Monopoly with Guns and Brass Knuckles

by Scott Slaughter

Fun factor: Average

Worth to: Rent

With a little more effort and polish it could have been a classic to rival or even exceed GTA IV, but flaws aside it still brings entertaining and fun ideas to the table.

Imagine playing a game of Monopoly where, instead of meekly paying rent to your opponent when you land on Boardwalk, you can instead bash him in the teeth, take it over from him, and collect the income for yourself. Instead of the right to build houses and hotels, controlling all locations of a certain type earns you bonuses, like extra ammo or brass knuckles. That pretty much sums up the premise of EA’s Godfather 2. The overall goal of the game is to build a crew, wrest control of various illicit businesses from your AI opponents, defend yourself from their counterattacks, and work your way through the various story missions that parallel and at times intersect the plot line of the movie.



In Godfather 2, EA has rolled out a game that attempts to differentiate itself from the GTA style of game play, while maintaining some open world elements. They have certainly attained that goal, for both the good and unfortunately, the bad. There are a lot of GREAT ideas in the design, but they are often overshadowed by bad implementation and bad presentation. It’s hard to give a purely numerical rating to this game because there are things I both love and hate about it, hence my lengthy narrative that follows.

The Good

“Don View”

In Godfather 2 EA added a strategy aspect to the proceedings. You now not only control your character in third person and carry out missions by yourself, but in “Don View”, where you influence actions elsewhere by appropriating guards to rackets you control, sending crew members to bomb or take over rival rackets, calling in “favors” you have earned, and targeting rival “made men” for elimination. Those looking for a purely street level, run, gun and drive like hell affair may be turned off by this, but it has its appeal. You definitely get the feel of being the “the Don” and pulling the strings of your “family affairs”.

Building a crew

You can build a crew from various wise guys you find hanging out at your compound or at your various rackets. You manage “employee development” through the Don View. Here you can upgrade your own or your crew’s abilities, weapons, and ahem… “downsize” crew members that aren’t cutting it, and replace them with ones that have more advanced abilities.

Strategic AI

At first glance I was unimpressed with this, but as the game progressed I noticed that the enemy AI’s got much more aggressive with their attacks, making finding the right balance between defending your holdings, expanding your enterprise, and working through the story missions an entertainingly hair raising experience, especially before you have your crew fully staffed. The only problem is that once you are fully staffed the AI doesn’t seem to send enough guys on attacks to be a real threat. As long as you have enough guards on site backed up by a mobile reserve crew, being wiped out is almost impossible. It only becomes a little hairy if the other gangs are hitting you on multiple fronts while you are attempting to take down an enemy location.



Gunplay

Lots of guns, lots of explosives, lots of rival crew members to take down. The thrill is somewhat diminished by mediocre character animations, but overall the gunplay is satisfying if a bit on the easy side.

Melee Combat

Just as in the last game, the mechanic behind beating the living crap out of a rival is just as good as in the original game.

The Mediocre

Mission structure

I don’t have any real problems with the story missions (other than the story itself); they just seemed a little bit on the easy side. Favor missions were too easy to the point of being boring. On the flip side, taking down rival businesses while defending your own is a lot of fun, especially since there are a lot of different ways you can do it, though I wish some of the made man hit missions had some more variety. You always have to go a hangout after you find out where it is through the favor system and wade through a horde of wise guys until you get to your target. From a realism standpoint, you should have been provided two paths to get to the target. The frontal assault as is presented in the game would be one, but in addition some kind of stealth mode where you nail the guy somewhere where he least expects it would have improved things, especially with some kind of risk/reward system for the approach you choose. Also, while you do need to have certain specialists with you to accomplish some things or attain access to certain areas, this aspect could have been more finely tuned, maybe with some side missions with stronger emphasis on particular specialties, especially the safecracker and engineer.

Favor System

I really like the idea behind the favor system, especially the part where you get intel on locations of rival made men. I don’t like how it was implemented. Walking up to random strangers to do “favors” doesn’t feel right. Seems like NPCs looking for favors should be waiting for you at your compound or one of you businesses. The way the favor system was set up for corrupt officials and also how you can “bank” completed favors for later use is well done.

NPC AI

I’ve heard some negativity about the NPC AI, but in reality, while there are some glitches, I didn’t see anything that was a total showstopper. Getting your crew to jump in the car resembles a Chinese fire drill at times, but they do get in as long as you have enough seats in the car you are driving. They don’t always follow you through doors and get delayed but sometimes it’s better to send them through the door first anyway, and that always works. They do perform an adequate job of covering your back and it is always better to have them along on assaults than not.



