The Godfather has taken an extra six months to make it onto the Xbox 360, but
there’s a bit more to it than graphical improvements over the versions
previously released for other consoles. The story is essentially the same as is
much of the gameplay, and the game remains recommended to fans of the film who
will appreciate the way the game weaves its storyline in with that of the movie.
For those of you who’ve played the other versions I’ll start with what’s
different before I bring the rest of you up to speed on the game. The most
obvious difference is the enhanced graphics that take advantage of the Xbox
360’s increased horsepower. However the game’s graphics are not of the knock
your socks off, built for next gen variety. While they certainly look better
than the Xbox and PS2 versions, there are plenty of better looking Xbox 360
games available. Probably of greater interest to most gamers is the addition of
28 new missions, three of which are tied directly into the storyline. Another
welcome new feature is the ability to hire henchmen to accompany you on missions
and provide some extra firepower. There are also a bunch of minor enhancements,
including giving you the option of running missions for merchants in exchange
for their loyalty. This adds some much needed variety to this aspect of the game
as using the same pressure techniques over and over can get a little old. Taking
all of this into account, if you played the heck out of the Xbox or PS2 version
of the game you probably won’t get enough new here to warrant a second purchase.
However, if you missed the game the first time around then you’re in luck
because it’s even better on the Xbox 360. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the
way, let’s look at the game in more detail…
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| Taking care of business. |
In The Godfather, you play a character who didn’t appear in a single frame of
the film yet played a vital role in the events depicted in the movie. The game
opens with you as a young kid who experiences the horror of watching your father
get gunned down in a gangland killing. Flash forward a decade and it is the
wedding day of Don Corleone’s daughter depicted in the opening scene of the
movie. Your mother makes a special appeal to the Don to take you under his wing
and since a Sicilian can not refuse a request on his daughter’s wedding day you
soon find yourself a foot soldier in the Corleone family.
You begin the game by creating your mobster’s look using the game’s extensive
character customization feature. The look you create will not only be used for
your character during the action in the game, but for all of the cutscenes as
well. This sort of feature is par for the course in RPG and sports games, and it
is nice to see it making its way into action games as well. The game then guides
you through the initial missions as a kind of on-the-job tutorial. This is a
great way to get the story moving from the start while getting you used to the
controls and game features and is far preferable method to the ubiquitous boot
camp levels found in military action games. Even these initial missions are tied
to events from the film and your training officially ends when your mentor Luca
Brasi is strangled in one of the memorable scenes from the movie.
The Godfather follows the Grand Theft Auto model in providing you with a
living, breathing city in which you can initiate story missions at any time,
build your reputation for ruthlessness, put the muscle on local businesses, or
just hijack some wheels and explore the city, which in this case is a recreation
of New York in the late 1940s. A lot is borrowed from GTA – you can steal any
car and kill any pedestrian you see, public acts of violence raise your profile
with the police, you awaken from death in a medical clinic, there are hidden
bonus objects in the city, … the list goes on. This is not a particularly bad
thing though as this gameplay model is a good fit for The Godfather. Don’t be
surprised by occasional bouts of déjà vu, though.
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