The Godfather: The Game

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I bought this Friday and haven't stopped playing since. The game is great, with depth and playablity by the bucketload. It really is top stuff and deserves to be played by all. Yes its violent but its very fun, in the GTA mould. Go out and get it, it takes sometime getting use to it but after an hour you will love it.

[Kraxis]

I have been looking at this... The atmosphere seemsto be very great.

Is the gameplay like Mafia?

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I haven't played mafia mate, but the game is vert GTA/warriors style, The only difference is for fighting you lock on with the L, R is shoot and for hand held fighting you use the analog. Its very good but a little too short for my liking. I'm on the baptism/assassination level, took down Stracchi in the lift, Cuneo in the hotel lobby doors, now off to shoot that old pimp Tattaglia and then to batter Don Barzini on the court steps.

Very good fun

[Kraxis]

Ah console?

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Yeah for the PS2. Its worth it mate, The exortion, hits and others missions keep the game from going stale. Its all together very sweet indeed.

[Dutch_guy]

Would have been so great had Al Pacino himself done Michaels voice, it really is a shame !

And on a side note, I don't have the game , not yet anyhow- been following this game for a long time.

[Navaros]

Was not the fellow who created the Godfather movie rather upset by the game?

Yeah, the director of the Godfather movie hates it because according to him all you do is drive around and shoot people in the game and it's not at all what the movie was about.

Michael in the game was also changed specifically to not look or sound anything like Al Pacino, because he wouldn't give them legal rights to use his likeness (probably to help sell the Scarface game which he did sell the rights to himself to).

I am a diehard fan of Mafia. Mafia is one of the very best games ever made in my view.

From what I've heard so far, the Godfather game does not hold up to Mafia.

I'd be very interested in hearing opinions of this Godfather game from other diehard Mafia fans.

I'm shocked that some people have not played Mafia; it's been only 10 bucks in a PC CDROM jewel case for a couple of years now. For a gamer who hasn't played it, that will be some of the best 10 bucks he's ever spent. Anyone who doesn't have Mafia yet, buy it today.

[Navaros]

Gotta agree with you there Navaros. I bought Mafia for the PS2 a couple months ago, and loved it.

You should spring for another 10 bucks for the PC version too since it's even better. IIRC the console versions of Mafia were using an old alpha build of the game since the much more up-to-date PC version didn't fit onto the consoles' hardware limitations or something like that. I've heard many reports of the differences between the versions being like night and day. If you loved the PS2 version you will probably love the PC version even more.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I've heard great things about Mafia, i might pick it up. Also the Godfather game has quite alot of other missions, assassinations, extortion, bombings, etc The first Godfather has around 17 murders and 1 dead horse so the game has to have its violence. If FFC disagrees about the level of violence he should play it himself i sure he would enjoy it.

[The Scourge]

Ah mafia ,great game .
Loved the racing part .Almost worth getting it for that alone .
Better than GTA ,imo .
There was a mod where you could run your own crew ,and was a lot more free roam kind of thing .Never could get it to work though .

[Simmons]

How realistic is the Godfather game??

I saw some video clips and it looked pretty arcady which turned me off straight away.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

I think it is quite realistic, the detail of New York and New Jersey is amazing. I'd just try it mate, if you like the GTA, warriors, etc you are bound to like it.

[orangat]

From the little I played of GTA2/3, I didn't like it too much. I much prefered the feel of Mafia. I loved the car chases and crashes in Mafia tremendously. Theres nothing like chasing a hood down, blasting his 2 rear tires then ramming his car against the wall and capping that sucker.

Does godfather play like Mafia or GTA?

[Kraxis]

Aha... Well, I think I will stay my hand then. I absolutely loved Mafia, the underlining good/bad aspect was supremely wellmade. And the extreme diversity of missions, from the usual mobster baseballbatboy-beats-up-guys, to sniping, to extortion, to protection, to bankrobbery, to racecar stealing ect. ect.
And just the amount of detail built into the city... Not a very big place, perhaps 300,000 inhabitant but it has everything you need in a big city. And the driving thus becomes lovely.

Btw, the end was perfect!

[Navaros]

Does godfather play like Mafia or GTA?

From what I've read at various places around the net, Godfather is much more like GTA rather than Mafia. Which I agree with you is a bad thing.

