Belated Game Reviews: Godfather II

Godfather II is a successful followup to the first Godfather game which puts you in the shoes of Dominic, an Underboss in the Corlone family.  The story takes place after Michael Corleone takes over the family and it starts in Cuba with a meeting of five Mafia family in Cuba in an attempt to consolidate their business influence down there.  There's one little problem: Some guy named Fidel Castro decided to pick THAT day as the day to start his little revolution against the government.  Some timing huh?

Of course, once you fight your way out of Cuba and make it back to New York, some other family has to start some shit and then it's on.  The game follows Dominic from his promotion to Don, building an army and then taking out the other 5 families to make the Corleone's the only family in town.

The gameplay is a blend of Monopoly, Risk,  and Grand Theft Auto.  You can view a map that lists all the available businesses you can take over.  If you have enough made men, you can send your boys on their own to take it out for yourself, or bomb it to take it out of the picture for a while.  Most times though, you'll be doing it yourself.  You can add up to three made men to your crew and pay a visit to your rivals businesses.   Ideally, you'll want to take out all the guards before "convincing" the owner of the business to start giving you money. 

Unfortunately, it's not as easy as just taking over businesses.  You have to stock your owned locations with your own paid goons because the rival families are not going to sit idly by while you take over their rackets.  They'll actively send their own made men to take back what was theirs.  You can pull off hits on their made men by doing favors for random pedestrians on the streets.  Yeah it sounds weird but it's the only way to take out rival made men.

Once you take over a family's businesses you can attack their compound and blow it up to take out the entire family and put you one step closer to being the Don of Dons.

The game has taken hits in the media for it's excessive violence, swearing, and nudity but come on it's a game about mobsters.  Name me one mafia movie that doesn't have all the above.  It does get a little repetitive at times but it's still a damn good game in my opinion.

There is an online mode as well which I didn't play but it looks like standard fare (i,e. A CTF variant, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch)

Final Verdict: 7.5/10

Trophy Whores: This ones a pretty easy trophy game, there's several trophies that you have to get before finishing the game because they have to be performed on mobsters and once you're done with the game there's no more mobsters.  Every other trophy is either a storyline trophy or can be easily gotten during gameplay.  2/10 for trophy difficulty