The Godfather 2 Review Available for: PC, XBOX 360, PS3 Tested on: PC In 2006, EA had released the game The Godfather. This game was based on the 1972 movie "The Godfather". This year, EA has released the sequel "The Godfather 2". Is the 2nd part better than the 1st part? I'll cover all of that in this review. Different Approach Unlike the 1st part, you immediately start with being the Don. You hire your own crew members, upgrade them, and give them assignments. The game world can be accessed by something, called "The Don's View". In that view, you can see the map of each city. All rackets (stores, construction sites, strip clubs etc) are visible there. You can see which family owns a racket, send crew members to take over or bomb a racket, and assign guards to a racket that you own. Next-Gen? The Godfather 2 contains three open areas: New York, Florida and Cuba. There are cars that can be driven, and pedestrians are walking all over the place. All areas aren't really big, and the graphics aren't pretty at all. You really don't think it's a game from 2008/2009. The quality of the cars are quite good, but don't compare to the vehicles of Grand Theft Auto IV that was released a year ago. Vehicles The only vehicles that can be driven are cars. There a just a few different cars. Driving a car in The Godfather 2 is really terrible. Steering feels unresponsive and turning is hard to do. When having crew members in your car, you can order them to take firing positions from within the car. This is useful when chased by the police. You can't fire from inside the car yourself, but I promise that you won't really need it. Crew members At all your properties you can find people who like to be a member of your family. Everyone has it's own special abilities. These include blowing up buildings, breaking stuff, cutting fences, healing other crew members and breaking safes. Each crew member can be upgraded to improve their health, weapon accuracy, recovery time and melee attacks. Weapons can also be purchased. These crew members are also called "Made Men". You can recruit a total of four soldiers (lowest rank). At certain moments during the game, you can promote them. The 2nd rank is Capo and the 3rd rank is Underboss. There can be a total of three Capos and two underbosses. When you promote a crew member, you can choose a new special ability (to add to the existing abilities). After promoting someone, you can recruit a new crew member to replace the old position of the promoted member. When a crew member is killed, he will be transferred to the hospital, and recover after a certain period. If you don't need a crew member anymore, you can mark him for Death. Once he is killed, you can recruit someone to replace his position. It's possible to take some crew members with you to use their specialities, like breaking a door, cutting a fence, sabotage the power, or blowing up a wall. You can only take up to three crew members with you. Rackets As said before, rackets are owned properties. These can be a store, casino, fuel station, construction sites, strip clubs, chop shops and more. The family that owns a racket gets paid each day by the owner of the racket as so called "Protection Money". Each racket belongs to a group. Such a group is called a "Crime Ring". When you own an entire Crime Ring, you gain a special ability. These include bulletproof vests, armored cars, cheaper guards etc. If a rival family owns a crime ring, then they will also receive a special ability. To take over a racket, enter it and persuade the owner. Each owner has a weakness that you can use. These include breaking stuff, hitting him or pointing a gun at him. There is a bar with one or two lines in it. While persuading him, the bar gets filled. If the bar passes the 1st line, it turns green and then you can take over the racket. The further the bar passes the 1st line, the more money you receive. But if it passes the 2nd line (the boiling point), or when the owner is killed, the shop will be out of business for a while. After you own a racket, you can assign guards to it. Each guard costs money, so you need to compensate expenses with the protection money that you receive. Each rival family will attempt to attack your rackets, so guarding it is a good idea. You can eventually order your crew members to help defend a racket when it's under attack. However, there is a downside here. When a crew member is defending a racket, you can't order him to guard something else or help you while that specific racket is under attack. A rival family can also assign guards to their rackets. In this case you have two options. Either kill all guards and then persuade the owner, or bomb the building. In that case, it's out of business. After it's opened again, you can make another attempt to take over the racket, but then without the guards. When attacking a racket, the guards can use the phones there to call for reinforcements. You can break the phone to prevent this from happening. The rival families There are different families that are your rivals. They can do the same stuff as you. So they also have their own crew members that also recover when they're killed. These crew members are also the ones who attack your rackets. There is a way to permanently kill them, and that is by killing everyone in a particular way. You can find the whereabouts and the specific killing way by doing favors for other people. The more rival crew members that you kill, the less problems you'll have with a family. But to eliminate an entire family, you'll need to blow up their compound. When you take over all rackets of a family, you'll unlock their compound. The Don and all crew members that are still alive will retreat there. After blowing it up, you've eliminated a family and their compound is then yours. Weapons and attacks There are different kinds of weapons in the game. These include the Thompson machine gun, MP5, shotgun, silenced pistol, magnum, baseball bat, dynamite, bomb, molotov cocktail and a sniper rifle. These can be upgraded by finding new weapons. in case you're out of ammo, you can also punch people. You can perform a punch, a kick or even a combo. If needed you can also grab people and then either throw them off a high building, through a window or strangle them. The strangle feature is useful to perform stealth kills. When your enemy is stunned, you can perform an execution. Either with a melee weapon or a gun. Either ways are quite brutal, and look really cool. Change your outfit During the game you can change your face details and change the outfit of you and your crew members. You can choose between loads of clothes. These include clothes for the upper body, lower body, shoes, hats and facial accessories like sun glasses. It's all just business Money speaks. This is important to remember. Won't it be nice if guards and police officers are temporarily blind, so they can't see whan you're doing. This can be done in the game. You can bribe guards to look the other way when for example robbing a bank. A yellow bar appears around the mini map. As long as it's visible, you can do whatever you want. The guards can even help you with killing your enemies. Not just that, you can also do favors for police officers and FBI agents to get something in return. These include calling off the police, arresting the Don of a rival family, or instantly recovering your fallen crew members. These favors that you do for those people really offer something nice in return. Safe-houses You have a safe-house in each area. In a safe-house you can hide from the police and refill your ammo. Beware of your crimes As usual, you can't do everything you want. The police wants to keep the piece. This is common in many games, like The Godfather 1 and Grand Theft Auto. But there's an addition here. When you perform a crime and there are witnesses, you see a small yellow circle appear in your area. This is the area where you are visible by a witness. You can either extort the witness or get out of the yellow area. When the police is called, they investigate the yellow area. You can hear the sirens when they're close. I you don't leave the area in time, it turns red. Then the cops are chasing you. The higher the wanted level, the more police you get on your tail. Boring,boring, boring If you think that The Godfather 2 has a long story and many missions, you've come to the wrong place. The only thing you're doing is interrogating a few people, and then taking over rackets during the entire game. There is no real story, just a few cutscenes and missions. I've completed the game in 10 hours, and 2 of then where real missions and cutscenes. If you don't like stories, and just wanna keep shooting, then this game is good for you. Otherwise you're gonna get really bored. Conclusion The Godfather 2 is a game with an entire unique gameplay. You start at the top, and manage your family. Choose between having your family do all the work, only you do the work, or combine it together. There a just a few missions, and that make it quire boring. Graphics don't look like a game from 2009 and vehicles don't drive like they should. If you liked The Godfather 1, you're not going to like the 2nd part. Do you like shooting without any of the story crap, then this game is for you.