[SwordsMaster]

I bought the game about a week ago - I loved the films - and I have to disagree with the majoritary opinion. It is a very good game. The controls take a while to get used to, the game in general has a bit of a learning curve,the city is fairly big, a little bit monotonous, but there are no loading times in between areas or when entering buildings.

I like the respect system - If you are feared enough in the neighbourhood, the shop owners will give in to your demands easily, others react to different kinds of intimidation.

I like the animations taken from the movie sequences or the modified versions that made it into the game - you do miss Al Pacino, but you can't have everything - but although it doesn't feel quite exactly like the original film, it does feel like a very good game about mafia, with influences and favours being very important, maybe not as important as heavy firepower, but when you get to the later missions you will see that you can't just blast your way through the game.

The AI of the enemies is good, and everybody will react in some way or another to your actions.

In general I recommend it. I think I have spent money on games that I have enjoyed a lot less, and this one has given me a week of solid entertainment.

[Avicenna]

So what's the game like? I've never played Mafia or GTA, so describing them in comparison to that won't help. I played a bit of the GTA before San Andreas, but just messing around with cheats at a friend's place.

BTW, if L is lock on then does it mean practically no aiming required?

[Alexanderofmacedon]

My oh my, I should see the movie first!

EDIT: Oh yeah MovieS

[Avicenna]

Alexanderofmacedon, it's movieS not movie. You've got to see all three of them, best trilogy of all time

[SwordsMaster]

So what's the game like? I've never played Mafia or GTA, so describing them in comparison to that won't help. I played a bit of the GTA before San Andreas, but just messing around with cheats at a friend's place.

BTW, if L is lock on then does it mean practically no aiming required?

Well, there is aiming but there is locking too, you can use either.

It is a third person shooter. There is a main story and many sidequests you can do in between.

[The Blind King of Bohemia]

Well, there is aiming but there is locking too, you can use either.

It is a third person shooter. There is a main story and many sidequests you can do in between.

How far are you in SM? I just have the Barzini's to wipe out then i'm done

[SwordsMaster]

How far are you in SM? I just have the Barzini's to wipe out then i'm done

I've beaten the main quest, and have a few more compunds and warehouses to take over: Tattaglia compound, Cuneo compound+warehouse and Stracci compound.

I kinda got tired of taking over small businesses, so I only do it if I need to save the game, don't feel like driving and there is an unpurchased property that belongs to someone else nearby.

[Avicenna]

*shocked*

No killing of Hyman Roth, Altobello or Fredo from the other movies?

[orangat]

So what's the game like? I've never played Mafia or GTA, so describing them in comparison to that won't help. I played a bit of the GTA before San Andreas, but just messing around with cheats at a friend's place.

BTW, if L is lock on then does it mean practically no aiming required?

If you haven't played Mafia, you should definitely pick up this game. It is one of the best of all time in the genre of action-adventure.

[Navaros]

Finally got around to playing this Godfather game this week.

I'm really going to town with this post because in my view Mafia is the very best game released in this Millenium and I needed to see if Godfather had usurped it's throne. Mafia is the benchmark by which all challengers must be judged. I am somewhat relieved that Mafia is still undisputed King of the genre, although if it were not so I would have admitted that.

I beat the main story of Godfather in 8 - 10 hours or so.

It's an ok game, but nowhere near as good as Mafia in my view.

As a game, I'd give Mafia a 10/10.

As a game, I'd give The Godfather: The Game™ (yes, that is how the official title of the game reads ) a 7/10.

When stood up directly next to Mafia, I'd give The Godfather: The Game™ a 3/10 and Mafia a 10/10.

Due to the short length of the Godfather I wouldn't recommend paying over 20 bucks for it.

I will be comparing the PC versions of both games, with all settings jacked to max and 4x AA and 8x AF.

Here is a breakdown comparing the components of the two games that lead me to conclude that Mafia is way better:


Voice Acting
The main voice actor in the Godfather sucks. They got the real actors to do the voices of the movie characters except Al Pacino as mentioned in an earlier post in this thread. All those movie actors were great. However, the voice of your character is a no-name actor and he is not convincing at all and in fact I often wished the other NPCs would smack him around for me just because of how terribly bad the delivery of his voice lines sound. On the other hand, Mafia's main character is voiced by Mike Sorvino (Paul Sorvino's son) and his performance is amazing and perfect. And Mafia has movie-quality voice actors in all the other voice roles too, so the Godfather doesn't even beat it in that respect either.


