not everything
makes sense for hardcore buffs of
the franchise and although they
didn’t take a lot of creative
freedom, they did in a few spots
that only slightly takes away from
the game.
You don’t get to
be a main character of any kind.
Instead you’re the new New York
boss- Dominic Corleone. It’s your
job to take over New York for the
Corleone family. At first by taking
over rival families' businesses in
New York. And then you’ll move on to
Florida and Cuba, balancing
your turf at the three places while
trying to destroy rival family after
rival family until you have a
monopoly of every kind of foul
business there is. That’s the point
of the game, but the interesting
part of it is how it’s accomplished.
The Godfather
II
balances a very basic strategy
system with some serious action.
By a basic strategy system, I mean
basic in its truest form. You
control some different guys in your
family- eight all total and you can
send these guys to defend your
businesses or bomb rival’s
businesses. You can also take three
of the guys in your family, add them
to your crew, and you can go shoot
up a joint and take it over for your
family. Your interaction with the
guys in your core family is limited
to a few commands both on screen and
off, but it works because the game
needs to be more about the action
that’s on screen than balancing what
you need to do to protect that's in
the game but off the screen. The
action part of Godfather Part II is
also very simple- you’ve got guns
and you’ve got fists. You can shoot
people or you can punch people. You
can also brutally finish someone off
with either tactic, which is
incredibly graphic, but pretty cool
nonetheless.
The creative
freedoms I won’t get into too much.
They don’t sit right with everyone
but they don’t draw too much from
the movie or really add too much to
the game for that matter. What EA
did do well with the license is the
overall presentation. Menus look
awesome. Sound effects, voice
acting, and the music in the game
are all outstanding and although
there are a few problems with the
graphics and clipping from place to
place, for the most part the game
was well done on the presentation
side of things.
Godfather Part II
is one of those games that could
have been better, it’s just hard to
suggest where it could have been
better because of the fine line that
needs to be balanced when
translating such a huge franchise
like The Godfather. With
The Godfather II EA did a
better job of presenting the game
and adding some elements in the
gameplay. When added with a great
multiplayer system,
The Godfather II is a title
that fans of the franchise can be
proud of.
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