The Godfather
Added March 30th, 2006 by Kisan Parikh
Introduction:
The Godfather, Francis Coppola’s masterful film, is considered by many to be the greatest movie of all time. EA, knowing that big name movies mean big money, decided that it was time to create a video game version of the movie. The mobster-theme of The Godfather seems perfect for a video game, but is this game one of the few good movie-based games?
Gameplay:
In The Godfather, you play as a minor character whose tale interweaves with that of the movie. The original film’s plot is untouched, but your character’s endeavors will have him participating in or witnessing key scenes from the movie. Your character is a young ruffian who witnessed the murder of his father at a young age. The Godfather takes you in, and you begin your life as a part of the Corleone family.
The Godfather, Francis Coppola’s masterful film, is considered by many to be the greatest movie of all time. EA, knowing that big name movies mean big money, decided that it was time to create a video game version of the movie. The mobster-theme of The Godfather seems perfect for a video game, but is this game one of the few good movie-based games?
Gameplay:
In The Godfather, you play as a minor character whose tale interweaves with that of the movie. The original film’s plot is untouched, but your character’s endeavors will have him participating in or witnessing key scenes from the movie. Your character is a young ruffian who witnessed the murder of his father at a young age. The Godfather takes you in, and you begin your life as a part of the Corleone family.
The first thing you will do, after seeing the brief back-story, is to create your character. Using EA’s Mobface tool, you can tweak your appearance within the game. I say tweak because your character must fit in to the crowd. While you won’t be giving your character obnoxious features such as an afro, you are allowed to adjust things to your liking. You are able to change your character’s: face, hair, eyes, cheeks, ears, nose, mouth, chin, and body. Your options are pretty detailed, and you can even furnish your character with moles and dimples.
Your appearance can be modified to your liking as time goes on and upgrades can also be purchased. Visiting the tailor shop allows you to buy better clothing. Clothing will increase your respect, which we’ll discuss later.
The world of The Godfather includes five areas of New York: Little Italy, Brooklyn, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, and New Jersey. You can wander the streets of these areas and do business as you like. When you first begin, you will mainly be extorting businesses. To extort, you have to convince the owner to see things your way. To do this, you smash their shops, beat up their customers, or even threaten the owner. By pushing the owner to their breaking point, you can get them to pay you a piece of their earnings, but be careful, because if you push too far, they can resist with all their might.
Once you have successfully extorted a business, you are then able to check if they are fronting for any illegal rackets. If they are just a front for a racket, you can buy out the Racket Leader in the same way that you extorted the store owner. This can be a bit trickier, because there are usually some thugs around to act as bodyguards.
As you control more business around the town, you will inevitably gain a promotion within the Corleone family. As you rise from an outsider to ranks such as enforcer and associate, you will be presented with more important tasks such as hits. In The Godfather, there are two things that you will need to monitor constantly. These things are Heat and Vendetta. Heat is merely EA’s version of GTA’s cop system. As your Heat increases, more cops are on your trail. To lower your heat, you can simply bribe a few corrupt cops or lay low for a while. Vendetta, on the other hand, can be a bit more important. Your Vendetta monitors your relationships with the other 5 families of New York. If you kill too many of another family’s men, you could find that your Vendetta is too high, meaning that the other families will be after you. Respect is another thing you will need to monitor, but it isn’t really life-threatening. Simply put, more respect makes you more intimidating to others.
All of the fighting, shooting, and driving within the game is well executed. Fighting utilizes the two triggers and the right thumbstick, while shooting requires you to arm your weapon and use the two triggers. The shooting is mainly lock-on based, but you are able to tweak your shots or go into full free shot mode. Taking down enemies is pretty simple, but entertaining nonetheless. Driving cars straight out of the movie can be pretty fun. Some of the driving sequences are truly great. A number of missions will have cops or other mobsters on your tail as you and your buddies try to make your way back to a safe house.
The best part about The Godfather is not the free-roaming GTA-esque world that you are able to play in. This is pretty fun in its own right, but the missions given to you by the Corleone men are even more entertaining. Your tasks will have you witnessing key events in the movie that you may not have seen entirely in the film. You will be doing things like driving Luca Brasi to his meeting with the Turk and watching his death. Additionally, you will be aiding the ambulance’s race to the hospital with Don Vito’s life on the line. The way the storyline weaves into the movie’s plot is one of the game’s best elements.
