The Godfather II opens with a plane ride out of a revolution. Hyman Roth has gathered the Corleone, Granados, Mangano and Almeida families in Havana to carve up Cuba under Fulgencio Batista, and the guests get caught in the Cuban Revolution instead. Corleone underboss Aldo Trapani dies in the chaos. Michael Corleone, his brother Fredo and Trapani’s second-in-command, Dominic, escape, and Michael hands Dominic the family’s New York businesses.
That is a strong first ten minutes. What follows is a game that keeps promising a mob empire and keeps handing you a city to wander.
EA Redwood Shores developed The Godfather II and Electronic Arts published it. It came out in April 2009 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, with 1C-SoftClub handling publishing in its territory. It is the sequel to the 2006 game The Godfather, and it is based on the 1974 film The Godfather Part II.
Trailer, via GlimpseOfThunder.
Dominic Takes New York
Like the first game, The Godfather II follows a character who does not exist in the films. Dominic starts as Aldo Trapani’s protégé and underboss. After Aldo is killed, Michael appoints Dominic as his new underboss and puts him in charge of the family’s businesses in New York City. The job is to expand the Corleone empire by taking out the rivals.
The game is an action-adventure and role-playing game played from a third-person perspective. You control Dominic. You can travel the game world freely, commandeer vehicles, attack or kill civilians, and move through the storyline at your own pace. The source material puts the basic mechanics in the subgenre of Grand Theft Auto clones, and that is an honest description rather than a slur. You spend as much time traversing the city as you wish.
Unlike the first game, which was primarily set in New York, this one also spans Miami and Havana. That is the single biggest improvement over its predecessor. Three cities give the empire a shape. Havana in particular gives the story a clock, because the revolution is running while you work.
The Don’s View
The headline addition is “The Don’s View,” a strategy meta-game that lets you oversee the entire world as you grow the family business. From that view you build, defend and expand crime rings and watch the movements and plans of rival families.
The loop is extortion, monopoly and conquest. You build up your family by extorting businesses, monopolizing illegal crime rings and defeating new families to become the most powerful mob family in America. Players also build a family of Made Men, hire crew, hand out orders and promote their best men up the ranks.
Each family member specializes in a field. The source lists demolitions, arson, engineering and first-aid among them. As Don you control the family, sending some men on missions while heading into action with others. In the field you fight alongside your hand-picked crew.
This is the part of The Godfather II that has aged best. A crew with distinct skills is a real system, not a costume. Sending a demolitions man to one job and an arsonist to another is a decision, and the Don’s View is where those decisions live.
BlackHand Combat
The series’ signature BlackHand control scheme returns and doubles down. The source describes it as featuring even more visceral hand-to-hand brutality at your fingertips, with a new combo system, pressure tactics and executions.
BlackHand is where the game wants to be felt rather than managed. It is also where the seams show. The combo system, the pressure tactics and the executions are the same handful of inputs repeated across three cities and dozens of rackets. Brutality stops being brutal once it is routine, and The Godfather II makes it routine fast.
The game promises that the combination of strategic organized crime gameplay and brutal BlackHand action sets it apart from other open-world games. That claim is half right. The strategy layer does set it apart. The action layer is the part you have seen before.
Havana, Miami and the Film
The Godfather II tells an original story that intersects with the film’s narrative multiple times. It changes the film’s plot more than the first game did. None of the material about Vito Corleone’s rise appears. The events of the film are presented in a different order.
Dominic also takes a more central role than Aldo did. In the first game, most of Aldo’s actions were events that happened off-screen in the first film. Here, Dominic appears in scenes where he was not present in the film. He is with Frank Pentangeli during his attempted assassination.
That is the trade the game makes. It buys a bigger part for its protagonist and pays with the film’s structure. Whether that is a good trade depends on how much you want the game to be the movie. The Godfather II is not the movie.
The Rosato Problem
Six weeks after Havana, Dominic is tasked with two ex-Corleone caporegimes, Carmine and Tony Rosato, who have formed their own family and are dealing drugs. Frank Pentangeli wants them dead. Michael suggests sending a message instead by taking over their protection rackets and killing their men.
