The Godfather II (Xbox 360)

Graphics

The graphics in Godfather II are somewhat dated, they’re functional and they look decent enough but they lack in the detail department compared to some of the recent titles – this isn’t going to matter at all if you’re not into Eyecandy, but many gamers seem to be these days. The textures seem a little flat, the models and designs are slightly stiff. The lighting is quite nice and the shadows are decent.

Animations

There are a few bugs in the animations, some of the executions didn’t line up properly and some of the grabs were mistimed. There are a few issues with some of the crew animations as well as the player animations, they don’t mar the overall experience but they are noticeable. Combat is nicely animated when it works and the rest of the animations are standard, with the living city given only a brief sense of life from the NPCs.

Physics

The car handling is loose and the vehicles are of course not as sporty as you’d expect, this isn’t too had considering that’s what cars were supposed to be like at the time. Bodies do their ragdoll thing and you can take locational pot shots at the enemy, sub-targeting their bodies for additional damage and effects. Explosions are adequate.

AI

The AI is variable, most of the time the enemy will provide little or no challenge if you have your tactics sorted. The Police AI is ruthless and the crew AI can get caught with their path-finding, there are a few times where they seemed to lose the plot and stood around in a gunfight shooting at a wall where a character had accidentally spawned.


Sound

The game has some decent sound and the sounds of the era are replicated pretty nicely, weapons sound good, the cars sound great and the whole feel is nicely evoked.

Music

There’s a nice spread of era tunes here, the radio isn’t at all bad and the typical Godfather theme plays an all important role in setting the auditory atmosphere, good stuff.

Voice and Dialogue

The voice acting isn’t bad at all, there are some familiar voice dialogues and some of it repeats a lot. The true star of the show are the exchanges between your various crew members as they accompany you and get involved in gun fights, brawls and crime sprees. It’s solid and it does a good job. The actual script is pretty good as well and evokes the feeling of the movies fairly nicely.

Multiplayer

With the usual smattering of options available Godfather II has standard multiplayer, unless you happen to be the Don of the game and this is where things get interesting. Not only do you have the Don’s view but you can act on that, mark people for death and give simple orders to the people in your Family. This reminds me a lot of the game: Savage and I loved seeing it here. You can use this view to give out bonuses via the upgrade nodes or detonate them and seriously damage anyone nearby.

There are incentives for playing online, money and upgrades are carried over to the single player game and you can gain new weapon licenses.

Multiplayer extends the 20 hour game experience and provides a lot of good replay value.