What have we done to them that EA should show us such disrespect?
Sonny Corleone was a hothead who shot first and never bothered to ask questions. His intentions were good, but his execution sucked. His brother, Michael, on the other hand, was a man who thought everything through and attention to detail. He has never pulled a gun, unless he needed it, and when he did, he hit what he aimed at. So Michael ended up as Godfather and Sonny ended up in a pool of blood on the New Jersey Turnpike. As Michael himself might say, "Ideas are good but the execution is everything." That brings us to the Godfather II, a game built around a very good idea that ends up being more than Sonny Michael.The Godfather II loosely follows the story of the classic Francis Ford Coppola crime drama. Beginning in the late 1950s, the player assumes the role of Dominic, under boss of the New York branch of the Corleone crime family. The tutorial segment follows Michael and Hyman Roth's attempt to ally with the Batista government in Cuba, which is shortened by Castro's revolution. In the process, boss of the New York family is gunned down while the player as the new Don. From here it is for the player to rebuild Corleone interests in New York, Miami and eventually Cuba in an effort to put Corleone back on top of the underworld.
Story summary also outlines Godfather II's best idea - to put the player in the shoes of Don and let them run their crime families as they want. By means of a "Don's View", a sort of pseudo-strategic overview of the game's three cities players can get a complete overview of what kind of rackets, crime rings and businesses are available, who owns them, how well they are protected by guards and more. The player who Don can hire and fire guards, assign defenders from his own crew of "Made" guys to stop hostile takeovers, or send them the same guys on their own to take over the enemy's operations. This position also tracks "favors" such as contract hits, break, beat downs and the like, the player may make an application for special abilities such as calling off the COPS, or rebuild a bombed-out company. The game's narrative is mostly used as a guide for the player to build their empire.
In between managing the family business, the player spends most of their time running around on foot and in cars in the classic Grand Theft Auto style of doing things like knocking over banks, threatening shopkeepers taking over rackets, burglarizing government offices and kill a rival family members. This part of the game is once again fine in theory. There is an undeniably fun element to the first couple of New York missions when you are learning what it takes to be a Don. Hit a crime racket and uses a series of fun weapons, ranging from one, 357 Magnum with a Molotov-cocktail to kill the site's guards. Then use Black Hand mêlée combat system to scare the owner to cut you any further by finding their weak points. Some will be vulnerable to punches, rapier, threatened by tossing off the roof, or simply damage. Just after I took my first crime ring was amazing and I thought I had finally found the strategy gamers' GTA clone.
It does not take too long after the first few missions, though, to realize that there are several holes in Godfather II gameplay than there was in Sonny Corleone's body. To start, the game is just too bloody easy. The decision to give Dominic and his friends, regenerating health makes each match a simple exercise to let your friends act as meat shields while you pick off bad guys with ridiculous ease. While there is a cover system, there is never a reason to use it for anything other than single brand of oh-so-stupid enemies. The rest of the time I found myself happily around four fights gennemvædning up bullets. The development team did a good job of translating the Xbox 360 controls for mouse and keyboard, but the more precise level of control weaken the game by doing what was easy at 360 even easier on the PC. In contrast to my experience on the 360, which was rarely a situation I could not handle solo. It freed up my done guys to hit other targets, and made the game feel like it was playing itself most of the time.
Worse than the Godfather II binds one of the greatest sins of all sandbox-style games: to be a boring and ugly sandbox. From an artistic standpoint, New York, Miami and Cuba is bland, low-poly worlds filled with cookie-cutter design elements. These include the ever popular white walls, boarded-up windows, walls, the player can not climb over arbitrarily locked or undestroyable doors and windows, and areas that are just window dressing. I knew that the game was in trouble when I first decided to go around in the backyard of the Corleone compound and found myself facing an empty backyard and a wall. Where was the infamous garden where Vito Corleone died of a heart attack chasing his grandson? I understand that Grand Theft Auto IV's Liberty City is a hard act to follow when it comes to making a city visually interesting, but Godfather II's blah Burg come out to resemble the test levels devs put together using a spare engine from the PS2 era. This is even more pronounced on the PC where the maximum resolution only points blocky, jaggy nature of the world.
For a supposedly "open world" game, the game is not open. One of my most frustrating moments were to realize that many of the "fronts" the player has to take over the strings in square rooms filled with generic junk plundered from Doom Mars base with corridors to block the player's movement through a two-foot tall barrier to Dominic inexplicably can not Vault. There may be indestructible box or a magic door that is apparently immune to explosives, but can take off a bruiser's fist. The latter makes any takeover attempt an annoying game of "hunt the owner" through areas not look like mazes but. Too often I found myself fruitlessly running through the same place again and again because I had forgotten the one door that resembles any other door in an area with almost no landmarks. The fun I'd had during the first few missions was replaced by a determination to never enter another building site in this game.
Even the "strategic" part of the game comes out so well conceived but poorly executed. Owner all firms in a "crime ring" (all gun runners or brothels, diamond smugglers, drug runners and the like) gives the family a special bonus. Owner all adult entertainment and facilities for examples that will give you cheaper guards while having all CHOP stores will provide armored cars. Had it worked, this may have some sort of urgency to the gameplay. The game tells you that bombing a company will take it out of service for some time, thus eliminating the bonus of an enemy family, which may make certain attacks easier takeover and makes some companies more important than others because of how valuable the bonus. The idea seemed to be forcing Don to stretch his limited resources while protecting turf and attacking enemies while picking off weakly defended areas, or take advantage of rival families attack each other.
In practice it is all window dressing. Most of the bonuses are pointless. Armored cars to own all the stores CHOP would be nice if there was ever needed. Cheaper guards are nice but there is so much money in the world, it is really easy to keep your business fully staffed with guards. Worse, they seem to have any influence on how easy it is to kill enemies. Bullet-proof vests at the enemy families - are not. Larger ammunition clip is meaningless when every enemy seems to have unlimited ammunition. What I had hoped would let me enjoy my inner Michael Corleone was thwarted by strategic AI that runs every enemy of the family as if they were Fredo,
Ultimately, The Godfather II comes out as a project whose scope goes beyond its reach. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the game in concept, and done properly, it would easily have established it as a classic in line with the movies, where it is based. Instead, we get brilliant concepts ham-hand executed. All I could think of after game was poor Fredo standing in the house in Nevada whining, "I'm smart! Not as everyone says ... like dumb ... I'm smart and I want respect!" Respect must be earned, and The Godfather II does not even come close.
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