The Godfather II Review

The Godfather II system requirements

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS FOR WINDOWS XP (SP2) or Vista (taken from EA page):

• 2.8 GHz processor or equivalent (any Pentium 4 2.8 GHz or better, AMD Athlon64 3000+ or better, any Athlon64 X2 or Core Duo processor)
• 1 GB RAM (XP), 2 GB RAM (Vista)
• NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or better (7300, 7600 GS, and 8500 are below minimum system requirements)
• ATI X1600 Pro or better (X1300, X1300 Pro and HD2400 are below minimum system requirements)
• 256MB Video Card and Shader Model 3.0 required
• The latest version of DirectX 9.0c
• At least 9 GB of hard drive space for installation, plus additional space for saved games.
• INTERNET CONNECTION, ONLINE AUTHENTICATION, AND END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUIRED TO PLAY.

The Godfather II Gameplay Mechanics

Roaming the world

The Godfather II looks like a cut down version of GTA IV (or the GTA series overall). You roam the streets in third person view either on foot or by carjacking some passers by. It’s kinda weird though how you can easily get a new car by simply stopping someone and shouting “I want your car!” or “Nice wheels! I want it” (PS: please don’t do this in the real world).

At some point in the game, you can go between different cities by plane (going to the airport and talk to the “travel agent” lady).

The Made Men

You can recruit several mobsters to join your family and bring them alongside you during the missions. You can only bring 3 of your made men but you can always let the others defend your businesses or send them for missions.  There are six specialties in the game that your crews can consist of:

• Arsonist (creates diversions and access inaccessible areas).
• Bruiser (breaks down doors, intimidate witnesses and stealth kills).
• Demolitions Expert (bomb buildings and some walls).
• Engineer (cuts through fences and shutting down power to prevent enemy reinforcements).
• Medic (revives you and other fallen team members).
• Safecracker (opens safe and vaults).

Their stats and skills can also be upgraded for a price. Or if you feel unhappy with your made men, you can always “mark” them for death (and kill them yourself) so you can recruit new members into your family. Since each man also has different weapon specializations, you might want to send your man to his grave once you’ve met someone better. Ah yes, the power!

The Don’s View

The Don’s View is a strategic overview of the world in the eyes of a Don (you). It’s a city map (if you want to put it that way) with all businesses being highlighted for you (and your enemies) to take over. You will be able to see which businesses belong to which families here.

If you manage to take over a whole set of the same business type (say Prostitution), then your family will get a specific bonus. Bonuses are varied such as a bullet proof vest for all of your men (including yourself) or an armored car.

The Godfather II Missions

The Godfather II missions are quite repetitive but thankfully, they are fun to do and aren’t frustrating. In fact, the missions are quite easy since your health bar will regenerate as long as you remain hidden for a period of time. Not to mention that you can have a Medic in your team which will replenish you back to full health if your health happens to drop to zero.

The missions involve killing, bombing, hitting, and other usual mafia chores:

• Arson (burn things down)
• Sabotage (steal things)
• Assassinate (kill people)
• Bombing (blow stuffs)
• Many more!

Some missions require you to play it yourself and some don’t. For example, you can send your men through the Don’s view to bomb or to take over the businesses. But of course, if you are playing the mission yourself with your team, there is a 90% chance that your mission will succeed.

The Godfather II bugs and issues

The storyline is alright and nothing too exciting. The end game involves killing all the families so basically there were no optional missions as you need to capture all businesses to be able to raid the families. Once you end the game, there is an option to continue with the game but since there are no more enemies left, there are nothing left to do apart from killing innocents or blow cars up just for the fun of it.

Some bonuses are also available only towards the end of the game, making them quite useless as you probably won’t enjoy it long enough.

Occassionally you can get stuck inside a table or a wall, requiring you to load a save game.

The dialogues are very very repetitive so you’ll find the same dialogues being voiced over and over again. Thankfully, the lines aren’t that long.

The AI can be quite stupid sometimes and you will often find these weird anomalies:

• Your men running around outside your car, trying to find an empty seat.
• No matter how far you’ve left your men behind, they’ll always magically appear when you look at a different direction. I guess this is a good thing as you’ll never find path finding problems in the game :)
• You open a locked door to find that some of your men are already teleported inside.

Conclusion

The Godfather 2 is a fun mobster style game in third person view. You can look at it as a cut-down version of GTA IV (Grand Theft Auto IV) but it doesn’t mean that it’s a  bad thing. The Godfather 2 is easy to learn and very rarely that I encountered frustrations in the game.

The strategical element is there (managing your families and also your made men) but it’s not much. The storyline is quite blunt and nothing exciting, unfortunately. It basically involves taking over the other families’ businesses, killing them and proving them that your family is the best mob in the country. Doing these chores can be quite repetitive but thankfully the missions are quite varied and best of all, they are fun to play and enjoyable.