Revisiting the Xbox with Godfather the Game

Ever since I started playing World of Warcraft, my Xbox has sat quietly in a little corner … underused and underappreciated. Not even Civilization 4 has taken time away from WoW. For a big Civilization fan like me, that is saying something. Every freetime away from work and food has now been totally consumed by WoW in one way or another.

Only my recent internet connection problems that started Friday afternoon has put the addiction on hold. I put my connection problems off until the next day thinking it was just random service problems and would get cleared up. Saturday came and nothing. Tech support had no clue what happened to my connection so I was told a technician would be sent on Monday. I was suprised when I got a call from the technician this morning telling me he could come by today (Sunday). I tell you, if you want customer satisfaction, get things done on a non-work day. Things seemed to be cleared up, but unstable. We’ll see how things go in the next few days.

My internet connection problems however has allowed me to explore games that I would not otherwise have had the chance to play. I picked up a copy of Godfather the Game and “joined the family”.

Most people who play the game will be comparing it to the movies, but I like playing games on how it stands on it’s own two feet. For the most part, the game does a good job creating a backstory based on the movies without actually changing or interferring with the main plots of the movies. You will interact with Michael, Sonny, Vito, and participate in the plot that very likely could have played out in the backstory of the movies. The game is open ended in terms of which businesses and rackets you want to extort, but the main storyline moves you along at a steady pace. The story driven parts of the game are great, but I found the open ended gameplay to be very repetitive. Extort a business, find another business, rinse and repeat. To make things even worse, most of the building designs are the same. A bake shop might have the same building layout as the tailor shop and so on. You’ll find yourself in neverending deja vu moments. Even the vehicles don’t offer any kind of variety. There are probably 7 car designs, and that is it. There is no depth in the city that makes you feel that you are really part of the whole mob drama.

What the game really reminds me of is a shallow version of Mafia. Sure there are open-ended aspects of the Godfather, but they are shallow and repetitive. It lacked the depth, variety, and challenge that Mafia had. On it’s own, Godfather the Game is decent, but when it has received as much hype as it did and released years after Mafia, I expected more.