Godfather II, The

GamePro

It isn't the best open-world game out there, but it does a sublime job of capturing what it feels like to be the head of a virtual crime family. [Apr 2009, p.81]

WonderwallWeb

We just could not stop playing this game, we were a little dissapointed with how quick it was over but it was sheer fun whilst it lasted. A huge improvement over the first game and worth a look.

ZTGameDomain

While it still isn't perfect, Godfather II is leaps and bounds above the first game, and one of the most engaging titles I have played all year.

GameZone

The Godfather II is a great sequel, expanding on the content of the original game while making some fine additions to the formula. While the story elements aren’t too impressive and there are some design quirks, the gameplay is deep and engaging, and easily recommendable for fans of the original game or of the sandbox-action game genre.

GameTrailers

If you’d rather call the shots than jump through hoops, this unique game is your kind of racket.

Talk Xbox

Plain and simple, The Godfather 2 is an action packed thrill ride. Even though it may not deliver on the strategy element’s pursuits, the action is constantly intense, and keeps you excited to play more up to until the credits begin to roll.

3DJuegos

Godfather II is a good action videogame that is remarkably improving the good work of its predecessor. A brilliant mixture of action, strategy and resources management, with extraordinary ideas in its concept but with a technical side that needs to be more polished.

Gamer 2.0

Conceptually, The Godfather II has the potential to be an amazing game. However, the somewhat dated visuals, coupled with the occasional mission-ending glitches, and the relatively ease of the strategy component mean that The Godfather II is a good game but one that doesn’t fully live up to its potential.

Pelit (Finland)

The Godfather 2 is a quite good, but too short GTA-style virtual criminal's sandbox. It doesn't look as impressive as "GTA IV", nor does it have as many things to do as "Saint's Row 2." [Mar 2009]

Impulsegamer

At the end of the day, The Godfather II is an apt game that manages to successfully recreate the world of the movies with some good gameplay, interesting stories and an almost sandbox like approach.

GameDaily

It's a fun single player adventure with an equally entertaining multiplayer mode full of 16 player death matches. Although its graphics look dated, monotony quickly sets in as shooting the same bad guys and completing similar missions gets old. That said, The Godfather II makes for an ideal weekend rental.

XGN

All together The Godfather II really is a fun title to play. The game is not perfect, but brings you a good atmosphere, great storyline and a intense mobster experience. The features to extend your family and the Don's View, are really great new extras.

Xbox World Australia

If you liked the first Godfather title, there's enough here to keep you hooked for a good ten hours, and that's before you try and rob all the banks and crack all the safes.

Extreme Gamer

The Godfather II might be a little sloppy in its execution, but its intentions mean well.

Cheat Code Central

A good game that players will both enjoy and find tedious. Hopefully, the franchise will progress with a third iteration, as sticking to a more complex, strategic-based formula would do wonders for the series. As it stands now, you'll have fun but wish for a whole lot more!

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.

Planet Xbox 360

Players who enjoyed the first should find the sequel to be much more unique than the original. It’s a soft-edged real-time strategy game that boasts the ability to go into missions with a handful of crew members, the ability to hire guards and a tremendous amount of bliss when it comes to violence.

Gaming Target

The Godfather II movie has been hailed as the best sequel ever. The game version is fun, but technical issues, a lack of replayability and a sense that it feels hemmed in by the restrictions of the license prevent it from receiving the same accolades.

Vandal Online

The strategic action and management combination that The Godfather 2 proposes is a remarkable formula, but also risky. Maybe it won't be able to convince gamers looking for an action game, nor those looking for strategy, but our feeling is that ultimately this is an action game -a good one- with interesting strategy elements, more than the contrary.

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.

Official Xbox Magazine

Though it deftly combines action, strategy, and resource management, Godfather II simply never evolves. [May 2009, p.74]

Gaming Age

I for one love what ideas the developers had in store with The Godfather II. The strategy elements were well thought out, implemented nicely, and the game really gives players the feeling of controlling your own family. If a bit more polish and time were given to the game’s action portion, The Godfather II would indeed be one you couldn’t refuse.