The Godfather presents some very fun gameplay within its 1940’s New York settings. You are able to roam the sections of New York at will and take on missions to your liking. Extortion, hits, and other missions are great, especially when you participate in events from the movie.
Graphics:
The Godfather isn’t necessarily spectacular visually, but given the scale, the game looks pretty good. The accessible environments are absolutely huge and you will experience little to no load time. New York looks pretty decent externally, but unfortunately, you will see a ton of repeated buildings. There is only a small range of building interiors, and you will see the same ones time and time again. People on the street are also extremely repetitive, but major characters from the film have been modeled well. Each is extremely recognizable, from Don Corleone to Luca Brasi.
Your appearance can be modified to your liking as time goes on and upgrades can also be purchased. Visiting the tailor shop allows you to buy better clothing. Clothing will increase your respect, which we’ll discuss later.
The world of The Godfather includes five areas of New York: Little Italy, Brooklyn, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, and New Jersey. You can wander the streets of these areas and do business as you like. When you first begin, you will mainly be extorting businesses. To extort, you have to convince the owner to see things your way. To do this, you smash their shops, beat up their customers, or even threaten the owner. By pushing the owner to their breaking point, you can get them to pay you a piece of their earnings, but be careful, because if you push too far, they can resist with all their might.
Once you have successfully extorted a business, you are then able to check if they are fronting for any illegal rackets. If they are just a front for a racket, you can buy out the Racket Leader in the same way that you extorted the store owner. This can be a bit trickier, because there are usually some thugs around to act as bodyguards.
As you control more business around the town, you will inevitably gain a promotion within the Corleone family. As you rise from an outsider to ranks such as enforcer and associate, you will be presented with more important tasks such as hits. In The Godfather, there are two things that you will need to monitor constantly. These things are Heat and Vendetta. Heat is merely EA’s version of GTA’s cop system. As your Heat increases, more cops are on your trail. To lower your heat, you can simply bribe a few corrupt cops or lay low for a while. Vendetta, on the other hand, can be a bit more important. Your Vendetta monitors your relationships with the other 5 families of New York. If you kill too many of another family’s men, you could find that your Vendetta is too high, meaning that the other families will be after you. Respect is another thing you will need to monitor, but it isn’t really life-threatening. Simply put, more respect makes you more intimidating to others.
All of the fighting, shooting, and driving within the game is well executed. Fighting utilizes the two triggers and the right thumbstick, while shooting requires you to arm your weapon and use the two triggers. The shooting is mainly lock-on based, but you are able to tweak your shots or go into full free shot mode. Taking down enemies is pretty simple, but entertaining nonetheless. Driving cars straight out of the movie can be pretty fun. Some of the driving sequences are truly great. A number of missions will have cops or other mobsters on your tail as you and your buddies try to make your way back to a safe house.
The best part about The Godfather is not the free-roaming GTA-esque world that you are able to play in. This is pretty fun in its own right, but the missions given to you by the Corleone men are even more entertaining. Your tasks will have you witnessing key events in the movie that you may not have seen entirely in the film. You will be doing things like driving Luca Brasi to his meeting with the Turk and watching his death. Additionally, you will be aiding the ambulance’s race to the hospital with Don Vito’s life on the line. The way the storyline weaves into the movie’s plot is one of the game’s best elements.
The Godfather presents some very fun gameplay within its 1940’s New York settings. You are able to roam the sections of New York at will and take on missions to your liking. Extortion, hits, and other missions are great, especially when you participate in events from the movie.
Graphics:
The Godfather isn’t necessarily spectacular visually, but given the scale, the game looks pretty good. The accessible environments are absolutely huge and you will experience little to no load time. New York looks pretty decent externally, but unfortunately, you will see a ton of repeated buildings. There is only a small range of building interiors, and you will see the same ones time and time again. People on the street are also extremely repetitive, but major characters from the film have been modeled well. Each is extremely recognizable, from Don Corleone to Luca Brasi.
