The Godfather II

For a while I was looking forward to playing The Godfather II. I skipped the first one in the series as it had some DLC that was no longer available and based on my experience here, that was a great plan as The Godfather II, to be polite about it, is a flat uninspiring gaming experience.

The story and premise are fairly simple – you play as some faceless goon, Dominic as he climbs the mafia tower in service of Michael Corleone. You have to wipe out other crime families and take over the city by controlling all businesses. There are other missions and an underlying story but none of the voice actors seem to care about this and I, in turn, didn’t either.

My first impressions of The Godfather II weren’t all bad. The driving mechanics and controls were really good considering it’s a 2009 release and it great to be using the triggers to drive rather than the A and B buttons. However, that’s where it ends. Once the takeover mission mechanics were explained, I lost interest and didn’t play it again for over a month.

Also, the shooting is god-awful (no pun intended) with horrible auto-aim that seems just as likely to kill you than save you. If you are in a gunfight with more than one person, Dominic will lock on to some dude hiding behind a chest-high wall 500 feet away, rather than the guy standing in front of you with a shotgun.

What else sucked? The whole structure of the game, if I’m honest. If you have taken over businesses, the rival families can take them back by attacking them. It happens a lot and at the beginning the game, where everything is loosely explained in a very dull way, it wasn’t clear how to prevent this.

Essentially what it boiled down to was taking out all of the made men from a family so they couldn’t attack you while taking over their businesses and sending any of your other family members to defend your locations if they are attacked. Except taking out all of the made men will take a long time and is hugely repetitive. Just like all of the other activities I’ve described.

So it’s basically an over simplified, boring version of Grand Theft Auto with terrible voice acting to boot.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 41 Achievements

When I eventually started getting into the game, the achievements came quite quickly. Most of them can be earned through playing the main story and overtaking all crime rings and businesses. Along the way you will likely rack up the 750 kills too.

There are some notable ones and this is again where I got slightly hung up on progressing the game. The first of these is simple enough. You have to eliminate 5 made men. The first one is a given in a ‘this is how you do it’ kind of way but the next four, you have to pick up favours (more repetitive work) to gain kill conditions and then kill them in a specified way. A concept that makes no sense – strangling someone means perma-death but headshots? Just flesh wounds, no worries. It’s a missable achievement as you will run out of made men if you wipe out all families but they will annoy you so much by attacking your businesses that you will want to take them out anyway.

The next is for completing all execution styles and to be honest this is the hardest work the game offers because the requirements are so irritating it’s not even funny. To get an execution, you have to injure a mobster enough to get an execute prompt and press the right stick with a certain weapon equipped to get either a standing or kneeling execution. The kneeling ones are stupid because getting an execution with the magnum or sniper rifle means you have to shoot them in the leg with a different gun, change guns then run up to them to execute them. Run up to them. With a sniper rifle. Super dumb.

There are also some environmental executions and thrown weapon executions, the most painful for me was throwing a bottle at someone to get the killing blow and I still feel I was lucky with this. I had to throw the bottle after damaging an enemy enough but before my allies killed them. You also have to pick up a bottle in the environmental so it’s conditional on whether there’s a bottle around to begin with.

Outside of this and clearing all the crime rings and businesses, there are safes in every location and favours you can earn from public officials. All of these collectibles are location-marked so finding them isn’t a problem, however the same can’t be said for the fire arms. None of these are too far out of the way but you do need to look for them and using a guide is probably the best way.

The last achievement I unlocked was for completing the game so there is no post game grinding, thought there could be depending on the order you choose to do things. The executions are one you’ll want to do prior to the end game as there will only be two guys left you can do executions on once all the families are wiped out. This sounded stupid so I did it as soon as I could.

Downloadable Content – N/A

The Godfather II was a boring and forgettable gaming experience where both gameplay and story fail to deliver. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you want to be bored for 12 or more hours doing the same repetitive tasks.