Da Gameboyz

Overall, The Godfather II is a decent game and was an ambitious undertaking by the development team.

Deeko

The Godfather II, even with its glitches and ho-hum visuals, is still an incredibly enjoyable experience.

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.

XboxAddict

There are so many issues that need to be fixed or outright changed before this would be an offer you can’t refuse.

DailyGame

EA introduces some new gameplay elements and injects some variety, but it's not enough to keep the game from getting repetitive, and the overall polish isn't as high as it was in the original.

Xbox World 360 Magazine UK

A very welcome strategic slant to the genre. [June 2009, p.70]

Console Monster

Anyone looking for the fun, stress free pleasure of a sandbox game then this is for you.

MS Xbox World

The Godfather II is not a game that should be played because it is “bigger and better” than its predecessor, as it is certainly not as long or as deep an experience, but instead it should be at least given a chance for its satisfying and plentiful on-foot action sequences and the addictive new strategy and resource-management elements which The Don’s View brings to the table.

Everyeye.it

Fortunately, not just a GTA clone. The strategic interaction with your personal "crew" and with the city add a nice twist to the classic Free Roaming mechanics. And the plot is good enough.

Level7.nu

This sequel does manage to do a couple of things right. The strategic elements are interesting, the sound is great and the way you overlook your influence in the different cities is implemented in an impressive way. Despite these great features the urge for spreading your influence never really takes off. Since both the presentation and gameplay feels dated you're better off waiting for upcoming gangster related games.

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!

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.

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.

Total Video Games

Far more enjoyable than its predecessor, The Godfather II presents a sufficiently different take on the open world formula to make it worthwhile - just forget the fact its based around Coppola's classic.

VideoGamer

Decent ideas married to some questionable execution. In short doses Godfather II can be an absolute hoot, but sadly its shortcomings become more and more obvious the longer you spend with it.

Team Xbox

This game without the Godfather license could have been great, and they wouldn’t have had to have changed too much either to the core gameplay. But with the awkward-fitting pelt of Coppola’s murdered masterpiece on its shoulders, it will be hard for people to discover the really well-designed hybrid-type game underneath.

Xbox360Achievements

This game is not terrible but, when that is the best you can say about something, that really isn't much to go on. You will have plenty of fun while it lasts but the all too obvious flaws will leap out at you and soon begin to spoil what would otherwise be a fairly enjoyable romp.

GameCritics

The Godfather II's failure is that, outside of the most utilitarian sense in which it is a smoothly-playable game, it doesn't accomplish anything at all.

Kikizo

An offer we can probably refuse, despite the great script and solid sim-management blueprint.

Gameplanet

Despite some serious gameplay issues, The Godfather II is actually quite fun, in a morbid kind of way. Unfortunately, repetition and poor AI routines damage gameplay and ultimately sap the life out of what should have been a tremendous sequel.

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.

Meristation

Godfather II works quite well as a gangster manager, but fails to deliver as a GTA-style sandbox. Its technical side is poor in all sections and despite the fact that we have plenty of options to gain control of the cities, it soon becomes repetitive. Globally it stays way under GTA IV, but as a mafia manager it still has a point.

GameFocus

The Godfather 2 is a great game in a lousy shell. If EA turned around and made the third entry in this series into a competent sandbox shooter and improved on the Don’s View mode, making it more useful and adding more depth to it, dropping the Godfather movie tie-ins, it would be a lot easier to recommend. As it stands now, you can find games that do what this game tries to do a lot better.

MondoXbox

The Godfather II represents for many aspects a missed chance, especially regarding the new management part, too superficial and unsatisfying. The technical aspects perfectly line up with the overall mediocrity of this new EA Games production, but the action part revealed to be quite fun, especially the executions, even if it gets quickly old due to its repetitiveness. The game doesn't live up to the higher standards of some of the latest EA Games productions, and for a brand like this it's a real pity.

