The Godfather II

First up, I apologise in advance for the lack of one-liners and quotes from the much loved Godfather movies. Unfortunately, they are still somewhere on my long list of movies to see. Being the internet I could googletube-o-pedia it, but the risk of sounding cultured is offset by the risk of just making an ass of myself.

Now that I have that out of the way, I can get stuck into talking about the game. Much like the previous game and certain other crime games, you have more or less free roam of a city. You can walk around, or cause motor mayhem at your leisure. Fortunately EA realise that we have all done this now too many times and have chucked in a unique gameplay element that should keep things fairly exciting.

You see, while you are running amok, so are plenty of others. Rival families all have their own turfs, which they will defend to the death. You can also expand your ‘family’, customise your team and otherwise order your men about. The Godfather II is less about being a foot soldier and more about being a don. As with the last game, you will have to pressure businesses into paying you protection. Having certain types of businesses allied to your cause will give you bonuses, such as having access to related goods.

‘Don’s view’ is basically a 3d map mode that lets you guard areas and manage your territories; you can switch to this mode at any time micro-manage your men. EA are trying to make the game world fairly dynamic with the mob war continually going on around you, sinking you into the experience. We hope that this is balanced well however, as sometimes we may want to stray from the action and just blow stuff up with little consequence.

The first Godfather game was fairly solid, but lacked a certain something to make the game pop. If EA can capture the atmosphere of the movies and create a more interesting game world than their last game, carefully adding their new RTS/RPG style elements into the mix – we could be onto a real winner here. Recently EA has been releasing some very high quality titles, we will soon see if their latest offering sinks or swims (with the fishes?).

Keep checking NZGamer for our interview with the games producers which will be sure to offer more juicy nuggets of information.