Map Design

The maps are “representations” of New York, Miami, and Havana, with no attempt to represent the actual geography or real world places of interest in either city (though I’m not sure about Havana since I’ve never been there). As I traveled around these “cities” I couldn’t help the feeling that I was in some Potemkin Village or a foreign theme park trying to emulate these locations rather than a living, breathing city. In contrast, the New York of the original game and even the “Liberty City” of GTA IV felt more like New York than the New York represented in Godfather 2.

The Bad

Graphics and Animation

While the “Don View” map and interface is extremely well polished, graphics and animation in the game world are subpar for a current generation release, period. I liken it to getting a beautifully wrapped present but finding nothing inside but some dead fish. Textures on exterior walls are just plain lousy and unfinished looking. Character animations, both player and NPC are stiff and not at all lifelike. The car models are terrible looking. Texture pop is everywhere, and vehicles sometime materialize out of thin air. All this would be forgivable on a PS2 or original Xbox release, but not for a current generation release.

I don’t know if there was a technical reason they had to skimp on the graphics, such as memory constraints or frame rate considerations, or if the developers just ran out of time to polish them up in order to make the April 7th release date. My bet is the latter, which is a shame. I would have preferred they delay the release to sharpen up the graphic presentation. Some non-gamer suit at EA probably decided the graphics were “good enough” and forced the release in order the make the release date. The problem is that this isn’t some generic gangster universe, this is THE GODFATHER!! SHOW SOME RESPECT!! Getting the atmosphere right is absolutely essential to create that sense of immersion into the Godfather universe. That’s one of the things I felt they did right on the first game. The universe in the first Godfather game definitely felt to me like 1940’s New York City. The cities in Godfather 2 just feel like generic urban landscapes without much personality. The overall game atmosphere has more of a “Goodfellas” than a “Godfather” vibe.

Driving

Driving mechanics are awkward. Drive normally without getting into a wreck is a chore, which it makes it hard to keep a low profile. The problem seems to be that the turning radius on some of the longer vehicles is greater than a lot of the corners and turns on the maps.

Finding a parked car is sometimes problematic on some maps, particularly at the airports. Jacking a passing vehicle is always an option, but I find that somewhat inconsistent with being a Don. The player should at least have the option of ordering one of the crew to jack the car instead. Another thing that would have worked would have been to implement a system similar to that used in “Scarface” where you could call for a car (from a phone booth of course… not a cell phone).



Historical Anachronisms

The Godfather 2 movie storyline takes place in the late 1950’s. However I noticed several things that were out of place for that time period. Pay phones are pedestal mounted and not in phone booths. I noticed that a lot of the phones themselves had push button number pads, not rotary dialers. Push button phones weren’t generally available any earlier than the 1970’s as I recall. While I understand that the car models were meant to be generic, one of the models looked identical to a Ford Mustang which didn’t come out until 1967! In the Don View, the jets sitting at the airport have their engines at the rear of the fuselage rather than on the wings. That for sure is an innovation that didn’t become common until later in history, let alone passenger jets of any kind. For that matter there should have been a few turbo props sitting around just to keep it real. Inside the game world the airports all have metal detectors and baggage screening equipment which weren’t introduced until years after the events in this game. To the reader these criticisms may all seem a bit nitpicky, but again for a Godfather game to be true to the movie universe, the game environment needs to be right!

Plot Gaffes

My comments here are general so as not to be a spoiler. In summary the game takes some major liberties with the plot of the Godfather 2 movie story line. While I understand that most of the events in the game are happening in parallel to the events in the movie, the points at which the two storylines intersect should be consistent with the original movie, especially a classic movie such as the Godfather 2. Unfortunately the worst plot divergence from the movie is at the beginning of the game, with some later moments being downright ludicrous… particularly events in Cuba

Nudity was way overdone, both in the context of the original movie and in general for the game itself. Some would have been appropriate in certain businesses, but it’s completely insane to see nearly naked women walking around in an industrial setting.

Summary

With a little more effort and polish this game could have been a classic to rival or even exceed GTA IV. As it is however, it really is going to be up to the individual gamer if this game is a rent, buy, or skip. Critical reviews are all over the place, so whether you will like this game or not will depend on what you prefer doing. This is not a 5 out of 5 game as portrayed in GamePro magazine nor is it 4.5 out of 10 as portrayed by Gamespot. All the flaws aside, I still found Godfather 2 to be entertaining and fun, mainly because of the “Don View” and the strategy element that it introduces to the genre. However if the strategy element doesn’t do it for you and you are looking for a purely open world, drive, and shoot crime epic, there are better choices out there