XBox 360 - The Godfather : The Game - The Review

I’ll do this review in two versions, the short ADD version and the long version -

The short version:

This game is awesome. Buy it.

The long version:

Just when you think you have gotten as gangsta as you can get with GTA:San Andreas and Saint Row, along comes The Godfather: The Game to take it back old school style. This genre of video game has been out and about for quite a few years now: run around, act the criminal hijacking cars, beating the snot out of people and complete a mission oriented plot line involving guns, drugs, hookers, and gang territories. In all honesty there is no deviation from that game play in The Godfather, you wont find a groundbreaking new type of game play. What it does instead is refresh it by taking it back to the “golden age” of organized crime, 1930’ s-1960, in none other than good old New York City.

The game starts off with a bang and continues to deliver a series of violent and movie related missions to give you a basic tutorial of how to control your character throughout the game. From there it moves on to increasingly higher profile missions that tie in directly (and thankfully credibly) to the movie itself. In between the plot related “main missions” you have the opportunity to increase your respect and cash income by extorting businesses, taking over rivaling family warehouses and territories, robbing banks and businesses, and hi-jacking cars. It is an open-ended game, so you can get distracted for as long as you want from the main plot missions.

Let’s talk graphics, sound, and controls. If you are looking to play only next gen games that have pretty textures, extreme lighting effects, and lots of cool neon particles then you won’t find it here. The graphics look just like the 180 x-box version. If you were expecting a big makeover for the port to the 360 version, it didn’t happen. This is not to say the graphics are bad in any way, they just aren’t “next-gen”. This is in no way a flaw in the game; it still looks great in almost every aspect. The models of all the main characters look amazing, down to moles and wrinkles the characters are spot on. The sound is pretty standard, nothing extremely noteworthy there. The voice acting is very well done and thankfully almost exactly spot on with the actors from the movie. (You will be surprised when Michael Corleone is introduced…enough said without spoiling it) The bullets pop and zing, tires squeal, and garrotes zip. It sounds great on my surround sound when I’m in a warehouse firefight with boxes getting riddled next to me, glass shattering behind me, and my bullets slapping into torso’s to my front. The game is controlled with the standard look and movement controls. The melee fighting control is uniquely done with the ability to grab the enemy and do some pretty brutal beat downs up close and personal. The weapons have a great lock on system using the triggers and a non-frustrating manual aim as well.

Lastly you should know about the character development. Your character is leveled up based on respect. The more businesses you extort, bad guys you beat down, and mission you accomplish the more respect you get. This will bring up your level and you get to increase your stats by assigning points to the corresponding skill. Ex. Melee, hand-to-hand, health, speed, etc. There is also a family rank structure you climb as the game progresses. These promotions are automatic as the missions are completed and increase your percentage of profits from all your activities.

There is no multiplayer however; you can upload your stats to EA servers. I haven’t explored this yet. I am assuming it just for reference to see who is doing what and all that fanboy stuff.