Map Perfection vs. Map Agony
Godfather uses a GTA style mini-map, however that is mostly-useless for determining where you have to go. Especially if you need to get there fast using a sensible route. To see where you wanna go you have to press ESCAPE which interrupts the gameplay to the "pause menu", then you have to go to the large map screen (only "large" compared to the mini-map, but still way too small to see anything!), then zoom the map in to the section of the city you are in. Considering how extremely often you have to perform this sequence of clicks and keystrokes during the normal course of gameplay, this bad game mechanic soon becomes a colossal pain in the butt. It does not sound very bad when I describe it with words, but once you play the game then you will understand exactly what I mean. I cannot emphasize enough how tedious and cumbersome having to do this all the time is.

On the other hand, with Mafia to see where you want to go it only takes one keystroke to bring up a big beautiful map that never requires zooming. Mafia requires virtually no interruption of the gameplay at all when using the map to see where you are going. Which may seem like a small thing, but when stacked up next to the agony of the Godfather's vastly inferior way, it's a huge godsend.


Environments
If I had to pick one word to sum up the environment presentation in Godfather, it would be "dingy". The environment looks very drab, bland, and depressing at all times. Even in the "daylight". I'm not against dingy environments by default (ie: in survival horror games they can be very good), however for the theme of the Godfather it just doesn't work in my view. I could never get immersed in the environment because of how dingy it is. It seems like most of the colors on the screen consist of reddish-brown, brown and gray, and that's about it. In case any of you have played the game "Guild Wars: Factions" - the environments of the Godfather are very similar to the main environment (the slum city) of that game.

Mafia has beautiful environments at all times. During the day time the scenery is bright, vibrant and beautiful. During the night time it is sublime and beautiful. It is much easier to get immersed in this environment than in the Godfather's. Mafia also has a much greater variety of different enviroments.

Going in buildings in Godfather likewise shows off more dingy enviroments and also very generic crate/warehouse-esque almost 100% of the time (even when you're not in a warehouse).

Whereas going in buildings in Mafia keeps the enviroment interesting and unique at all times. In Mafia inside of a building only looks like a warehouse if you are actually in a warehouse.


Graphics and World Presentation
Technically speaking the graphics of Mafia and the Godfather seem pretty much on par to each other to me, which is saying a lot about Mafia's quality since Mafia is a few years older. However, Mafia has a more "elegant" look to it whereas Godfather has a "cartoony" look to it in my view.

Worst of all, the Godfather always has really annoying "shield/and/or arrow icons" (not sure what it's supposed to be) above every NPC's head that are always visible when you walk near any of them. When you highlight an NPC in the Godfather, a circle aura flashes beneath him. Such things are really good at making sure you can't get immersed in the game. The game always looks like an arcade video game.

Just as bad, whenever you are near a wall in Godfather is has big bright letters the top the screen ("reminding" you what keys to press to do stuff in case you are too dumb to ever figure it out permanently, and there's no way to turn this off) looking like this:

CAPS
WALL COVER

or

SPACE
SAVE GAME


Godfather also has the very arcadey GTA-cloned mini-map in your face at all times.

Mafia has none of these distractions hence it's much easier to get immersed in Mafia.

The faces in Mafia look more fancy up close (ie: on par with faces in Doom 3) than in Godfather where the faces look "cartoony". But I must give Godfather credit for depicting the NPCs to look exactly like their movie counterparts, (again, except for Al Pacino).


Cars and Driving Gameplay
Both games are heavily-based on driving around in cars. However, the Godfather has very few cars in the game. The cars that are in the game look very bad. The cars in Godfather look like the cars in Mafia would look if you turned the "car detail" slider in Mafia all the way down to it's lowest setting. The Godfather has no detail setting for cars: in Godfather they are forever stuck looking very detail-less and crappy. Mafia had a wide selection of real cars in it (with names changed so as not to be sued). As far as I can tell Godfather did not do this even with the few, crappy-looking cars in the game. You can't even store cars to keep in Godfather at any stage in the game, not even to save one car. In Mafia you get a huge garage that saves tons of cars you wanna keep.

