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The Godfather makes its way to the PlayStation 3. EA’s announcement that they would license The Godfather angered many of the film’s enthusiasts. They couldn’t believe that the evil corporation was willing to sacrifice the film to get in on the popular Grand Theft Auto market. The Godfather, originally released for PlayStation 2 and Xbox about a year ago, proved to be an enjoyable game. The PS3 version holds up less favorably since it’s pretty similar to the six-month old Xbox 360 version and can’t compete with the made-for-next-generation games.
Let’s get the new features out of the way. The PS3 version of the game includes Sixaxis tilt functionality. This means that you can push the controller forward to shove people or perform some executions. While it works okay, if you’re really interested in motion sensitive controls, you should look at the Wii version of the game. Also new to the PS3 version is the addition of the Hit Squad: a group of people that work for you and help you accomplish certain tasks. More importantly, it makes you feel like you’re truly part of this empire and not just an add-on.
In The Godfather, you play as a brand-new character. You create this character using a system similar to the character creation system of the Tiger Woods games. When the game begins, you find out that the character’s father is murdered. A few years later, your mother asks the one and only Don to look over you. It turns out that your character’s mother is quite lucky and happened to ask the Don on his daughter’s wedding day—no Sicilian would turn down a favor asked of him on his daughter’s wedding day. Luca Brasi, part of the Don’s entourage, obeys the Don’s orders and agrees to look over you.
One of the game’s highpoints is how well it integrates material from the film with new stuff. Although the character you play as wasn’t featured in the films, he fits in well with the rest of the cast. You begin by being a henchman for the Corleone family. You’ll have to bully merchants into paying protection money, usually by causing damage to their person or business. Once you do so, you’ll be able to collect weekly payments. The PS3 version includes all of the content from the Xbox 360 version and more. This means that you’ll find the Xbox 360’s favor missions where you will do a favor for a business owner in exchange for a cut of his business revenue. The favor missions add much-needed flavor to the standard extortion missions. New to the PS3 version are rooftop. While the side missions do increase the game’s length and allow you to unlock clips from the movies, the variety just isn’t all that great and it eventually becomes a bit dull.
Thankfully, there are more interesting things to do in the game such as take part in the horse head scene, drive Don to the hospital after his run in with the rival gang, or participate in Sonny’s toll booth ambush. As you complete missions, you’ll receive respect points. You’re able to use these points to improve your health, speed, street smarts, shooting and fighting statistics. The game also rewards you with better weapons.
Aside from missions, you can run around in the city and cause general mayhem. Much like Grand Theft Auto, you’re able to run over citizens, shoot people at whim, borrow cars and of course, escape the police. Again like GTA, as you commit these crimes your heat level increases and the cops will be more aggressive to take you down. That said, you can’t expect to have the same level of mayhem because the game has a more realistic damage system, so you won’t be able to take several shotgun shots before falling. The game does adapt the formula to The Godfather world since you’re able to bribe police officers to leave you alone if you don’t feel like running away.
The shooting in the game is well done. The game features the typical lock-on and free-aim shooting modes. You’ll find guns ranging from shotguns to revolvers, but you’ll also find other melee weapons like lead pipes. With respect points, you can upgrade the weapons and each weapon can be upgraded two times. Melee combat is also enjoyable. You lock on to a person and then you can unleash on them with slams, punches, and tosses. The AI in the game is a bit uneven, sometimes performing very well and struggling at other times. As in the Xbox 360 version, you have the ability to bribe police so that they take out your rivals for you. If you bribe a policeman in a certain part of town, if you go back there and get into a shootout you’ll see the police helping you out.
The game’s visuals were respectable on last-generation consoles. The character models were improved somewhat for the PS3, but they are nonetheless fairly simple and look like PS2 player models in HD. The same can be said for the rest of the visuals from the car models, interiors, and general world architecture. Thankfully, the audio holds up better. The background music (including the theme) comes directly from the film, creating a feeling that you’re really in 1940s New York. The voice acting is stellar since the original actors provided their voices for the game. The only exception is Al Pacino who chose to not voice Michael.
The Godfather, at its core, is a very satisfying game, especially for fans of the movie trilogy. The game does a lot of fan service by allowing you to collect film reels and unlock clips from the movie. You should only be considering the Godfather on PS3 if you haven’t played the game before since the new additions don’t drastically change the game. As another caveat, if you’re intrigued by the tilt functionality, you’ll find that motion sensitive controls are better implemented in the Wii version. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Mar 20, 2007
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