The Godfather (DVD-ROM)

List Price: $9.99 Discount Price: $17.49

Features:

• Pull off missions for the Corleones - From mob hits and bank heists to drive-bys and extortion
• Use your skill with weapons to take out the rival families - Tattaglia, Cuneo, Sollozzo, Brazini, and Stracci
• Intimidation and negotiation are your tickets to the top - but you'll also have to use brutal violence, skillful diplomacy, or a cunning mixture of both, to stay there
• Characters in the game world will remember your interactions with them - and that will affect your choices in the game, so play it smart
• Rise through the ranks to become Don in a living, 1945-1955 New York

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

For 10 bucks, you bet its worth it! [Posted on 2007-07-09]
10 dollars for a game is...unheard of. 10 dollars for a FUN game...even better. *drumroll* I give you, THE GODFATHER!

I bought it last week and have been playing it on a daily basis. The game is incredibly entertaining. It is very much reminiscent of GTA, but it takes place in the world created by Mario Puzo and not Rockstar. While the game is a bit linear, its fun factor is undeniable. And after all, that is the point of video games...fun.

You work your way up from the bottom eventually becoming a prominent member of the Corleone empire. Along the way, you hijack cars, take over rackets and businesses, kill a few (haha, "few"...) enemies, and follow an interesting storyline.

The graphics are pretty solid. I run the game on a laptop that does not have the best graphics card, etc, but it plays smoothly!

The controls in the game are pretty easy to get used to and make sense. The fighting controls are a real treat. When engaging in hand-to-hand combat, its reminiscent of Mortal Kombat...but more hands-on...as it were.

Honestly, you should not feel as if you need to research every facet of this game. For 10 dollars and free shipping, you really cannot lose here! Granted this game is not revolutionary as GTA, but it delivers entertainment in huge amounts!

Don Vito playing in his sandbox [Posted on 2007-08-03]
Give EA credit for at the very least taking on a huge risk with a property as beloved as The Godfather. There were plenty of dark alleys that the publisher could have driven down, but they largely stayed on the straight and narrow with this sandbox game adaptation of one of my favorite movies. The Godfather attempts to balance a retelling of the greatest ganster story ever told, while weaving in a playable open world environment that allows freedom of not only movement, but advancement within the subplot and side-mission structures. I can recognize what an arduous task it presented, if only considering the number of ways that this amount of freedom could send the narrative careening off course. Certainly a tightly scripted and more restrictive game like Mafia (which I'll use as a comparison) tells a better tale, but The Godfather takes more risks.

The most laudable accomplishment of The Godfather is the voice acting. James Caan, Abe Vigoda, Robert Duvall, and others (I've read conflicting reports as to whether or not Brando supplies Don Vito's voice) reprise their roles brilliantly. An actor is as good as his material, and fortunately the scripting is excellent. Even the minutae of daily life as a Mafioso scrub seems glamorous when your instructions are delivered by Sonny Corleone. Caan outshines everyone else, in my opinion, and his were my favorite missions. Ambient sounds like pedestrian banter and occasional period music are appropriate and well-placed. Weapon and destructive sounds are deep and jarring as they should be. In other words, it sounds like a big budget game.

The Godfather strikes a visual balance between the historically correct world of Mafia and the pulp-fiction fantasy of GTA III. While I read some complaints about graphics, I was personally impressed with the level of detail delivered both outside and inside the game's New York City. If anything, EA may have tried to cuddle too close to the movie's atmosphere and architecture. Some variation and expansion in both architecture and accessability would have given the game a bit more depth and reduced the feeling of tedium that crept over me as I noticed the sameness of various business interiors and street exteriors. While it would have shortened the side mission play time (a foolishly overvalued priority in current game design), a city perhaps 25% smaller in square mileage would have yielded more interesting gameplay. The tunnels, for example are insufferably boring. Overall, I have to compliment EA by managing to capture the historical correctness of Mafia with a greater level of detail and polish.

The on foot gameplay is mostly a blast. EA did right by gamers in installing the extortion and conquest system. Without it, The Godfather would be subpar considering the relatively short and truncated primary mission structure. But played alongide the Corleone family's requests, business extortion instills a satifying sense of accomplishment. Walking into a baker's shop, inquiring about the owner's level of protection, then gunning down the current family's guards while cracking open a few display cases to sample the wares is a lot of fun. Particularly when the baker changes his mind after all the smoke clears. Again, the city should have been smaller as even the exortions become dull after the halfway point. I recommend a good quality dual action gamepad for the PC, as the mouse controlled movement is a huge disaster. The dual analog stick aiming and movement are tight enough, although I enjoy freeaim mode in my shooters (what's the point of gunplay if you're using an autotarget?). Unfortunately, the difficulty balance is seriously whacked around the hubs and warehouses, where the player is required to knock off around 40 goons with only one or two health pickups. These little jewels, which are required conquests for game completion, are actually tougher than the family compounds.

