EA made an offer I couldn’t refuse in their latest offering, The Godfather II, it’s extremely addictive and just a lot of fun to play. It is fully an adult-only game with a Mature rating on it, there are parts of the game, several of them actually, that you get to see many cuties flashing their digital boobies at you, yes they are computer generated but you can tell what they are. That’s only part of the M rating though, the violence is over the top at points, but that’s what part of being a gangster was all about back in the day, you can’t take over a racket without shedding a bit of blood!

The Godfather II was officially released by EA yesterday, I was going to try and have the review up for the release day, but honestly I spent too much time playing it and wasn’t ready, so what’s one more day right? Seriously though, I’ve been playing this game almost non-stop, and it’s addictive and a ton of fun, there were a few days where I sat down and played then the next thing I knew it was 1am, yes it’s that much fun, it’s very engrossing and you just want to keep playing to see what is going to happen next. It can get repetitive though, there’s a lot of driving around and running around really, but I think it’s worth it in the end. The Godfather II offers quite a bit for players who like GTA style games, and even if you don’t, GF II combines strategy with third-person shooter, you’re not just going to be running around whacking people off, you’ll also need to strategize and plan your way to taking over the city from the other families, and at the same time protect your rackets from being taken over by them.

*Before you continue into this review, here’s fair warning that the images might be considered NSFW, depending where you work at, though I did do a bit of censoring to the images to tone them down a notch to more of a PG-13 level.

So continue on for a couple brief movies, my impressions and a ton of screenshots from The Godfather II…

We’ll start off with box shots:

I’ve got two videos for you as well, both are brief, one is 41 seconds the other is 1:34.

The first video is a rather violent cutscene.

The second video is a longer cutscene that sets up your next job.

Overall the acting is decent and most of the time the lips seem to sync with the words, which is a good thing as there are a ton of cutscenes in The Godfather II. You’re going to be seeing many, many of them as you, they range from short to rather long.

I love the whole mafia genre, movies, books, games etc, I guess partially cause I’m Italian and grew up around those speaking it and speaking with the heavy accent, and the whole talking with their hands thing, that’s one of the reasons I talk with my hands I guess… but anyway that’s part of it, the other part is the allure of it all, who wouldn’t want the money, power and respect of being a mafia boss, Capo, Don or a made-man?

Specifications:

The Godfather II

“The Godfather II offers players the ultimate fantasy of being a Don – of finally being the guy who calls all the shots for the family,” says Executive Producer Hunter Smith. “By combining the strategic gameplay of thinking like a Don through the ‘Don’s View’, with our intense, visceral ‘Blackhand’ combat, we are focusing on the game at the root of the Godfather franchise, the game of organized crime. In essence, we’re creating a new niche in the open-world genre and are really excited to see how players will build their families and customize their own experience in both the single player campaign and multiplayer battles.”

The Godfather II takes all of the drama, action and family values from the classic Godfather films and brings them into an interactive experience. This means that players have to build and invest in their family, manage their rackets, takeover crime rings and even reach out to corrupt officials – all through the revolutionary Don’s View. The Don’s View is a 3D display of the player’s criminal empire and family tree, offering a birds-eye view of all three cities to better coordinate their take-down strategies, plan hits on rival made men, attack enemy compounds, and much more. As a Don in the Corleone family, The Godfather II puts the control in the players’ hands and allows them to live in the Godfather universe while creating their own story of deception, betrayal, and conquest in a 1960’s organized crime world.

Developed at the EA Redwood Stores studio, The Godfather II is rated M for Mature by the ESRB and 18+ for PEGI. The Godfather II will be available for MSRP $59.99 on the Xbox 360 and PLAYSTATION 3 and MSRP $49.99 on PC.

When you first start out the game you can create your character, everything from totally shaping the face to hairstyle, build, and clothing, if you’re creative I’m sure you can get very close to your real life self as possible, me I just played around a bit and got somewhat close, but not really. You have to remember this is a time period game, so you’re basically working with what the styles were back then in the 60’s.

