The Mob Wants You!!

After my xbox live account got canceled and I couldn’t play Halo 2 online for about a week I went down to the local video store and rented “The Godfather”. Now I’m not big on one-player games much anymore, but I figured this looked like a good start.

The Godfather goes just about hand in hand with the movie, and if you’re a fan of the movie, then I think you will love this game. The Godfather is basically another version of GTA, but set in the 1930’s. You start out the game by creating a character to your liking. You can visit the tailor shop and buy all the 1930’s mobster apparel you wish. Anything from buttoned up shirts with suspenders to double-breasted sport coats with all the mobster accessories. You’re pretty much able to do just about anything with the character’s face (hair, eyes, nose, mouth) but not too much with the body itself. You can also check out game tips and film clips in this area too.

Once you’re done creating your mobster, you then go and join the family. You start out as a minion of the Corleone family. As in GTA, you have a lot of missions to complete to become the Don of NYC. You start out small, persuading small businesses in the area that they need the Corleone’s protection. You use your negotiation skills such as either bloodying the shopkeeper up or destroying his/her store. You’ll know how successful you are by watching the negotiation meter. Once you have persuaded the shopkeeper enough, he/she will be begging for your protection. You need to watch out though because if you try and persuade too hard, the shopkeeper will reach their breaking point and fight back. Some of the businesses have no protection at all, but the four other families in the game control a good bit of them. You’ll know if another mob has control of that business by looking at the map and their symbol will be on that business.

Once you take control of the business, you have the option of going in the back room and taking over the rackets. The rackets include anything from brothels with beautiful women to illegal gambling operations (I spent most of my time in one of these two rackets). You need to be careful though because most of the time the family in charge of that racket heavily guards these.

The weapons you have vary from the .38 snub revolver and a couple of other pistols to the famous tommy gun. The tommy gun is nice, but doesn’t have the greatest of accuracy, so you’ll need a lot of bullets. You also have baseball bats, clubs, and lead pipes to use for persuasion purposes. For close quarters the shotgun is always the best way to go. The dynamite, molav cocktails, and bombs are always fun to play with. I only lost a couple of fingers and one toe. The bombs are also good for Mob wars.

Mob wars are started when you kill mobsters from other families. You have a vendetta meter and once you reach the max level, you are in for a world of hurt. You have two ways to end a mob war. One way is to bomb a local business owned by that family, which is my choice. The other way is to bribe a FBI official to take the focus off of your family and apply more pressure to the family you are having a mob war with. Speaking of bribes, you also have a police pressure meter. When this gets to high, you will have to either get to a safe house to lower your rating or find a police sergeant or captain to bribe to get them off your tail. Biggest piece of advice I can give you about this meter is when the cop is shooting you, don’t turn around and blow his head off. You’ll have NYPD all over your ass.

The setting is set up in Old New York City. You pretty much have free roam when you are not on a mission, which means you can choose to go to Little Italy, Brooklyn, Midtown, Hell’s Kitchen, or New Jersey. At some point, you will have to venture into each section for one mission or another. The only way to get to one of these locations is by taking a family car, or hijacking your own set of wheels. If you are in another family’s territory though, be careful because the other families drive around too and they will shoot you for trying to hijack their car.

The graphics are decent, but will definitely be much better for the 360. As for the cut scenes though, it’s about as close as you will get to the movie and I think they did a pretty good job of that. The one thing I did like about the graphics and sounds is that the game makes you feel like you are actually in the 1930’s and living the life of a mobster.

All in all I think this game is pretty damn good. You have a lot of different options to take you through the game. The setting again is very realistic for the time frame. It is not a game you will blow through in 2 days, but I spent about 7 hours a day on it and beat it in about 6 days. I would definitely have to recommend this game as a rental though, because once you become the Don of NYC, there isn’t really a whole lot left to do. If you disagree with my opinion of this game, feel free to send me an email with your home address and I’ll be sure to send a couple of friends over to set you up with some new cement shoes.