The Godfather - Completed

To start off I am not exactly a fan of the god father series. The movie wasn’t bad and I enjoyed watching it, but doubt I will ever find the need to see it again. From what I recall of the movie the storyline inter mingles well with the movie. I cannot say for sure if the character you play is in the movie or not. Either way you know the story line is good since it is based off the movie and the cut scenes/missions coincide really well from what I see.

The game play consists of two different paths. The first is story mode which follows the movie and has missions. The missions are essential scenes from the movie where you play and assist the main characters. Then there is the "Mob Wars" mode. Breaking down New York to look like you are playing risk. With in the sections you will find people to extort and business to take over. When you are ready to move onto other territories you select who you want to attack and it brings up a mission. Unlike risk where your armies battle it out via a dice roll, in mob wars you get to do your own fighting. There is also a card element to mob wars. Cards that help you with your heat level (cops), to entice truces, and even directly steal money from the other families. You must destroy the other 3 family’s compounds in order to take over all of New York. The bottom line of the game is to be the Don of New York. In order to do this you have to complete story mode and mob wars. Which took me around six hours, with at least an hour of the re-playing levels because I couldn’t find the best method to pass a certain point and would die.

I was impressed by the fighting in the game, the down and dirty punch them in the gut. The options you have to beat people allowed for some creativity. Sadly the second mission you receive a gun and rarely revert back to your fists. When it comes to the gun play I was a little let down. You press a shoulder button to auto lock on an enemy and fire away. This is all good and dandy if you can see the enemy. There is an option to put your self flush against the wall and peek around corners and shoot. But this doesn’t help when you are going down stairs or the wall layout does not allow you to see anything. In these instances you would walk blindly into a room while you’re being shot at. Press the auto lock mode and because you cannot see the enemy it won’t lock on and if you fire your gun, it shoots straight down. Who in hell thought it would be a good idea for you to shoot straight down with a Thompson machine gun? If anything have him shoot from the hip randomly into the walls and give the chance to hit an enemy.

The missions all consist of the same thing, run down the street, go into a building, either kill everyone or extort the shop owner, and well sometimes you plant a bomb. They only thing that saves you from the repetitive nature of the game is being in the movie sequences. Helping Michael protect his father in the hospital and so on gave the game some spark and pushed me to keep playing. I did not touch mob wars until I had finished with story mode and this made mob wars a breeze. With upgraded weapons and skills I destroyed the other families in less then an hour.

When leveling through the game you are given skill points. These are used to upgrade your abilities (fighting, shooting, health, etc). In the end I had upgraded nearly all my skills to the max and strangely enough after raising a skill it was hard to recognize its affect. Health increase and how much you can carry were easy to spot. But the weapon increases and accuracy were not that apparent.

The graphics of this game are great, better in my opinion then GTA:LCS. The cut scenes are very well animated and higher end for what I have seen on the PSP.
I give the game 7 out of 10. If it had a little more content and some better shooting mechanisms they game would have been much better.