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Godfather II, The

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5.5 User Score:

Mixed or average reviews

Based on 29 critic reviews
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Based on 12 votes
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Game Info

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: EA Redwood Shores

Genre(s): Action, Adventure

Players: 16

ESRB Rating: M (Mature)

Release Date: April 7, 2009

Summary

After being promoted by Michael Corleone to Don of New York, players expand to new cities, as they build up their families through extorting businesses, monopolizing illegal crime rings and defeating new families in an effort to become the most powerful mob family in America. To help players manage their empire, The Godfather II introduces "The Don's View" – an innovative strategy meta-game that allows players to oversee the entire world as they grow the family business. Using the Don's View, players will be able to build, defend and expand their crime rings, while keeping an eye on the movements and plans of the rival families. Players will also learn to master the business of organized crime by building a family of Made Men, hiring crew, handing out orders, and promoting their best men up the ranks. Set in a stunning open-world environment, The Godfather II expands on the popular gameplay mechanics of the first game and doubles down on the series' signature BlackHand control scheme, which now features even more visceral hand-to-hand brutality at your fingertips, introducing a new combo system, pressure tactics and executions. In The Godfather II, players fight alongside their hand-picked crew, who have their own skills and expertise. Each family member specializes in a specific field such as demolitions, arson, engineering, first-aid and more. As The Don you control the family, sending some of your men on missions while heading off into action with others. The combination of strategic organized crime gameplay and brutal BlackHand action promises to set The Godfather II apart from other open-world games. Play The Godfather II online multiplayer modes and become the true Don of Dons. Take your money, weapons, and crew from your single-player experience online and wage mob warfare against up to 16 players from around the world. Play as one of the family’s crew specialists and put your best strategies to the test as you take over territory and strike back at rivals. Earn upgrades and money that can be used in your single-player experience. [Electronic Arts]

Also On Metacritic

FILM: The Godfather: Part II

GAMES: The Godfather

Cheat Codes & Hints: Cheat Code Central

Also On The Web: Official Website

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

PC Gamer

The Godfather II doesn't trip over the ambition of its design - it balances the different genre aspects extremely well - but nagging graphics issues weigh it down, causing quest characters and family members to disappear or distort in-game and in cutscenes, sometimes requiring me to load old saved games to progress. [Apr 2009, p.82]

Multiplayer.it

The Godfather 2 is a great improvement in comparison to the first installment, but it has some flaws that keep the game from excellence. The Don's view works and it's well devised, unfortunately the game is too tedious hours after hours , the A.I. is a little bit broken and the visuals aren't top notch.

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Gamers.at

Being a virtual mobster never has been this much fun; though the highly repetitive gameplay manages to put an end to the gun-toting joyride before long.

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IGN

It's still fun and has almost all of the elements of a great game, but until a harder difficulty level is added (which, fingers crossed, would occur with a future download or patch), The Godfather II falls a tad bit short.

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GameShark

The strategy elements fall short and are only as important as you choose to make them, but the combination of brutal action and customizable crews is reason enough to warrant a play-through.

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NZGamer

In the end, The Godfather II has the recipe for an excellent game filled with action, mindless violence, great characters and strategic thought. But you just can’t help but shake the feeling that it doesn’t quite feel 100% finished.

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PC Games (Germany)

Dominic’s criminal activities remind me of GTA. The first one in 3D to be exact – the one released for PC seven years ago. But despite its prehistoric visuals I like it in some kind of way. The don mode adds some strategic challenge to the quite simple (and in a couple of missions even quite boring) gameplay. Not a perfect mafia game, but if you have never played GTA4 before, you’ll be well-entertained.

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GameStar

The game feels like it came out a few years too late. GTA is much more modern in every way, but the strategy elements are unique and can be a lot of fun. On the other hand, the game is far too violent. That some opponents are immortal except when brutally executed just serves one purpose: voyeurism - and plays into the hands of people asking for video games to be banned.

