Right, those perks I mentioned. Taking over crime rings grants you these benefits: perhaps you’ll receive bigger ammo clips for conquering one, others may give you cheaper guards (don‘t worry, they still do their job), bullet-proof vests, armoured cars and double the income (you‘ll have to keep an eye on your funds, if you want things to continue to bob along nicely). It’s an interesting idea and one that, at times, may make you think before making your next move.

 

 

Problems come in the form of your made men being too good at what they do, and if your advisor thinks that an attack will be successful, it normally will be. The opposing made men are, meanwhile, pretty much proper enemies with longer power bars, with no increased intelligence to speak of.

 

Also, when rival families had particular perks, they didn’t really give me too much bother: certainly not enough to make me want to go all out to remove said perk from their cold, dead hands after wiping them out.

 

 

Character and vehicle models look great, the environments less so due to some atrocious pop-up.

 

Aurally, the theme music is used liberally and the voice acting is superb, though those expecting Al Pacino’s Michael Corleone from The Godfather films, will be sad to learn that he’s absent once more.

 

 

The multiplayer is decent enough but is largely forgettable. This portion of the game can be played by up to 16 players in Team Death matches (what else? Kill the rival team), Safecracker (use one of your safecrackers to open safes dotted around the map), Firestarter (start fires in particular places), and Demolitions Assault (blow things up).

 

Interestingly, you’ll use your made men from the single player, and they can earn licences to be granted the use of new weapons, something that they don’t really need.

 

The lack of auto-aim is an annoyance and, on the whole, I would rather invest my time in better online games.

 

 

"The Godfather II" is a lot of fun with some neat ideas, although it’s just a shame that some things weren’t better thought through. I could certainly see something like this being more successful sometime down the line, so I just hope that EA will keep this same mindset for any future games in the series.

 

 

 

+ The strategy elements have some good ideas
+ Great story and voice acting
+ On-foot and driving are very respectable