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The Godfather (2006)

Platform: Xbox, Playstation 2, Windows Games, PSP, Xbox 360, PS3 & Wii
Genre: Action-Adventure
Release Date: March 21st, 2006
Developer: EA Redwood Shores
Publishers: Electronic Arts

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Synopsis

The Godfather is an open world action-adventure game played from a third-person perspective, in which the player controls Aldo Trapani as he ascends through the ranks of the Corleone family, with his rise intersecting with the narrative of the film on numerous occasions. The basic gameplay and game mechanics are similar to most open world titles as the player can travel across the city freely, commandeer vehicles, do whatever they want in terms of attacking and/or killing innocent civilians, and progress through the storyline at their own leisure, spending as much time traversing the city as they wish

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Gameplay

The Godfather's gameplay is action packed and always changing. There is very little times when you are left doing boring & tedious missions as with other games of this genre, which is what really hooked me. The opening mission of the game really kicks the campaign off to a good start as you play as Aldo Trapani's father, who is victim to a rival family's attack, later in the mission you play as Aldo Trapani himself and swear to avenge you're fathers death. Getting you on the edge of you're seat right from the start. Admittedly at first it is difficult to play, due to the way the camera acts in-game. However, you quickly adjust to this and shooting rival family members because a newly found talent of yours

As The Godfather is an Open-World game it means that if you're not feeling like playing along with the story line at that moment in time, you don't have to. There's many of activities that you can do out in the world, such as - Robbing a bank, Doing 'favours' to earn money, look for hidden weapon upgrades & much more. The gameplay overall in The Godfather will never have you bored, there's so much for you to do!

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Plot

The plot of The Godfather is based off the first film of the Godfather series, with some adjustments. The game begins in Little Italy of 1936 with a cut-scene of Johnny Trapani (a modest ranked member of the Corleone family) being beaten and then murder by the rival "Barzini" family. After Johnny's brutal murder you (Aldo Trapani, as a child) arrive, where Vito Corleone tells you that when you are older you will take revenge and avenge your fathers death. The game then skips forward to 1945 where Aldo Trapni is older and is a member of the Corleone Family himself, after being recruited by Luca Brasi, who also trains you to fight and extort businesses for "protection money"

From then on out you work doing small jobs, like extorting businesses for a short period of time, whilst you work your way through the ranks of the Corleone family. After this period of time you are introduced into the Cocaine trade with Sollozo. With tension building in the family due to a disinterest of the Cocaine trade by Vito Corleone, Bruno & Sollozzo kill Luca Brasi, which is witnessed by Aldo Trapani. Later on causing an attempted hit on Vito.

Tension quickly rises between the Corleone family and its rivals, leading to lots of blood-shed and violence. An attack is made on the Corleone family compound, consequently causing the Corleone family to declare war. Later on after lots of violence and murder Tom promotes Aldo Trapani to Associate, this signifies your rise through the ranks and the gaining of the family trust.

After even more blood-shed Vito retires as the Corleone don, leaving Micheal Corleone in charge. Shortly after Vito sadly passes away and Micheal Promotes Aldo Trapani to Caporegime (further signifying your rise within the family). Micheal quickly learns from Monk that a member of the Corleone family has been acting as an informant for the FBI & that they have been meeting at a nearby hotel. Micheal & Aldo make their way to the hotel where they are then informed by Monk that the informant is in the hotel with the FBI. Monk, Micheal & Also decide to storm through the hotel room and execute the FBI Agent along with the informant. They proceed to do so, where Monk executes a single FBI agent. After doing so Aldo quickly learns that Monk was the informant and had wanted the FBI agent dead, so the family would never find out. Aldo later on tracks down Monk & kills him for betraying the Corleone family.

Aldo returns to the compound to see Tessio held at gun point. Tom explains Tessio had set Michael up to be murdered. Tessio had arranged a meeting between Micheal and the Barzini family, but what Micheal didn't know is that they were plotting to execute him. Aldo heads off to the meeting and then kills the Barzni assassins along with Tessio. Micheal then summons Aldo to church as he holds a ceremony for Aldo, During which Micheal has Aldo assassinate the four head of the rival familys: Victor Stracci, Carmine Cuneo, Philip Tattaglia, and Emilio Barzini. With Aldo finally assassinating Emilio Barzini he has got the revenge he set out to do in the first place, meaning that he has acted upon the promise he made many years ago. After Micheal hears that Aldo was successful in carrying out all 4 hits he promotes Aldo to Underboss of the Corleone family.

The game is then over, unless the player decides to keep playing (which is optional). If you do so then Aldo Trapani bombs all four rival family compounds, to which he is then promoted to Don of New York

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Graphics

With the game being released all the way back in 2006, it is to be expected that the graphics are not on-par with today's standards. However, for the release date the graphics are amazing! I have noticed on a few occasions that sometimes textures in the game will not be rendered properly & can stay this way for a short period of time, as well as glitches within the worlds physics, like objects being pushed into walls and sinking through the un-rendered floors. If you look past these minor bugs then the game is by far what is classed as "playable" & after a short period of time you get used to the graphics of the game.

With The Godfather having lots of cut-scenes and dialog, one thing that I must point out is the Character's when speaking. Like many older games the character's voices do not match their mouth movements, which can be a little off-putting or slightly annoying when you're eagerly watching to find out what you're next task is. However, it's only a minor defect and doesn't effect you're overall playing experience very much

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Controls

I feel like the controls are very well optimised for this game, as it uses very similar controls to other games of its type. Meaning that there's not a steep learning curve just to be able to play the game. One control that I feel should have been different is the control to spring / jog. The button for this is A (Xbox 360) / X (PS2/3) and when trying to sprint & control you're character at the same time things can get very tricky. To work around this I often found myself using my controller in a "claw" type grip, which is very different from how the standard player would play.

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Rating

Gameplay: 9.5/10
Graphics: 7/10
Controls: 9/10
Overall: 8.5/10