The driving gameplay in Godfather seems unfinished. Cars will always drive along at what seems like ~5MPH and they don't drive in "straight" lines when you get near them; by that I mean they always get your way and cause you to crash into them even if you weren't driving "wrong" at all. Pedestrians in Godfather do this too. From what I can tell, the Mafia devs put a lot more work into the pathfinding & AI of the cars and pedestrians.

To drive "properly" in Godfather, you have to be honking your horn constantly. This makes the NPC cars swerve to the curb side of the lane they are in. This is not a "luxury" feature like it should be; instead it's a necessity practice to avoid collisions due to the very bad pathfinding & AI & ludicrously slow speed of NPC cars. To add insult to injury, you have to press the "horn key" again and again constantly, you can't just hold it down.

In Mafia the cars and pedestrians behave as they would in a real life situation. If you crash into them then it's your fault, not wonky pathfinding AI's fault. In Mafia you can cruise around in peace without having to be aggravated by these issues that are constantly in play in Godfather.

You also can't shoot guns while driving in Godfather, in Mafia you can and this has been a standard feature of these types of games since GTA III so it's extremely puzzling why it's not in Godfather too. Oddly enough, In Godfather allies in your car with you can shoot guns through your driver's side and through the passenger's side too whilst you drive. Enemies can shoot at you from their cars whilst driving. But you can't shoot back at all whilst driving. Which is very frustrating when enemy cars are chasing you and shooting the you to smithereens yet all you can do is keep switching cars before you blow up because you have no other defense.

The Mafia devs seemed to put a ton of love into the "car aspect" of their game; Godfather devs, not so much.

Fighting & Shooting Gameplay
In Mafia when you want to shoot someone, you aim your crosshair over them and leftclick to fire. Then that gangster dies.

In Godfather when you want to shoot someone, you rightclick whilst simultaneously praying that the game automatically targets the gangster you were trying to kill. If it doesn't then you frantically click the rightclick again another few times whilst still praying til it finally chooses the target you want. All whilst getting shot full of holes by the enemy gangsters.

Godfather has an "auto-aim" on or off feature. I presume the "rightclick & pray" method of aiming is the "auto-aim" one. However, when I switched the other method of aiming, my gun would never stop pointing straight at the floor (hence I could never use that method at all). This may be something I'm misunderstanding about the game mechanic, but I couldn't figure it out so i'm concluding that the Mafia shooting gameplay is much more cohesive and better across the board.

For the hand to hand gameplay, Mafia likewise has a simple "move your fists where you wan't 'em and leftclick" to beat up the bad guys.

Whereas Godfather has a convoluted control scheme about this too. You have to "swing the mouse around" to beat up people in Godfather, and use combinations of both the left and right mouse button and keyboard.

The Godfather has some benefits here, as you can grab your enemies while punching them out, or throw them around in Godfather. This is a cool feature that Mafia doesn't have. However, given the cost that this feature comes at, namely, awkward & inaccurate play control, I'd say Mafia does this aspect way better.


Extortion Gameplay
The Godfather has another gameplay feature that Mafia doesn't have, the ability to take over businesses via extortion. Which is a great idea on paper, but not in it's implementation.

There are dozens/hundreds (not sure exact amount) businesses all over the city in Godfather, however there are only really ~6 or so different businesses. All of the businesses in the city are exact clones of each other based on those 6 types. The environments are exactly the same in all of them, and the NPCs in them are exactly the same in all of them (other than the color and strength of the enemy gangsters, which vary from family to family - however this is a very minor difference that doesn't affect the clone-saturation feeling at all). It's the copy & paste method of level design. Make 6 levels, and then copy & paste those 6 levels dozens/hundreds of times to make up the "meat" of the game. As you can imagine, taking over the same businesses dozens/hundreds of times over and over again gets very tiresome very fast.

Taking over a business simply involves beating up the business owner and/or pointing a gun at him and/or beating up his customers and/or bashing up his furniture until he agrees to give you the business. And killing the enemy gangsters protecting the business from you being able to do that. That is to say, there isn't really any "diplomacy" or anything of that sort to taking over the business.

I give Godfather credit for adding this mechanic into the game, but since it's really only 6 businesses/levels, the implementation of it doesn't amount to much.

