The Godfather II Review - Xbox 360

7

Gameplay: 6
Graphics: 6
Audio: 8
Multiplayer: 6
Innovation: 5

Introduction

Developed by EA Redwood Studios, The Godfather II is based on the 1974 film The Godfather Part II. Players take on the role of Dominic, an underboss in the Corleone family who aspires to be a Don someday.

Gameplay

Dominic soon gets his chance, when Aldo Trapani, the Don of New York City, is suddenly assassinated following a business meeting with a couple of other Dons. All of a sudden finding himself promoted to Don, Dominic turns his attention to his rival families, and begins to build himself an empire. Along the way he’ll need to recruit new family members, take over businesses, and assassinate rival family members.

The game makes use of a large city which acts as a hub to give you access to various locations and businesses. The amount of freedom in the game is good, and the world is very seamless. You can go from taking over one business, to assassinating a rival family member within minutes, and with only a single loading screen to sit through in the whole game. As you progress from one city to another, you’ll need to work harder and harder to maintain your family’s rule. With more businesses comes more chances for rival families to attack, takeover, or bomb them. As such, you’ll need to hire guards to protect your investments, but each guard you hire will also pull a little cash out of your pocket. You’ll soon find your profit margin decreasing due to the sheer number of guards you’ll need to hire in order to repel intruders. This is the game’s way of raising the difficulty level over time, and it works well as you’ll never have nothing to do. Just because you’ve finished taking over one city and have moved onto the next, it doesn’t mean that your enemies will stop attacking the businesses you’ve left behind. Packing your properties with guards becomes a very important step in your path to success, as you can easily lose them if you turn your back for too long. Each business you come across is part of a larger crime ring involving a number of similar businesses, capturing all of these will give your family a nice bonus. These include knuckledusters to increase melee damage, larger ammo clips for weapons, and a discount on hiring guards. All of these will do their part to make things a little bit easier for you, so they’re well worth the time required to get them.

Going a little deeper into the mechanics, taking over a business can either be simplistic, or a bit more complex. You have the ability to send your family members out to a business of your choosing, where they will try and do the job for you. However, this rarely works. When it comes down to it, you’ll be doing the job yourself. Taking over a business manually is a three part activity. First, you open the Don’s map (accessed by pressing the Start button) which is a simplistic 3D map of the ...