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VideoGamer

The other major problem is that the game as a whole is pretty short: You can get through the game in about 10 to 12 hours, maybe less if your work swiftly, and once you're done there's really not much left to play for.

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InsideGamer.nl

The Godfather II is a technically flawed game. Glitches, pop up, framerate drops are quite frequent and the soulless sandbox world isn’t too appealing either. The upside is the strategic element of the game. It’s fun to coordinate attacks on rival families and to take over businesses by using excessive force. All in all it’s great fun if you’re not turned of by the technical issues.

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GameZone

The game could almost be called the Good, the Repetitious and the Ugly. Some elements are well done and some are not. Still, this is not a bad game, by any means. There are some immersive elements and you do, at times, feel like you are part of the world. The graphics could have been better, though, and some of the game mechanics could have been improved upon.

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Play (Poland)

It has its moments - managing the family business and conquering the cities one building after another is compelling, as is the decent crime story told within. But this game looks dated, as if the GTA IV never happened. Roaming the city and the brushoffs with the police feel awkward, like an afterthought. [Mar 2009]

Telegraph

The film truly is a millstone around the game's neck. If this game was called Cosa Nostra or Organised Crime 101 (or something similar) it would feel like a far stronger title altogether. Its open-world game template may be well worn but The Godfather II contains some excellent ideas, and the way it integrates them through a smooth control system is admirable.

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Total PC Gaming

Violence is of an unsightly and masochistic flavour and nothing here is a patch on the king of the genre.

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LEVEL (Czech Republic)

Addictive fight for power in between “famiglias” Godfather II is a long term attraction. Unfortunately, this game is smart and entertaining but at the same time it’s rather ugly. In other words: nice fights, good story, real feel on one side, unsightly graphics, plain locations, repetitive mission on the other side. [Apr 2009]

Cynamite

The Godfather II was meant to be big competitor to the dominating GTA series, but it feels like a lousy rip-off. You got to be doing more than that, EA!

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PC Format

Overall, there’s certainly been an effort made to do something interesting with The Godfather II – an engaging business model has been strapped onto the familiar crime-sim, but with middling results. If you like your games mediocre, dive right in, otherwise heave a little sigh and move on.

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SpazioGames

All in all, The Godfather II goes on the same path of its predecessor: funny gameplay, but repetitive, cool design, but graphics look old. You can squeeze the best out of it while managing your rackets, but the fun won’t last long, and won’t leave much behind when it’s over.

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PC Zone UK

The Godfather II is an improvement over its predecessor, though that's hardly a gratuitous compliment. How about this - The Godfather II is surprisingly not as plain as you might have thought it would be, all things considered. [May 2009, p.70]

Worth Playing

The Godfather II is an offer that you probably should refuse.

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ActionTrip

EA had a chance to deliver a really cool game and to improve upon the sequel. They seemed to have failed on both fronts.

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Game Informer

Most of this game’s content is in betrayal of the license, and it’s not all smut, either. In one mission, you are tasked with assassinating Fidel Castro, an act that ends up being just as comedic as The Naked Gun’s assassination attempt on Queen Elizabeth II. Unfortunately, the intent of this sequence isn’t to make players laugh. [May 2009, p.82]

Game Over Online

The only one of the film's cast members to appear here is Robert Duvall, and every word spoken sounds like he was reading it while doing his taxes. The members of the Godfather cast who appeared in the first game knew when to 'git while the gittin's good' it seems.

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Gamer.nl

A good idea that turned into a bad game. The Don's View has potential, but with a very low difficulty you can take over where and whenever you like. The action itself is pretty mediocre, the graphic style even worse. The Don's View can form a good starting point for a new game, but pretty please with sugar on top, don't mess with the Don.

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PC Gamer UK

Bizarrely creaky tech masks nice ideas. [May 2009, p.66]

GameSpot

Even if it were finished, this movie-inspired action game wouldn't be deserving of its prestigious license.