The graphics are decent, but not wonderful, I’ve got all of the settings maxed out running on an ATI 4870 512MB video card at 1680×1050 resolution with an Intel 9650 quad core processor and things are still a bit blocky, and grainy at times and pixellated when close up to objects. I even found tears in the scenes at spots and see-through people as well where you could see the background through them. No problems with framerates on my system no matter what I was doing.

I also found an odd bug where the sound would cut out, or where it would buzz loudly, and yes all of my drivers are up to date, but it happened only a few times.

If you’re a gangster you’re going to be in gun battles, there’ no doubt about that, though you don’t have to participate in every one of them, you can send one of your men to handle things for you. Each of your men have specialities as well, like you’ll need an Engineer to get into locked buildings or cut through fences, a Safecracker, you’ll need a Demolitions expert to blow things up, an Arsonist to burn things down, a Bruiser to knock things down, and you might need a Medic as well for when things get out of hand during a battle. Each of you men start out with one speciality, but as you promote them they can earn more or be cross-trained, so one man can do what three lower level guys can do.

Like all mobsters you’ll be attending a lot of meetings, taking over businesses, killing people, bribing people, and doing favors in return for other favors

A lot of things going on take place from the Don’s view, you press tab and up pops a control screen, here you can gain quite a bit of insight as to what’s going on in the world, and what your enemies are up to. Through this view you can also upgrade and promote your family, send your guys to take over rackets or just bomb them.

One interesting thing about the view is that you can zoom in and out, almost to street level:

There are icons for each of the Rackets or businesses you can take over and own, like a silhouette of a pole dancer for the brothels and strip clubs, yours are red colored. The idea of course is to take over everything, once you control all of one type of racket you can get a bonus like bullet proof vests, or larger clips for your guns.  Once you take over a place you’ll need to make sure it’s guarded, all places a a certain number of guards that you can place in them, some can hold thirty, and some can only hold eight guards at a time, guards will defend your place for you while you’re not there. While thirty may seem like a large amount of guards, it can still be taken over fairly easily by your rivals if they send their made men or bosses to take it over, members of the family are much more powerful than just plain guards and a couple of them can easily take down a business. When you get attacked you’ll be notified, and you can send defenders if you wish, you’ll see who they’ve sent to attack you and then you can decide if it’s worthwhile to send a family member of your own to defend the place.

While it does resemble Grand Theft Auto to a point, The Godfather II offers a bit more class, and style to this type of game. It can get quite repetitive at times with quite a bit of driving or walking around. When you’re taking over a business you fight your way all the way through it, and some can be very large, when you finally get tot he owner and win or lose, you’ve got to walk all the way back through the building, it would be nice if it wasn’t quite maze like, and maybe more doors opened once you defeated the owner.

As for the online portion, I can’t say much about it as I couldn’t get online, it just kept saying connecting, I even tried the yesterday, the day the game was launched, thinking maybe it wasn’t ready yet, but it still wouldn’t work for me.

We’ll finish this off with the slightly NSFW shots of me in one of the Brothels, a place where I found myself spending a lot of time, you can flirt with the girls but that’s about it, and of course you can admire the scenery…

Conclusion:
The Godfather II is quite addictive and just all around fun to play, it truly lets you feel what it must have been like to be a Don.

GF II brings class and a bit of style to this type of game, it’s not just a re-hashed GTA game, it’s much more than that really, though if you don’t like GTA games you may not like GF II, but then again you might as there is quite a bit more to it than what GTA has to offer.

I did run into a small bug with the sound issues, not sure what that was all about, and I couldn’t get online to work either, but even not playing online the game is long enough and does offer a bit of replay value.

Pros:
Addictive
Great story
Lots of fun
Decent acting
Long

Cons:
A few bugs
No online for me

Grades:
Overall
Design
Performance