Driving? Eh, not so much. Unlike Mafia, which was largely a "car guy's" game, the vehicles of The Godfather are merely a device to connect point A to B. Which you'll be doing a lot of, considering the bizarre and disjointed mission locations of The Godfather. Due to their inexplicable decision to link most mission starts to multiple informants located at opposite ends of New York, EA had to make the cars run like bottle rockets on a Hot Wheels track. I despised the cartoonish handling and racecar top speeds, which combined with the sewing machine engine sounds and lack of authentic touches like a manual transmission (something I really appreciated in Mafia), ruined the movie atmosphere every time I opened a car door. Only six car models and a lack of analog speed control or even a cruise button show EA's carelessness with their autos. Again, a smaller city requiring less travel, and perhaps a public transit or taxi service would have helped the situation.

EA made a commendable effort to deliver the core of the movie's story as a string of playable missions. Any undertaking such as this will be a degree of failure in the eyes of a movie fan, and I mean to say that EA cut The Godfather's plot as tenderly as possible (unlike the rusty butcher's knife they took to From Russia With Love). The most dramatic scenes from the film are playable and largely enjoyable, although many motivations and subplots are left out. While a bit disjointed and incomplete, I have to admit that The Godfather is the most faithful game adaptation of a classic film I've played.

So, in summary, fans of the movie or action oriented shooter fans will undoubtedly enjoy the majority of The Godfather: The Game for PC. Be sure to have a quality analog gamepad handy, along with a DVD drive and a healthy video card, and you'll have a blast knocking down New York one bakery at a time.

Great Game especially with this price tag! [Posted on 2007-08-13]
I cannot complain, maybe they didn't put in the greatest graphics available at the time, but this is still a great game. The cool thing is that you can go into count less stores and take them over for the Corleone family. The mob wars are also very fun. Lastly, i had fun with the cars, whose handling is above normal and speed ahead of it's time (this game happens in the 40's) but that makes it even more fun to drive. The actual plot of the game is interesting, you get to meet all the characters from the book, the character's faces based on the movies. My only concern with this game is that at the end of the game plot the story starts to move too fast and ends too suddenly, and the end I will not spoil.

Overall, a great game for 10 bucks. I would say this game is a mix of Grand Theft Auto and Mafia.

Don't Bother [Posted on 2007-11-28]
There's already a great role playing organized crime game set in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It's called MAFIA, and it came out four years before THE GODFATHER. MAFIA features better graphics, more cars, better voice acting, more diverse missions, a larger playing area and better music. This game is dull and repetive. There are a few fun things, but mostly it's "drive here, beat up or shoot a bunch of thugs and get back to your hideout"; or, "go to Mr. X's deli/saloon/restaurant/warehouse and rough him up til he starts paying his protection money again". Sandbox games have been tremendously popular with the GTA and Driver games over the last few years. A gamer looking for this kind of experience simply has too many options to chose from these days. Don't bother with this one. Some of the cutscenes, which feature dialogue and scenes from the movie, are fun to watch, and you do get to dress up your character and change his appearance. But all in all, you will become bored very quickly with this.

Sanbox games like GTA are fun because you can wander back and forth from the main storyline whenever you wish. If you don't want to advance the main story, you can drive around doing side jobs or just exploring. GODFATHER tries to recreate this, but the only side jobs available are stickup and protection rackets which become boring after the first 15 look alike.

All in all, a disappointment. I played it for about two hours initially and then uninstalled it.

a seriously stupid game [Posted on 2008-04-04]
It's a pretty fun GTA clone. It's a lot like the free roaming mode in Mafia if you don't pay any attention to the story.. and if you're as big a fan of the Godfather movies as I am, I strongly suggest that you don't pay much attention to the story.

The best thing this game has going for it is the combat. There are a million different ways to kill and maim people. You can use your typical array of weapons from pistols to machine guns to explosives, or you can grab people and throw them through windows or off bridges and buildings, strangle them until you break their necks, head [...] them to death, throw them in front of cars, slam them into walls or other nearby objects.. etc.

If you want to waste an hour being a total psychopath, this really is quite a fun way to do it.

But that's about all there is to this game. Sure, there's the "story", but I just can't recommend that part of it. It's quite amazing the lengths to which the developers went in order to wedge you into the events of the book/movie. Every single major event of the movie, your character is there to witness, and often has a big part in accomplishing.

For instance: You're there to witness Don Vito's assassination attempt, and must drive him to the hospital... You're there to see Luca Brasi get whacked and must kill his assassin... You're the guy who plants Michael's gun in the bathroom and must drive him to the docks afterwards... You're there when Sonny is whacked and must chase down and kill his assassins... You're the guy who whacks Paulie... You're the guy who whacks Tessio... etc.. etc.. etc..

With all this madness revolving around you, you'd think the Corleones would have had you whacked on page 4. It really is supremely stupid, and is an absolute disgrace to the beautifully complex and multi-layered story of the film.

All that aside, there is a good bit of fun to be had here. I suggest sticking to the sidequests and doing the story last only if you have nothing else to do.

I've also heard that they're going to be making two more games to go along with the other two films. YAY! I predict that in part 2, you will play two roles: your character from this game and his father. Get ready to help Vito whack Don Fanucci and help Al Neri whack Fredo all before lunch. In part 3, you get to poison the Pope! Good times!

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