Music & Presentation Thereof
Music is a huge part of the atmosphere of games like this and really helps with immersion and enjoyment of the game. Godfather has the great Godfather theme on the title screen, and as the main music you hear while driving around in a car. That track is amazing, can't complain about the music of it. However, that is just about the only good music in the game, and you only hear it whilst in the car. While you are walking around on foot, there is no music at all. And the track starts and stops again from the very beginning every time you enter or exit a car. Which gets really really annoying. There is "battle music" in Godfather when you are in shootouts, but that music is very bad and due to the huge quality difference of that and the title theme I suspect the "battle music" was made specifically for the game and not composed for the movie's soundtrack.

So to sum this up, in Godfather you have:

1. No music at all most of the time.

2. Great title theme music from the movie soundtrack while driving around, but it's only one track and it gets really annoying because it starts and stops again from the beginning every time you enter/exit a car. I think they have one or two other good tracks from the movie soundtrack that play based on what neighborhood you are in, but these also have the problem of starting/stopping from the beginning every time you enter/exit a car.

3. "Battle music" during shootouts, that doesn't sound very good.

Mafia on the other hand, is constantly has great music playing all of the time with a different track based on what neighborhood you are in. And it's real music from great real-life artists of the time like Django Reinhardt. In Mafia the music never starts/stops based on if you enter/exit a car. Mafia also has original music in it too, but the original music in Mafia is amazing and on par with the real music of the time.

So to sum this up in Mafia you have great music playing almost 100% of the time that really helps to immerse you in the game.


Character Appearance Editing
Godfather has another feature that Mafia doesn't have, that is the abilty to customize your character's appearance and what clothing he wears. Which on paper sounds great and like a sure aspect where Mafia is beat.

However, in my experience the implementation did not bear this out.

I still like how Tommy (your character) from Mafia looks way better than how any possible setup of your character from Godfather might look. Tommy has a better face due using the Doom 3-esque face technology (Mafia came out a few years before Doom 3, I'm just not sure what the technical name for this technology is, all I know it looks a lot better than the Godfather's face technology).

In the biggest fashion faux pas I've ever seen in a video game, your character cannot even wear a trenchcoat in Godfather. Old-school gangsters with no trenchcoats just isn't right. Likewise the enemy gangsters in Godfather don't have trenchcoats. In Mafia, Tommy wears trenchcoats often, hence by default he looks way better than any trenchcoat-less Godfather character ever could. And the enemy gangsters in Mafia have trench coats.

To make matters worse, the appearance and clothing selection in Godfather is fairly limited. I couldn't find a way to give my character blond hair. Or make my tie not be brown.

Story Presentation
Mafia has hands-down the best story presentation I've ever seen in a game, bar none. I must give Godfather credit here for presenting the story more like Mafia's way rather than in GTA's way. Ie: Intespersing the cutscenes with actual gameplay, rather than GTA's way of showing you a 30 second cutscene, then you go do the mission and that's it, no more story presentation during the mission. Godfather does indeed have excellent story presentation that surpasses GTA games' by a longshot.

However, it still is not as good as Mafia's. Alot due to the aforementioned horrible voice actor of your character in Godfather which really drags the story presentation down a lot. Also due to a lot less variety of enviroments in Godfather; IE: you will hear NPCs giving you the story at Corelone compound on many different occassions. Whereas in Mafia you get the story at your compound, before a big race, at an abandoned gas station taken over by gangsters in the middle of a country side, at a remote enemy-infested farm in the middle of nowhere during a fierece thunderstorm late at night, on a cruise boat, in the middle of a funeral etc. etc.


Loading Screens
Godfather has pretty good loading screens featuring black and white drawing of characters in the game pasted into the middle of the screen, with a black background.

Mafia likewise has the best loading screens I've ever seen in a game, with beautiful, very well-drawn full color illustrations of an artifact from the mission at hand.

Loading screens may seem like I'm nitpicking too much, but I thought it was a good illustration of a microcosm of why Mafia is better than Godfather - Mafia perfected every single detail of the game, whereas Godfather let some be average or just outright slacked in a few areas.

Stat Boosting Gameplay
Mafia has none of this. This is a great concept on paper that would have been good for Mafia. Godfather has a system where you can get "skill points" to upgrade stats. However, this upgrades only have a marginal effect on gameplay and aren't necessary to beat the main story. Hence it's another great idea dragged down by a lackluster implementation.

