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The Godfather makes its way to the Wii. 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 Wii version includes the expected motion sensitive controllers and thanks to the lessened graphical expectations, holds up favorably on the new console.
Let’s get the new features out of the way. The Wii version of the game makes extensive use of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk for motion sensitive controls. The Blackhand controls now include 25 separate gestures that will have you doing everything from throwing basic punches and uppercuts to aiming and grapple moves. EA should be commended for incorporating the controls in a way that actually improves the game and makes it more immersive than it previously was. In terms of content, the Wii version includes the additional content included in the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of the game.
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 Wii version includes all of the content from the Xbox 360 version. 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. 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. Lock-on works very well on with the Wii Remote, and free aim works incredibly with the Wii Remote. 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 Wii and actually don’t look half-bad when compared to other games on the console. The same can be said for the rest of the visuals from the car models, interiors, and general world architecture. The game also supports progressive scan and native widescreen on Nintendo’s latest console. The audio holds up pretty well, too. 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 Wii if you haven’t played the game before since the new additions don’t drastically change the game. The Wii version does share all of the new content found in the PS3 version so if you are interested in the motion sensitive controls (which you will be once you experience them), this is the version to get. -- Jose Liz, PGNx Media
---- Mar 20, 2007
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