The Godfather II

Head in a vice...

There's a point when, after you stumble into yet another completely recognisable bar, you conclude that Godfather II suffers from some pretty serious deja vu: the designers should probably be thoroughly checked for symptoms of serious short term memory loss. Running through all the endlessly recycled corridors is enough to make you feel nauseous, but the fact that none of these environments were good to begin with makes it all so much worse.

A sequel to the lukewarm original, Godfather II's biggest innovation is the emphasis on building up a family and delegating tasks: the original had you carting yourself around doing all the work. You play as Dominic, the customisable Mafioso given Don status by an awful imitation of Michael Corleone at the start of the game. You're allowed to recruit a single soldier who follows you around, and does little more at this point in the game than bolster your offensive attacks with extra firepower. As the game progresses you'll be able to draft in two more soldiers, two capos, an underboss and a consligiere to help you perform your inimitable style of business.

The game is positively littered with people desperate to join your family, so you never have to worry about being short on prospective staff. Each henchman you come across has their own particular perk, such as demolitions, engineer, safecracker, medic and so on, and they're required to perform their specific tasks across the game's many missions. Money can be spent to upgrade their abilities as well as your own, and alongside accompanying you they can be sent off on their own to shake down business owners or defend your own enterprises that are under attack from rival families.

While they might be your henchmen, they're certainly not your friends. The AI troops are surprisingly soulless, occasionally busting out some mundane quip about how whatever you're doing is fantastic or that they'd like to have sex with something. This is apparently enough to enamour themselves to the player. It isn't. They're so devoid of personality it's not even a macabre moment when you decide to occasionally kill them off to make way for statistically superior replacements.

But they do all have great big silly haircuts, which is nice.

Delegation is handled from the 'Don's eye view', the game's most touted feature, but its top-down management features are crippled by the rather drab options at your command. It's really just a rather slick map screen where you can occasionally order your men to attack or defend specific targets. And the strategic options - 'GTA meets an RTS' served as the term thrown around during the game's development - that the Don's view potentially allows for are forever denied by a game that constantly frets about distancing any potential players by including something as unsavoury as a difficulty level, leaving you trapped in a remedial exercise that's simply a consideration of two decisions: if one of your businesses is being attacked, send some men to defend it. If not, send some men to attack something you don't own yet. Rinse and repeat.

It's all about the business, obviously. Dotted around the game's cities are a number of shady establishments that you need to shake down for your income. Inside of all of these is an owner, who you need to intimidate into submission after taking out the muscle positioned there by any number of the game's rival families. Push the owner too far and he'll attack you, which resets the area and forces you to wait before attempting to attack the store again. The objective of the game is, quite simply, to own everything.

There's a lot of businesses, too, so it's understandable that you probably can't be bothered to get them all yourself. You can send your AI companions off to do the job for you, and for the most part they have a tendency to be successful. But for all the attempts at making the squad system cohesive and advantageous, the game never avoids the distressing truth that every single action of the game is easier when you just do it yourself. If it weren't for the fact that you need a few AI buddies to plant explosives or crack a safe open the entire game would be a doddle on your own.

You can, quite interestingly, take any of your henchmen online for an assortment of adversarial multiplayer modes, where netting yourself one of the 'top honours' in a match goes towards advancing their weapon level both on and offline. There are a few modes that go beyond simple team deathmatch, giving the characters with perks in demolitions or safecracking something to keep them occupied, but nothing about the multiplayer is rewarding. There's no impetus to actually level your character up because the game is already so easy, and the maps are poorly designed. They feel vacant even when the game is full.

It's a combat orientated game. Whilst there's plenty of action, there's no real threat as you're all pretty much invincible. Occasionally you'll take a shot from a high-powered rifle and crumple to the floor, only to be revived to full health by your medic after he sticks a needle in your arm. You're given ammo in copious amounts, for free, and most of your enemies are so weak that even the sound of gunfire causes major damage to their health.

Forget running the city, you could probably take on the entire world.

Godfather II tries to be more complicated than it actually is by adding in various other features, such as having various bonuses conferred onto you by owning all the businesses of the same type within the city. For your efforts you get things like bulletproof vests, knuckle dusters and armoured cars. Nice, you might think, but completely unnecessary in a game where you're already indestructible to begin with. You don't need the bonuses, and you're so strong that you don't have to worry about the fact that if your enemies own a crime ring they get their hands on the bonus because they're still pathetically easy to stomp over. It's all moot.

Then there's the rather comical 'favour' system, where you walk up and down the street and stop people with a glowing icon above their head to ask them if they need anything doing. They'll reply, with ridiculous nonchalance, with something like how they want something nicked from their boss or an ex-partner beaten up. Doing this can net you a tasty wad of cash, but more frequently you'll find out how to permanently kill a member of a rival family.

Members of aforementioned rival families have their own particular (and ludicrous) hangouts, such as on rooftops or in construction sites. They also have their own kill conditions, so it's not enough that you just shoot them: that'll just send them to the hospital to recover. Having to kill them in specific ways allows you to explore some of the game's fiddlier melee mechanics, seeing as in all other situations you'll just pop someone's head open with the Magnum.

When you finally usurp all the businesses from your rivals, they'll 'retreat' back to their personal mansion-cum-fortress compounds and you'll be allowed to take out their family permanently. These levels unfold like any other: you and your crew run around shooting the opposition, and when you get to the Don's room you plant an explosive.

And that's it. Once you kill off a family, the game progresses and you kill off another. Sometimes you'll find yourself in a new city, but nothing ever changes, and after you bump off your fifth family the credits roll. It's just all so painfully repetitive. There's a major drought of intricately designed set pieces to cut up the formulaic nature, and there's never even a whiff of genre-trademark vehicle chases. Managing the business constantly feels like some kind of intricate side-quest or diversion, but the major events never arrive. It's like a sandwich with no filling.

There's no real reason to recommend playing Godfather II over GTA IV, Saints Row 2 or even Crackdown. Despite the pedigree of the licence, very little of the movie's quality has made its way into the game. The characters are bland and the presentation of the narrative is decidedly uninspiring. It feels like a half-finished game and, whilst the idea has a lot of potential, is decidedly lacking in quality in its current form.

49%

By Martin Gaston