Morality of being a made man & License Usage.
Normally I wouldn't care to mention stuff like this in a video game comparison, but I thought it deserved mention here due to the stark differences between Mafia's hero and Godfather's hero and the emotional attachment to these heroes that is necessary to enjoy the games.

Tommy in Mafia is a total gentleman who gets roped into joining the mafia. Tommy was a "good guy" who got caught up in bad situations.

When I first beat Mafia, I regretted that Tommy didn't always follow the nefarious orders of the Don, and you as the player didn't have the choice to make him do so.

After having played Godfather, I have reversed my position on this.

The reason is, your character in Godfather is a total creep.

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind "bad gangsters" - if they are charming and fun. Like Joe Pesci's character in Goodfellas or Casino, I love him.

But in Godfather you are just an outright creep with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Your character says stuff like "Hey baby come here, don't be stingy" to flirt with women, or grabs her by the hips and pull her into him and says "Think I could get a little on the house?", or slap their bums and then makes other derogatory comments.

Your character doesn’t seem to care about anybody at all other than himself, I could give disturbing specific examples but for the sake of not spoiling the game for those who haven’t played it yet, I’ll let you discover those disappointments on your own.

The "meat and potatoes" of Godfather gameplay is to go around to every business that exists and beat the crap out of the owner, even if she is a woman. It is possible to beat up women in Mafia too, but it isn't a necessary part of the gameplay in Mafia and I'm sure most Mafia players have never beaten up a woman in Mafia. But I'm sure most Godfather players have beaten up a woman in Godfather since the nature of Godfather's gameplay calls for it. For these reasons I very much understand why Francis Ford Coppola hates this game.

It's not a good use of the license in this respect either, since in the movie Don Corleone built his family by doing favors for locals; not sending a two bit thug (your character in the Godfather game) to go around beating up every business owner in town.

I legitimately felt disturbed at controlling such a creep of a character in Godfather, and I don't like him at all. In Mafia, I love Tommy, there is nothing to complain about with him.

They also drop a lot of "F bombs" in the Godfather game and other profanity, which I would say is a bad use of the license because it doesn't reflect the class of the Godfather movie. Excessive swearing fits in movies like Goodfellas and Casino, but Godfather is a different type of movie that didn't have excessive swearing. Yet the Godfather game does. I think this drags the class down of the whole Godfather brand image.

[econ21]

Interesting comparison, Navaros. Given what you say, I think I'll pass on the Godfather. But based on your earlier recommendation in the Arena, I did pick up Mafia a while back and agree it is an outstanding game. Going off topic a little, I wonder what other games would you recommend that you think share some of Mafia's qualities? I tend mainly to play RPGs and strategy games, so I am not so familiar with the genre Mafia is in (what is it, BTW? action? shooter?). I know that it may be hard to make recommendations given that you rate Mafia as the best game ever.

I think Vietcong was made by the Mafia people and I thought that was about the best shooter I've played. Very varied missions, quite open gameplay and authentic feeling weapons/combat. Max Payne 2 has some Mafia-like qualities - good story, quite artistic presentation but it is more unrelentingly combat heavy (no driving - although that's a non-essential feature for me) and linear in its path through levels.

I'm thinking of trying on the GTA games, but am not that hopeful I'll like it.

[Bijo]

Navaros, I appreciate your effort for the long post


But something tells me you aren't fairly judging the game, as you constantly compare it to Mafia and continuously praise it (showing a possibility you might've been influenced to make the Godfather game worse in your review). Your post doesn't look entirely objective either it seems.
My critique is no attack on you whatsoever, btw, just to be clear. I just think it would've been better to review just The Godfather game and leave Mafia out of it. Not everybody has played Mafia or is going to play it. And because Mafia is better according to you shouldn't keep people from playing the Godfather.


You make some good points here and there.

The character is a rough nasty bastard that doesn't really properly depict The Godfather movies, but still we have to keep in mind it's a game. And your comparison of the main nasty bastard character with Don Corleone doing "good deeds" is a bad one. Indeed the Don did favors, but he also intimidated (to actually do favors for people).
If we're going to compare them, how about what Pacino said near the start of The Godfather Part 1 - how his father told somebody either his brains or his signature were gonna be on the paper? It eliminates the comparison as a candidate for fair judging, as it shows the Don was just as ruthless as the character - it's just less obvious due to the movie's presentation... he's still a gangster after all, and he's of course wearing more respectable attire.
From what we've seen of the movie is that the Don mostly didn't treat women badly. That's because we aren't shown that much about it, meaning the previous statement is a very loose one. We only see how he's doing business, taking care of the family in Part 1. And we see some of his history in Part 2 wherein there's not much to see regarding his treatment of women.


