The Godfather II review for PC.

The Godfather II for PC.

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The Godfather II is an M-rated (Because of pixelated boobies and drug references pretty much, with added violence and language of course) sandbox action adventure game with online multi-player directed and published by EA studios. The Godfather II first takes place in Cuba where Don Corleone and the Capo's of the Corleone family having a meeting with Hyman Roth on how to divide up Hyman Roth’s empire. After the meeting, the Cuban Revolution tells everyone to flee the country as rebels are attacking the island. You take control of Dominic, a soldier of Aldo Trapani from the first The Godfather game.

            You first start off with the character design. It’s actually pretty good. You can add hats, glasses, wear classic outfits, even Polo’s with a custom color scheme. After you design your character you come to an un-skippable cutscene of the Corleone family discussing how to divide up Hyman Roth’s empire. You then get to move around a bit and feel the controls. You can change your look whenever you want, just press Tab and go to your Family Tree tab and click on your guy and it’ll show your records and the weapons you own too.

Your Family of soldiers and how they look.

Now, whenever I play a PC game, I check to see if it allows controllers. This game can run with an Xbox 360 controller, needless to say though, it feels clunky. The rotation speed of the camera feels slow and movement feels sticky. You can access the Main Menu using select, but you can’t use the analog sticks to move around, it forces you to use the D-pad to navigate. There is also no option in the menu to turn the rumble feature off. I personally hate rumble as it distracts me. On the first day I got this game I knew that the 360 controller sucked. On the second day, I used my keyboard. Everything is easier with the keyboard and mouse, even aiming compared to the slow X and Y axis of the camera with the controller.

            Your main mission at the beginning is to take control of the businesses around the small area. You are given the chance to hire a soldier. A soldier can be of many professions, such as an Arsonist, Lock pick, Demolitionist, or even a Healer. As you progress you can hire many more soldiers increasing your Family size. After a few business extortions, you find out that you need to take care of the Don from another family. His men will attack your businesses to take for their own. You can hire bodyguards to protect your businesses but it’ll come out of your total income that you receive once a week. 

The combat goes around as you can punch someone to death, gun them down or just kill them with your crazy driving skills. You pick up weapons through out the game like shotguns, Tommy guns, snub pistols and even explosives like dynamite and Molotov's. On the mouse the right button controls your right arm and the left button controls your left arm. Press both of them and you can grab a hold on someone. Grabbing a hold on someone is a great way to kill someone. You can strangle them by holding space, pummel them with the F key, execute them, instantly killing them, with F also. On top of a big building? Throw him off by grabbing him while next to a ledge and bring your mouse up and it'll throw him to his impending doom. Your soldiers will also help too. They're actually pretty well good at combat and killing for themselves. 


The travel system is pretty basic as it's like any other sandbox game. You go hijack a car, get your soldiers in, listen to your favorite radio station and run hookers over (although you might actually kill one of your own if you own a prostitution ring). When you unlock the ability to travel to a new state or place, just drive off to the local airport, book your ticket and you're off.
 

This game will take you all the way from New York, Florida and then back to Cuba all trying to create the biggest mob business in the world. The story is deep. The voice acting is wonderful as it re-creates the classic mob scene.

I could not connect to the multi-player servers for some reason. Then again, it’s EA. I always have problems when connecting to an EA server. I tried playing Battlefield: Bad Company probably two years ago and it kept saying the servers are down, try again. But with this, it just stays on the “connecting to EA servers”.

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The Score

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Audio/Music: 8. Great Soundtrack, great voice acting.
           

Scenery/Graphics: 5. The graphics are exactly the same as the original The Godfather, the one that I own for the original Xbox. The scenery is bland and is scaled down so much compared to even the The Godfather. The HUD is nice though, the minimap has this cool 3D Isometric thingy to it, which I found amazing.
           

Gameplay/Story: 8. The story is great as it’s personally one of my favorite times in history. The Gameplay is actually good, with a cover system and customizable characters for your Family. The shooting/fighting scenes are actually on the dot, although a bit easy. The driving is clunky though on PC. I did dislike the fact the 360 controller would not work as well as it would compared to keyboard/mouse.

Overall, this game deserves a 6. Buy this is if you like the classic mob scene and/or if Grand Theft Auto is just boring the hell out of you. The Godfather II probably has about 20-30 hours of gameplay to interact with.

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