Reviews// Godfather (Xbox)

In general, the missions are pretty decent, although there are a couple of drawbacks to them, most notably trying to perform them when you have run out of ammo (which necessitates finding an arms dealer, who generally hang out in back alleys). You’d think that the Corleones would tool you up before they send you out into the firing line, though.

In general, the ambience of the game is pretty good, with its authentically dingy graphics, period cars and so on. The voice talent is spot-on, too: indeed, Brando himself recorded plenty of material for it just before he died.

The control system has come in for some criticism, but it is perfectly tolerable once you realise that you have to keep pressing the left trigger to swap between targets – if you keep it pressed and kill your target, you will carry on targeting the dead man. Punching and swinging melee weapons owes a lot to Fight Night (you swing the right stick), and you can perform stealth executions by creeping up on victims from behind with the garrotte selected and clicking both sticks. Without a weapon, clicking both sticks lets you throttle people, which also works nicely. Frequently, you must perform hits by chucking people off roofs or into pizza ovens, which is a little bit fiddly but satisfying when you get it right.

The bad and the ugly

One of the most annoying aspects of The Godfather will strike a chord with GTA-heads: an utterly useless map. Just like GTA, it depicts your destination with a (blue) dot. And just like GTA, it seems to delight in sending you down blind alleys. Sometimes, you will need to proceed in precisely the opposite direction to the one indicated, if you want to reach your destination as quickly as possible. This, of course, is particularly irritating if you’re engaged on a timed driving mission.

Although the useless map does have a useful by-product: you’re forced to pay enough attention to the layout of New York circa 1950 that you soon feel you could become a taxi-driver there. Which is amusingly ironic, as anyone who has ever been to the Big Apple will be aware that even if you have never been to the city before, you’re more likely to have a general idea of what direction you need to head in than any real-life taxi-driver you might patronise.

At last year’s E3, EA – stung by accusations that The Godfather was a mere GTA clone in flashy clothes – took pains to highlight the open-ended technology which lets you build up to “boss of all bosses” status by going into businesses and rackets protected and owned by rival families and taking them over – generally by intimidating the owners by beating them up until a meter at the top right-hand sides of the screen reaches a certain level.

Sadly, this aspect of the game proves utterly tedious. It’s all too easy to kill people you’re trying to put the frighteners on, at which point, you’ll attract so much heat that whole parts of the city become no-go areas. For that reason, this aspect of the game is best ignored until you’ve finished the story mode. It provides a certain amount of replay value, but is the sort of thing you’ll abandon with a sigh of relief when you get another game to play.


SPOnG score B-

In the end, once you have finished the story mode, you’re left with precious little to do that is particularly compelling – which is disappointing in what was supposed to be a high-tech game. At least the story mode provides some choice gaming moments, which will delight fans of the Godfather films. If the thought of Grand Theft Auto: The Corleone Family Circa 1945 to 1955 excites you, then you won’t regret buying this game. But otherwise, feel free to give it a miss – and to carry on treating EA like the family-friendly company it is desperately trying to pretend not to be.