The Godfather (the video game) is a GTA inspired sandbox type game that pits you in the mob era and lets you play out the story in the movie. Like the movie, the game takes place in New York City. The city itself is split into 5 areas: Little Italy, New Jersey, Brooklyn, Hell’s Kitchen, and Midtown. Each of the said areas are controlled by a rival family, with your family the Corleones, controlling Little Italy. The campaign of the game will lead you through the movie’s plot as this kind of unnamed mobster. You’ll be with many of the main characters as the events unfold from the movie and be largely responsible for the bloodshed of the enemy families. To start with, The Godfather has quite a unique control scheme for hand to hand combat. Using the L-trigger, you can lock onto foes and throw punches and combos by moving the right analog stick. Moving it in different directions at different times will allow for different combos. This control really works well with the game and makes killing some of the enemies that much more up close and personal. You can also wield melee weapons such as bats, tire irons, and golf clubs that use the same control scheme. Then to add more style to the game, when an enemy’s health is low, you can tap the right bumper which will allow you to put the enemy away for good with a brutal execution. These executions can be done with melee weapons, bare hands, or any of the games firearms. Each weapon has two unique executions, one when an enemy is on their knees another when the enemy is on their feet. Some of these executions are on the order of Manhunt’s gruesome executions, which really add to the overall feel of the game. It also makes you feel like a total badass mobster. As for the shooting mechanics, they control much like the melee system does. Hold the L-trigger and you’ll lock on to a foe. One nice little touch is that you can then move the right analog stick to move the courser around on the enemy’s body, allowing for specific targeting of certain limbs. You can also hit the left bumper to enter and freestyle type shooting where the aimer appears on screen and you can freely move it about, but the auto aim tends to be much more effective when hordes of mobsters are chasing you. However, the targeting system in the game can get downright frustrating. For the most part, it works fine. However, when multiple enemies are shooting at you, things can get messy. You can switch targets by gently letting up on the L-trigger and pushing it back down, but most of the time it will jump to the wrong person a few time before finally landing on the person you want to shoot. Other times it will choose to target mobsters off in the distance rather than the ones that are three feet in front of you blasting at you with a shotgun. And it’s worth mentioning that the vehicle controls are pretty standard and work fine.
As far as the game’s presentation go, the graphics could have definitely looked a lot better. Many of the interiors that you go into start looking familiar and some of the back alleys are just plain ugly looking. However, the game does feature some pretty impressive audio. Everything from the music to the voice acting is great. I’m not quite sure if they have the original talent or not in the game, but all the characters sound great and authentic. The music is also good and I believe is the same music that appeared in the movie.
The main story consist of about 15 or so missions (don’t quote me on that) which take place of the course of Godfather I and II. (I think, I’ve never seen the movies). You get to create your mobster at the beginning of the game and as you complete story missions, level up your mobster and rise through the ranks in the family. The missions are pretty well diverse, ranging from killing people to bombing places and the story is also great as well, though you don’t get to go through 100% of the movie’s story, really only the highlights. After you finish the story missions, there are quite the few favor missions or hit missions. The favor missions are just little side missions that correspond to events that happened in the main story. The hits missions are exactly what they sound like. What makes the hit missions a bit more interesting is there is always a bonus condition that can be met which will earn you a ton more Respect and cash. These bonus conditions will be like, “Whack X with a bat” or “Kill him with your bare hands.” Nothing that requires that much more skill, but makes it more fun and mob like. The Respect you earn from completing the missions is what allows you to level up. Each time you level up, you can put a point into a few different categories such as Shooting, fighting, speed, health, and so on. The money you earn throughout the game allows you to purchase new clothes, weapon upgrades, and safe houses, which are locations that you can restock on ammo and health at and save your game. They also get some of the cops off of your back. One last important note is that while the main games story consists of these missions, one of the best things to do is try and take over as many rival family owned businesses that you can. You can do this by talking to the store owners. Some are more willing to pay for your protection than others and need a little convincing.
Overall, the game is surprisingly good. The game does an awesome job at making you feel like an actual mobster. And while it may not be a technically perfect game, the games feel really helps to overlook some of its flaws. It is definitely worth a rent.