For the most part, I think you're right about the points you make (regarding Godfather only, as I didn't pay too much attention to the Mafia comparisons). There's still a couple of things that the Godfather game lacks or does wrong, though.
That is proper change of gameplay. From start till finish you're still required to run around on your own taking down businesses and warehouses, etc., even if you've already ascended to the high ranks. A rational gameplay change would be to allow/force the player to have more of a "manager function" of the sort. To sit in your office, give orders, manage, and drink wine until you drop unconscious or something.
Then there's the fact lower-ranking members still call you a kid and such even if you've become the Don.


And I think the story is badly done in the game. It doesn't matter if it has similarities with Mafia to some extent or not: The Godfather: The Game(tm) is a bad game that doesn't do proper justice to the movie series. But then still, it's a game and we can't expect it to be perfect or something. This game never should've been made

[The Spartan (Returns)]

Godfather is a lot like GTA its kinda a RPG.
my friend told me the 360 version of Godfather, you can tell mafiosi to follow you like in San Andreas.
and then there new edditions that add new content i believe that i saw on Gamespot.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I'm shocked that some people have not played Mafia; it's been only 10 bucks in a PC CDROM jewel case for a couple of years now. For a gamer who hasn't played it, that will be some of the best 10 bucks he's ever spent. Anyone who doesn't have Mafia yet, buy it today.

I got that stupid game for Christmas, and I haven't been able to get it to install on my computer, or another newer one I tried, even after going online looking for answers for hours. A piece of crap, says I!

Luckily, it came packaged with Max Payne (1), which was very fun.

Crazed Rabbit

[Navaros]

Interesting comparison, Navaros. Given what you say, I think I'll pass on the Godfather. But based on your earlier recommendation in the Arena, I did pick up Mafia a while back and agree it is an outstanding game. Going off topic a little, I wonder what other games would you recommend that you think share some of Mafia's qualities? I tend mainly to play RPGs and strategy games, so I am not so familiar with the genre Mafia is in (what is it, BTW? action? shooter?). I know that it may be hard to make recommendations given that you rate Mafia as the best game ever.

I think Vietcong was made by the Mafia people and I thought that was about the best shooter I've played. Very varied missions, quite open gameplay and authentic feeling weapons/combat. Max Payne 2 has some Mafia-like qualities - good story, quite artistic presentation but it is more unrelentingly combat heavy (no driving - although that's a non-essential feature for me) and linear in its path through levels.

I'm thinking of trying on the GTA games, but am not that hopeful I'll like it.

GTA games are pretty cheap these days so it might be worth picking some up since it won't cost a lot. I think everyone should play them just to see why Mafia is so superior and GTA is over-rated.

Not sure what genre Mafia is, I suppose technically it's action/adventure but I don't like sticking that label on it simply because it is so much better and more expansive than that label implies.

When I say Mafia is the King of the genre, "the genre" in that statement means any game that includes driving and third person shooter gameplay. Namely, GTA III, GTA Vice City, GTA San Andreas, The Godfather: The Game™ and Scarface.

Games of Mafia's quality are indeed a short list. I'd also put Max Payne 2 up there like you did, although I like to say Max Payne 2 is the best 1/5th of a game that I ever played and it would be nice if the other 4/5ths existed too to make it a complete game.

The second best 1/5th of a game I ever played is "Gun ",which I also got around to recently. It's a very brutal Wild West game (keep kids under 18 well away from this one!; it has very graphic murders in it) with an amazing atmosphere, great voice-acting by real actors, spot-on dialogue, and excellent gameplay including horse combat via using guns while riding a horse. This is also an 8 - 10 hour game at most though, and with zero replayability or things to do in the game once you beat it. Either rent it or get it from the bargain bin. I bought my copy from the bargain bin when M2TW came out. Gun cost me $15 CAD at that point in time.

