Guest review: The Godfather (PS2)

Leave the gun, take the cannoli

The game allows you to follow the narrative of the first Godfather movie or strike off on your own to take over the territories of the rival crime families. The storyline offers you a nice variety of mission types while you interact with both original characters and recognizable ones from the movie. Although the game manages to work your character into the story very well for the most part, there are a few times where some rather large liberties are taken. Remember the scene where Don Vito is being driven to hospital while being shot at by the Tattaglia family? No, me neither. Though the casual fan likely won’t have a problem with EA’s artistic license, Godfather purists (and they’re out there) may not be so forgiving.

The side missions of taking over businesses, rackets and enemy warehouses offers both a diversion from the storyline and some fairly straightforward action. The problem is that things can get a little too straightforward. Just as businesses and their owners are repeated, so are your enemies and their strongholds. If you’re an obsessive-compulsive completist or just can’t get enough of blowing mobsters away, then this part of the game should hold you over. Otherwise it tends to get old.

Today I settled all family business

Overall The Godfather offers a very solid gameplay experience. There are enough innovations with the combat and extortion to make this more than GTA with a Godfather license. The license itself is fully employed throughout the game, though there are some rather large liberties taken at times.

The game starts off strong, but will drag on unless you find that you can’t get enough of continually roughing up NPCs and shooting mobsters. The difficulty is relatively normal, but can be erratic at times. A character with no stat boosts and the starting weapons will die very often. A maxed out character with fully upgraded weapons will breeze through most of the combat.

Finally, there are some odd design choices in the game. While you can unlock clips from the movie, you can only access them from the main menu. Similarly, you’ll need to head there if you want to further customize your character’s looks. Beating a character with your fists will kill them, which can be a pain when trying to extort. Why not have them fall unconscious and then require one of the vaunted executions to finish them off? Despite these quirks, you’ll find that The Godfather is a solid game that’s worth your time.