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Gaming Nexus

You're better off just playing through the first game a second time and waiting for The Godfather III!

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GameSpy

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the game in concept, and done properly, it would easily have established it as a classic on par with the film on which it's based. Instead we get brilliant concepts ham-handedly executed.

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Absolute Games

Establishing a new Family is a hard undertaking… and a tedious chore. Imagine spending 10+ hours on taking over one building after another! In GTA: San Andreas and The Godfather, this occupation was but a side attraction; here, it is everything.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this game is 5.5 (out of 10) based on 12 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Marc G gave it a5:
Not a bad game but the graphics while nice to look at are dated. The play was fun at first suffered the same repetitiveness of GF1. It was way too easy but if youre a fan of the movies then this will be fun to play just based on that. Just dont expect too much from it and you'll be fine.

Mac M gave it a2:
Ea games have yet again hit a low mark with this game. Not only are the graphics from at least 2 generations behind current standards (comparable with GTA San Andreas), but the game is also, as is typical of all EA releases these days, completely unstable. I ensured I had the latest drivers from nVidia, and running a Quad core @ 3.0ghz, an 8800gtx and 4gb of RAM (average PC these days) and the game crashed to desktop after about 15 minutes, with my system reporting it as a driver issue. In the past 3 or 4 months I have purchased numerous games, and out of those, every single EA game has come packaged with issues. It seems EA games have become too big, and are focusing on quantity of release over quality. The other theory would be them focusing on console releases which leave developers with minimal time to attempt to focus on porting. As for the game itself, it is way behind the pack. The Don control was a nice idea, yet badly implemented and was put together in a shabby way. The cars handle very badly, and the AI of your henchmen are a disgrace. The gameplay is extremely repetetive and although enjoyable the first few times you take over a business, it quickly becomes boring. If you are waiting for a game of this style, then I'd wait for Mafia 2 (whenever it is actually released), and in the meantime maybe give even The Wheelman a try. At least that game is optimized for the PC, runs well and is more fun, even if not perfect, it's better than this pile of dog poop.

Thomas P gave it an8:
Notice how Mister Douglas J spent his entire review doing nothing but bashing Electronic Arts and not actually commenting on the game itself. He is an example of the people that are sucking the life and community out of video games by overlooking the point in front of him and bashing something that is irrelevant to the topic of conversation (aka NERD RAGE WAHHH). Anyway, GF2 is an enjoyable game. GTA IV is better graphic-wise, but in terms of sheer enjoyability, GF2 is above it. Mobface is back and has been upgraded, but is somewhat sparse when compared to other games with character customization. The added teamwork and business management focuses are a welcome touch as well. The three locales where the user can interact with could be a bit larger, though. All in all, a short game, but an enjoyable one that also has multiplayer features (I have yet to try it, but I hear that it is alright from my friends).

Douglas J gave it a4:
More mediocrity from EA.....need I say more? This company seems incapable of creating solid, compelling, original and most importantly fun video games. Like all the other heartless, thoughtless, talentless and ultimately spineless multinational corporate conglomerates in the world, they've become so big that they can't even seem to get out of their own way let alone allow creativity to flow from the dozen or so once proud game studios they've swallowed whole. Looking at their once faithful customers as the next criminals just waiting to rip them off just like the RIAA\MPAA\IFPI line of thinking goes. EA's become to big to serve any purpose in the gaming world.

T.C. gave it an8:
Not the best, but definitely not the worst, The Godfather 2 is an entertaining sandbox game that plays around (but not in) the film of the same name, with the player being able to travel to 1960's New York, Miami and even Cuba. Aside from the standard third-person game play, the game also adds a management system allowing you to constantly overlook your Underground empire no matter where you are. If you thought GTA IV was boring, The Godfather 2 will fill that gap.

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Godfather II, The

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