There is a very little known game called Nocturne from 1999 which in my view is the most under-rated game of all time and a sheer masterpiece in every way. Had it been released a couple of years later, then I would have difficulty calling Mafia the best game released this Millenium. Nocturne got a 94% from GameSpy (yet since the general public never bought the game and many don't even know it exists, GameSpy/IGN since pretends it doesn't exist in all their bogus, corporate-driven "lists") and it got several other professional review scores of over 90% including some 100%'s. All those scores above 90% are very well-deserved. Although it unjustly got trashed by not-so-competent (being quite overly polite here for the sake of Org's standards) reviewers in the "big magazines". Nocturne is very similar to Mafia in many ways: they are both set in the 1930's, the character dresses like an old school gangster in both cases, both of them give you gangster allies and gangster enemies, although in Nocturne's case they are undead gangsters. As in Mafia the main character in Nocturne is voiced by a truly outstanding actor, (Lynn Mathis who is now deceased, RIP) - Mr. Mathis is bar none the best voice actor talent I've ever heard. The voice-acting in Nocturne is likewise outstanding across the board, as is the story presentation. As are the graphics. As is the gameplay. Nocturne is a cross-genre, unique breed of game, as is Mafia. Both games have all the classic gangster weapons like the Tommy gun. Both games feel like you are playing in a very well-done, interactive movie. Think think Van Helsing (which could be said to have ripped-off Nocturne in a few ways, actually) + Dawn of the Dead + Dick Tracy + Bram Stoker's Dracula + Frankenstein + the Untouchables + all the classic film noir greats you've ever seen, all wrapped together and presented perfectly in a video game, and that is about what you got in Nocturne. Nocturne oozes with atmosphere at every point, which is another thing that puts Mafia and Nocturne and Max Payne 2 etc. in an elite class all by themselves. Another thing similar about all of these games are that they are unapologetically mature. They are gritty and compelling, and although they have humor, they never sacrifice the serious tone of the story to make really stupid out-of-context jokes (ie: like Baldur's Gate 2 does even though BG2 gets universal praise for allegedly having a great story). Nocturne is off the market, but it has been known to be sold on eBAY for only a few bucks, which you can't really go wrong with.

But something tells me you aren't fairly judging the game, as you constantly compare it to Mafia and continuously praise it (showing a possibility you might've been influenced to make the Godfather game worse in your review). Your post doesn't look entirely objective either it seems.
My critique is no attack on you whatsoever, btw, just to be clear. I just think it would've been better to review just The Godfather game and leave Mafia out of it. Not everybody has played Mafia or is going to play it. And because Mafia is better according to you shouldn't keep people from playing the Godfather.

That's why I said upfront that as a game on it's own merit, Godfather warrants a 7/10 (which is also what competent professional reviewers gave it, although I can also see how a lower score would be justified). Those who don't care about Mafia can stop reading right there if they only want the 411 on Godfather on it's own merits alone. I agree because Mafia is better it shouldn't stop people from playing Godfather. I just don't see the logic in wanting to play a game that is less than the best, and not also playing the best too, especially when the best is much cheaper nowadays than the newer, worse game.

My review may not have been objective, but I don't think that matters because for me to be objective I'd have to pretend Mafia doesn't exist, and that would be a distortion of reality. In my view it's better for a non-objective review that informs the reader of what could have been done better as evidenced when held up to the best of the best.

I agree that Don Corleone did some bad things, but the way the movie presents it makes it seems like for the most part he only did bad things to indviduals who he had a somewhat legitimate beef with, as opposed to going into town and terrorizing all the business owners. He killed the other Don because that Don was Italian and yet he terrorized fellow Italians. It seems Don Corelone was very much not okay with terrorizing fellow Italians. Yet in the game you have to terrorize every business owner in the Little Italy section of the city same as anyone else.

I got that stupid game for Christmas, and I haven't been able to get it to install on my computer, or another newer one I tried, even after going online looking for answers for hours. A piece of crap, says I!

It's unfortunate you had to go through that. But hardly fair to blame the game for that problem. The game works fine on OS/hardware configurations that were commonplace at the time of it's release. That is the problem with all computer games in general. Eventually they will all stop working on new computers, or lose functionality/have crash problems, or require extensive workarounds to make them work. The problem is not that the devs did something wrong in making the game. The problem is that MicroSoft doesn't ensure backwards compatibility with games in any of it's OS'es, service packs, drivers etc. etc.