Godfather

The Godfather is a game developed by Headgate Studios, which is a fairly unknown company, mostly known for the Tiger Woods series. The company has been renamed to EA Salt Lake, which later developed games like Madden NFL 08, The Sims 2 Pets(Wii) and Nerf N-Strike(Wii). The Godfather can best be described as a sandbox-game with shooter elements, driven by the story of the movie.

The game starts out with a scene where a store blows up in front of a small boy. Soon after he sees how his father gets shot by a gangster and gets a clear look at him, but he is restricted from attacking him because Don Vito Corleone tells him that he'll get his revenge but that it's too early for that now. As some of you may have noticed, this is the beginning of the film. And throughout the game you'll run into these key-scenes all the time, now I haven't really checked whether or not every single one of them was actually a scene from the movie but quite a lot of them were, except for the side-missions but they mostly consist of killing some targets.

In the Godfather(game) you're a gangster and you'll get involved in all kinds of criminal activities, similar to the Grand Theft Auto series, only exception being is that the Corleone family doesn't deal drugs. But instead you extort stores, such as the local bakery, and take over illegal enterprises, such as a casino or a brothel. Racketeering is the major activity in the game, murdering your opponents and police is simply a tool to get there. Missions progress the story and give you bonuses for completing them such as money and respect, respect is used as an experience system in which you can use the points gained by leveling up on skills, so that you'll be more effective at laying waste amongst the enemy gang members. With money you can simply choose to buy out the owners of illegal enterprises, which saves you the hassle of slamming his head into the wall a couple of times before he gets the picture, stores however do need this encouragement in order for them to pay you protection money. Money also allows you to buy certain items, such as better guns and hideouts. The stores and businesses are divided amonst five families: Corleones, Stracci, Tattaglia, Barzini and Cuneo. Most of the time things are relatively peaceful and they won't fire at you, at least not on sight. But if you take away too many businesses and stores from them, you might provoke a gang war or cause them to shoot you on sight, which makes penetrating and taking over a business harder.

The graphics are fairly okay for it's time, it has a somewhat realistic look and it looks like many other games from that era. It doesn't really stand out from the crowd graphics-wise, due to the fact that the cities and the streets feel cold and dead. You'll often find yourself driving through similar looking streets without too many people walking about.

Sound-wise I have to say that the game isn't as well as one could hope for, since they only repeat the godfather theme song over and over again. There are little other songs to be found in this game. The gun-sounds do not really match the type of the gun, some guns sound way louder than they should. Another thing I found annoying in this game, was the sound of the car you're driving in, since you'll be listening to a monotone humming until you've reached your destination, and seeing as you're probably playing your own music in the background(you'll grow tired of the godfather theme song, however beautiful it may be) so creates some static noise in the background of your own songs.

To conclude this review, I had fun with this game, the amount of hours of gameplay is well worth your money, you might not spend a lot of time on it in one row since it does become boring over time due to the cold streets and cities. But I think it's safe to say that this game is worth your money, especially if you have a thing for the Godfather series.