Customer Reviews

The Godfather II

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Here's the situation, I have played GTA4 all the way thru. This is the 4th day of playing Godfather II, did not play the 1st one. This is obviously a similar game to GTA, it's not as deep, but the focus on action does make it a nice play 1 hour here & there game.

Character creation: It's fairly detailed, you can customize the look any way you want. The one thing I didn't get is you get to choose 7 or 8 styles of clothing, but you end up only wearing only 1. There's formal, casual, sporty, etc, thought you would be able to change it up in the game. So far, don't see it.

Fighting: This is more action oriented than GTA. Just a few hours into the game, already got all the available guns. There's plenty of ammo, plenty of reloads, and the health meter regenerates fast. The hide & aim controls aren't as tight as GTA, easier to just run in and gun em down. Maybe in the later stages it gets harder.

Driving: The controls are identicle to GTA, so that was easy to learn. Each unique car doesn't feel as different, but back in the 40's, maybe that's just the way the cars are.

Camera: This gave me a bit of trouble. When running around in the room, the camera can't keep up, often ends up in bad angles, and you have no idea who is shooting you. Fortunately you have plenty of health and it regenerates fast enough you have time to take a few shots and look around.

Voice / Music: The voice acting and music is fine. I'm one of the few that didn't watch Godfather all the way thru, so can't really comment on how it compares to the movie. Playing this game already made me buy the blue-ray Godfather set and plan to watch it this weekend.

Missions: The missions are a bit more dull than GTA. Although the main idea is the same, it's either driving or killing, GTA does make it much more sophisticated. In here, you basically go in the place, kill most guards, find owner ( this can get frustrating as some are hard to find due to the bad camera), take over, defend. The variation comes in the way you kill. Some nice finish move animations.

Control: One thing I must point out is this game lacks JUMP! Some obstacles gets really frustrating when there is a tiny little ledge and you can't jump over it. Yes, it does have a vault in some areas, but it can't be used everywhere. Otherwise, this game's controls are about the same as GTA, so if you played GTA, it'll be easy transition.

Overall: For the casual gamer, this is fine. It's not that hard, pickup & play for a hour, a bit repetitive but still fun. I'm not good at FPS, prefers RPGs / Strategy games, so this game suits me good. Has RPG / Strategy elements, and the action is easy enough for me to handle. For hardcord gamers this might be too easy / repetitive. Still, even if you don't buy, it deserves at least a rental to try it out.

I bought this game for my son so this is his review:
At first i didn't think this game was gonna be good...i was wrong!!!Its so addicting.Other people say its terrible but just ignore them!Graphics aren't perfect but nothings perfect.Some say its to short but its not meant to rush in completing the game in 4 days. you have a pistol, shotgun, tommygun, magnum, sniper rifle, bomb, molotov,dynamite, garrote(strangling device), and a crow bar, golf club, baseball bat, or knight stick. Rival Families, they'll bomb and attempt to takeover. Safe cracker, demolitions, engineer, bruiser, arsonist,and medics can be in your family.Robbing banks is fun,do it the wrong way...your screwed.Not necessarily based on the movie, but fun gangster game mixed with the godfather.4 days getting it later not on 3rd city yet(to much fun free roaming) Overall awesome game its worth the money, ignore other people there wrong i am right, another thing if you arrested no big deal you get a small fine. I do not see buying another ps3 game this one has all. Hope 3rd comes out.

Godfather 2 is a great game if you can get past the average graphics and voice acting. The main goal of Godfather 2 is taking control of New York, Miami, and Havana from rival Mafia families one business at a time. Godfather 2 is very addictive because you want to keep taking over businesses as you watch your territory grow. You hire a crew of 3 people, each with their own speciality (lock picking, medic, etc). You also get to upgrade their stats like an RPG, and you can buy them better weapons that you unlock in the game. It may not be pretty, but for 20 bucks you can't go wrong.

In playing "Godfather II" I quickly realized it was like a movie skin applied to "Grand Theft Auto 4" but that was not a bad thing at all. Even the controls reminded me of GTA4. That said, "Godfather 2" loosely follows the real movie and is quite an enjoyable game.

The graphics are of the quality of GTA4, but at times they are nothing special, with some cutscenes looking to be the quality of a PS2 game, but with better textures on the clothing. The vehicles and character models are pretty good, but as with most of these games--they degrade in the darker settings.

The sound is great and it has some cues from "The Godfather" and actually has pretty good voice acting, including the actual Robert Duvall.

I found the weapon wheel to be pretty useful and easy but the cycling through the weapons using the cross pad was not so quick and easy. The weapons are plentiful, but you'll find yourself just going through weapon after weapon that has ammo. Some are automatically upgraded but I really didn't notice much difference.

The gimmick of the game is a Monopoly-styled board where you get to see the businesses you own and your competing mob families own. You can direct your soldiers and made men from the "Don's view" screen and have them bomb or attempt takeover of competing businesses. It's interesting at first but after awhile it is more distracting and works better as just a map.

Being able to enlist and customize your "made-men" is interesting, but I noticed that no matter how you upgrade they basically fight and interact the same. I found myself spending money on generic guards to guard places I took over and then occasionally sending one of my made men to help out.

The game takes place in several locations like New York, Florida and even Cuba. You have to take on about 5-6 rival familes and they have a similar structure with the Don at the top, followed by other higher ranks right down to the lowest made men, which are still better than the average soldier. You basically just go to a rival place, kill all of the rival soldiers and then find the owner of the business. This is the neat part as you get to figure out their weakness (i.e. some are afraid of guns pointed at them, others afraid of punches, etc.). When you get them to their breaking point, you can take over the business, but don't push too much or they will refuse.

