The Godfather is a game I bought from a friend more than a year ago, and for some reason it never made it to the top of my to-play stack. Now, after finishing it, I can’t believe it took me so long to check it out!
Usually I hate these “GTA Clone”-action-adventure type games because
they punish you for not completing a mission successfully by forcing
you to restart the mission from the beginning. I was pleasantly
surprised by Godfather as I soon realised that each mission has small
auto save points within it, so that you rarely have to replay more than
2 minutes to get back to where you were before dying. The driving
mechanic was also above expectations – if you don’t choose to hijack a
senior citizen driving a total clunker, you can outrun cops with ease
while only killing the minimum of innocent bystanders. The voice acting
was superb as several of the original actors of the first Godfather
returned to do the voice acting for their characters, most notably
James Caan and Robert Duvall. If you have watched the original
Godfather movie, the storyline won’t offer you anything new (not that
it is a bad thing) - rather that than spoiling the franchise with a
sub-par Spanish TV novella plot.
Before attempting to take out one of the other families, I hired a
henchman to help me. Chubby little fellow. We got in the car, busted
through their reinforcements while they are futilely trying to gun us
down. Our car catches on fire and I drive into their main road block
just after bailing out of the car. They come closer to investigate and
the car explodes, killing nearby enemy mobsters. More come rushing out
of the house to help them and while they are searching for me I bombard
them with Molotov cocktails and shoot the stragglers. Now my henchman
wants a part of the action and promptly gets himself killed as he
proudly jumps into a group of mobsters with his little pistol a
blazing. After that they shoot me. Repeatedly. But that’s not the
point. The point is, whenever I get action sequences like this out of a
game, I am reminded of one of the reasons I love video games.
Reviewed by:
Heino Colyn