Totally360

Overall Godfather 2 is a Grand Theft Auto clone and a fairly mediocre one at that.

Giant Bomb

It took me about 12 hours to finish The Godfather II, but I felt like it just ran out of steam about two-thirds of the way through. There are definitely a lot of interesting ideas at work here, but the game was never challenging enough to make any of the decisions I had to make feel very weighty.

Worth Playing

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

Official Xbox Magazine UK

That seed of potential excellence is frustrating, when the execution falls so regularly short of great.

Game Revolution

There are scattered elements throughout the game that come across as shockingly unfinished, or at least dismayingly unpolished.

Gamervision

Almost a solid game. There are some interesting concepts put forth this time around, but most of them are overshadowed by the lack of attention paid to the gameplay. I really wanted to enjoy playing this, but the longer I played, the more it felt like a chore instead of fun.

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.

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.

1UP

Godfather II suffers from a lack of design foresight. Instead of delivering a movie-quality narrative, it presents a frustrating, accidentally comic world.

Armchair Empire

In trying to do something new with the Don’s View, it seems like the resources of the development team were stretched too thin, resulting in a completely forgettable experience.

D+PAD Magazine

Godfather II is a game that’s never quite sure of which audience it’s trying to please, instead choosing to go straight down the middle and culminate in an experience that is as unengaging as it is unsatisfying.

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.

Gamestyle

Godfather II stands out in the sandbox genre because of the Don’s View but it’s the only thing that really does. Everything else can be discarded, but if EA can take the Don’s View and put that in a game with more technical proficiency, we’ll be buying.

Thunderbolt

After experiencing The Godfather II in its entirety, it’s impossible to deny that this is an unfinished, irrational product that fails to capitalise on the license which has been well and truly worn out after two poor iterations.

X360 Magazine UK

A tired city crime epic that might have looked good five years ago, but even that would have been a bit of a stretch. Now it’s barely passable and a bit of a shame in pretty much every respect.

games(TM)

Everything required of you feels functional, mechanical, and pedestrian, and each city is sparse and lacking in the kind of lifelike vitality that gamers now demand from their sandbox environments. [May 2009, p.108]

BigPond GameArena

The weirdest thing about this game - I've never had so many gripes and still found myself so incredibly addicted. I played the game all the way through - around 25 hours - in two sittings.

Play.tm

Despite the pedigree of the licence, very little of the movie's quality has made its way into the game. The characters are bland and the presentation of the narrative is decidedly uninspiring. It feels like a half-finished game and, whilst the idea has a lot of potential, is decidedly lacking in quality in its current form.

Gamers' Temple

When viewed as a whole package, Godfather II doesn't equal the sum of its parts, or at least the sum of the parts, as they SHOULD have been.

GameSpot

Questionable design choices aside, the problem with almost every aspect of The Godfather II is simply that it feels unfinished.

Gaming Nexus

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

HellBored

In the end, it appears that The Godfather II was rushed out the door and as a result it fails in many areas. The actual framework here could have made for a great title – it has all the key ideas – but by making it so easy to bypass elements of the game, and having it so criminally easy, then there’s little to encourage you to play through again, if you bother completing it the first time.

GameSpy

Brilliant concepts ham-handedly executed. All I could think of after finishing the game was poor Fredo standing in the house in Nevada whining, "I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect!" Respect has to be earned, and The Godfather II doesn't even come close.

Eurogamer

Lacking both a challenge and soul, and failing to even engage on a narrative level, what you're left with is an overly forgiving shooter with weak strategy elements, which only serve to make it even easier for you. Having played right to the end, I wish there was something I could point to in its defence, but all I'm left with is the empty realisation that they've managed to somehow make this even less entertaining than the flawed original.

Teletext GameCentral

Disappointing sequel that manages to undo the relative successes of the original and dishonour the film.

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.