Carmine offers to meet Dominic and Frank to make peace, then tries to have them killed. An assassin tells Frank that “Michael Corleone says hello” and shoots him. Dominic escapes and confronts Michael, who denies being behind the hit. Shortly after, Dominic kills Carmine and takes over his remaining businesses.
Later, Roth invites Dominic to Florida. Fredo meets him there. Michael sent Fredo to manage their hotels.
The cast is doing recognizable work. Danny Jacobs plays Hyman Roth. Rick Pasqualone plays Aldo Trapani. Carlos Ferro plays Michael Corleone. John Mariano plays Fredo. Chris Cox plays Dominic. Joe Paulino and Peter Hulne play Carmine and Tony Rosato. Gavin Hammon plays Frank Pentangeli.
- Hyman Roth — Danny Jacobs
- Aldo Trapani — Rick Pasqualone
- Michael Corleone — Carlos Ferro
- Fredo Corleone — John Mariano
- Dominic — Chris Cox
- Carmine Rosato — Joe Paulino
- Tony Rosato — Peter Hulne
- Frank Pentangeli — Gavin Hammon
Multiplayer and the Carry-Over
The Godfather II ships with online multiplayer modes. The pitch is to become the true Don of Dons. You take your money, weapons and crew from the single-player experience online and wage mob warfare against up to 16 players. You play as one of the family’s crew specialists, take over territory and strike back at rivals. Upgrades and money you earn online can be used in your single-player experience.
That last clause is the interesting one. Most games of this era kept their two halves in separate boxes. The Godfather II lets the multiplayer feed the campaign, which gives the online mode a reason to exist beyond a leaderboard. It also means the online mode inherits every balance problem the single-player economy has.
Sixteen players is a real number for 2009. It is not a real answer to what the multiplayer is for.
What The Godfather II Gets Right
The Don’s View is the reason to play this game. Managing crime rings across three cities, watching rival families move, and promoting Made Men through the ranks is a genuine strategy layer, and it is the thing the first game did not have. Havana and Miami expand the map in ways that matter. The crew specialists give you a reason to think about who you bring to a job.
The film material is handled with more nerve than the first game showed. Putting Dominic inside scenes he never appeared in is a real adaptation choice, and it gives the story a spine the first game lacked.
What It Gets Wrong
BlackHand is the problem. The source promises a new combo system, pressure tactics and executions, and all three arrive. None of them stay interesting. The combat is the part of the game you endure between Don’s View sessions, and in a game this long that is a heavy tax.
The open world is the second problem. The source itself files the mechanics under Grand Theft Auto clones, and the game does not escape the comparison. Free traversal, commandeered vehicles and civilian violence are table stakes by 2009, and The Godfather II brings nothing new to any of them. The cities are backdrops for the strategy layer, not places you want to spend time in.
The story is the third. It changes the film’s order and drops Vito Corleone’s rise entirely, which is defensible, but the result is a plot that keeps intersecting with better material. The Pentangeli scene lands because it is a Pentangeli scene. Dominic is standing in it.
Where This One Lands
The Godfather II is a strategy game wearing an action game’s clothes. When it lets you sit in the Don’s View and run an empire across New York, Miami and Havana, it is doing something the first game could not and most open-world games of its year did not attempt. When it sends you back into the street to punch another man through another window, it becomes one of a dozen games you could be playing instead.
The crew system and the Don’s View are worth the price of admission. The combat and the open world are not. Sixteen-player mob warfare with campaign carry-over is a good idea that never becomes a reason to stay.
This is a sequel that improved the right half of its predecessor and left the other half alone. The Godfather II earns its place as a curiosity in the licensed-game pile, not as a classic. It is a game about running a family that keeps interrupting you to hit someone.
- Release: April 2009
- Platforms: Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
- Developer: EA Redwood Shores
- Publisher: Electronic Arts; 1C-SoftClub
- Perspective: Third person
- Modes: Single player, multiplayer
- Multiplayer size: Up to 16 players
- Score: 6.5 of 10
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