Another interesting gameplay device is talking to citizens and getting clues as to the locations of rival made men and how you have to kill them (i.e. throwing them off a roof, etc.) and working your way through another families' tree. The goal is to eliminate all made men to make attacking their family compound easier. The catch is you really don't have to and it isn't that difficult to attack and destroy a compound with all of the made men alive. In order to attack the compound you must take over all of that family's businesses.

Overall, the game plays like GTA4 but has some features that sets it apart. It's basically a 15+ hour game and has replayability and multiplayer. If you like GTA4 type games, give this one a try.

4/5 stars

Pros:
*15+ hrs. of gameplay.
*Good graphics for the character models and levels.
*Involving storyline that expands the world of "Godfather II" movie.
*The 3 different locations are solidly constructed and fun to drive and walk around.
*Controls are pretty solid.
*Enemy AI is good.
*Sound is good--particularly the inclusion of Robert Duvall.
*Plenty of customizations for your character and made men.

Cons:
*Repetitive gameplay, much like that in GTA4.
*Enemy AI is not consistent. Sometimes it is too easy and sometimes too hard.
*The Monopoly-styled map is a bit gimmicky.
*Unless you do side quests and actually go after rival made men, the game can be shorter than 15+ hours.
*Some of the graphics in the cutscenes are not that good.

It could have been a lot better. It seem that they rushed the game a little. I don't like the fact that once you take over a compound, you can't use that for a safe house. I beat it pretty quickly, it took me longer to play the original and I still go back and play that one, I don't know if I want to play this one over and over again.

I played the Multi-player once, but there are just a bunch of foul-mouth kids on there. So I won't be going back to that.

Sometimes anticipation for a much awaited game can make me put thrift aside and go for the impulse buy. It happened with Scarface, and here we are all over again.

Godfather II exemplifies this experience. In all honesty, if I had waited to read the user reviews here I would not have purchased the game new right off the bat for $60. I would have waited for a used copy or rented it when I was home sick with the flu. Lesson learned.


Overall the game has major problems. I don't compare it so much to the movie as I do to the first Godfather on PS2. The biggest flaw is a general sense of repetition and a lack of creativity.

Pros:
*I like the crew aspect and the AI is very good on your crew members. Makes for a nice strategy.
*Molotovs make for an amazing fire display during heated battles
*Despite it's flaws it does offer compelling and downright addictive gameplay. You take over one business and you just want more, more, more!
*I like being able to customize all the wardrobe details
*Cuba offers a very unique game play setting with stone buildings and military police checkpoints
*Some of the businesses (i.e. oil rig) offer very cool layouts
*Shooting and aiming is user friendly, similar to GF I

CONS (and there are a lot):
*Awkward screen controls. XY axis is hard to control the view angle.
*Frustrating vertical mazes do not equal challenging puzzle play. Just trying to maneuver around is constantly thwarted by not being able to jump off of a surface or get over a low barrier. If a window if 3 feet high you can vault it but if it's 3.4 feet high you have to go 300 feet to get around?
*GF I offered repetitive business takeovers and compounds, but these were offset by interesting missions and some difficulty in opponents. Missions here are just lame. There's no challenge, no strategy, no puzzle to figure out, just find 'em and off 'em. Opponent AI is just too easy with no ability to adjust difficulty level.
*Driving is too much like real life--it's a slow, tedious way to get from one place to another rather than part of the game itself. There are no interesting chases, races or getaways.
*You have to play online to upgrade your weapon license. It's one thing to offer perks for online play, but to make it necessary for completion? Essentially if you don't have high speed internet (doesn't everyone?) you have to off your crew members as you go along to get new ones who use better weapons. Some omerta! Very uncool.
*Too short! I finished the anticlimactic finale in 3 days. And the game has very little replay value.
*Movie scenes are more about exposition than moving your character's story line along. I understand it's a game not a movie adaptation, but when the source material is this good and the first game stuck so close to the movie, there is an expectation for a certain level of authenticity that is lost by this much straying.
*Dying or getting arrested has no real penalty. You don't lose your stuff or much money and you just go right back to where you left off. Although in theory this sounds great, what it does is lower the stakes to where you just don't care so much if you live or die, in essence ruining the excitement and/or suspense and muting any victories attained.
*Every moment of the game is dominated by a sense that it could have been so much more. If I can think of it, the programmers should have too. Which makes me think that this was just a rush to production to coast off of the previous title and the moview with no true attention to quality and innovation.

I love this game. Sure, it's repetitive, but what game isn't? I love that there are now three locations - New York, Florida, and Cuba, although I will admit that three cities also present a problem with immersion into the game. I love the Don's View - the cities look really cool. This game, however, isn't all great. The graphics are good but not great. The AI sometimes isn't all that smart or responsive. It's a little too easy to swap out your crew in the middle of a mission - I like that members of your crew have specialties, but they should have made that more important to the planning stages of a mission, maybe.

After taking all the negatives into consideration, I still think this is a very enjoyable game. I haven't stopped playing it since I purchased it.

i like this game very much. I loved the first one and this one did what i thought it would do. I like the dons veiw and every thing but i have two problems with it. the online play cause u have to play online to actually do well in the normal game and u cant quit the session in online play. The Game was to short i beat it in like 5 days but i enjoyed it very much. It is just like the movie.

You are and underboss of the new york corleone family and ur in cuba when the revolution begins ur boss dies and micheal gives u the family in new york then all u do is missions take places over and kill people its a very good game i bought it for 30 dollars well worth the price

This game is fun for about 2 days then you realize that you are doing the same stuff over and over again. The game itself is ok and I gave it a 4 star rating because its the godfather but the fun level is gone in a day. This game could have been so much better.

This game my son enjoys however said it is a little like GTA with the fact he is sent on missions and so on. He however plays it a few times a week!