There aren’t a whole lot of nice details to look at in The Godfather, but since everything is presented in such a big scale, that can be forgiven. The graphical annoyances will probably not be too distracting as you will be too busy working your way up to Don of New York.
Audio:
The Godfather will have you meeting a ton of people as you take over businesses and roam the streets, and you can interact with every character. You can simply walk up to anyone on the street and get a response. These are normally single phrases, but if you are looking for more meaningful conversation, you can walk up to someone with The Godfather symbol above their head. The characters offer tips and weapons for sale. All of the voice acting for these minor characters is extremely well done, and in addition, the major characters’ roles are spoken well. The game’s musical accompaniment is simply the theme song of the film, which works perfectly for the game.
Controls:
The controls for this game are fairly simple, but allow you to participate in a large variety of activities. On foot, you are able to spring, interact, and crouch all with the face buttons. By engaging the triggers, you can proceed to beat someone up. If you want to add a gun to the equation, you can use the D-Pad to bring out your weapon, and use the right trigger to fire. Driving is just as simple. After using Y to jump in a vehicle, you can operate the car with the right trigger to accelerate and the left to stop. The learning curve is about thirty to sixty minutes, and after that you will be navigating the streets with ease due to the well-integrated Luca Brasi led tutorials. If you are having trouble with any aspect of the game, you can check out the Family Secrets. These are a series of videos that can take you through aspects of the game such as Extortion and Vendetta.
Replay:
There is only one mode of play, but it provides a ton of replay value. Taking over New York in its entirety is a huge task, and you will need to spend a huge amount of hours to achieve this task. Additionally, there are a ton of collectible items within the game. These are film clips from the movie, so you can get your Godfather movie fix right there in the game. The five areas of New York have many things to control, so you will definitely get your money’s worth when trying to complete this game.
Audio:
The Godfather will have you meeting a ton of people as you take over businesses and roam the streets, and you can interact with every character. You can simply walk up to anyone on the street and get a response. These are normally single phrases, but if you are looking for more meaningful conversation, you can walk up to someone with The Godfather symbol above their head. The characters offer tips and weapons for sale. All of the voice acting for these minor characters is extremely well done, and in addition, the major characters’ roles are spoken well. The game’s musical accompaniment is simply the theme song of the film, which works perfectly for the game.
Controls:
The controls for this game are fairly simple, but allow you to participate in a large variety of activities. On foot, you are able to spring, interact, and crouch all with the face buttons. By engaging the triggers, you can proceed to beat someone up. If you want to add a gun to the equation, you can use the D-Pad to bring out your weapon, and use the right trigger to fire. Driving is just as simple. After using Y to jump in a vehicle, you can operate the car with the right trigger to accelerate and the left to stop. The learning curve is about thirty to sixty minutes, and after that you will be navigating the streets with ease due to the well-integrated Luca Brasi led tutorials. If you are having trouble with any aspect of the game, you can check out the Family Secrets. These are a series of videos that can take you through aspects of the game such as Extortion and Vendetta.
Replay:
There is only one mode of play, but it provides a ton of replay value. Taking over New York in its entirety is a huge task, and you will need to spend a huge amount of hours to achieve this task. Additionally, there are a ton of collectible items within the game. These are film clips from the movie, so you can get your Godfather movie fix right there in the game. The five areas of New York have many things to control, so you will definitely get your money’s worth when trying to complete this game.
Summary:
The Godfather is a solid game that tops many of the other movie games to date. The storyline fits in to the movie well, and refrains from changing the plot in any way. The gameplay is fun and exciting, although it borrows from GTA quite a bit. The graphics are average, but on the whole, the game is a great pickup for those who love the movie. However, if you are a bit of a graphics junkie, you may want to wait around for the Xbox 360 version.
The Godfather is a solid game that tops many of the other movie games to date. The storyline fits in to the movie well, and refrains from changing the plot in any way. The gameplay is fun and exciting, although it borrows from GTA quite a bit. The graphics are average, but on the whole, the game is a great pickup for those who love the movie. However, if you are a bit of a graphics junkie, you may want to wait around for the Xbox 360 version.
