The Godfather II

Overview

In this sequel to the 2006 release, The Godfather: The Game, EA Redwood Shores again allows players to attempt to build their own crime empire by defeating rival gangs and taking over local businesses. Godfather II is set in 1959 and has been expanded to take place over 3 cities: Miami, Havana and New York City.

In the game you play as Dominic a young man in the employ of Aldo Trapini, the previous game's protagonist. When Aldo is shot and killed by Cuban revolutionaries, Michael Corleone charges you with taking over his role within the family and from there you must begin expanding the family's control of the crime world. In order to achieve this, you get tips and help from Frank Pentangeli, an old made man, to gather up a family and start taking over rackets and businesses. The game's story is loosely based on The Godfather: Part Two, the movie by Francis Ford Coppola.

Gameplay

Single Player

The game play has a conquest like feel, in that the individual rackets in the city are controlled by rival families, and you are tasked with getting these rackets under the control of your family by intimidating them to pay for your protection. To do this you can send members of your gang to rival controlled territories to weaken them by doing things like bombing their buildings which outright destroys the racket for a period of time. You can also take out members of the rival family. If the family member is taken out, they can't defend their rackets or attack your rackets. Also, they won't be at their family's compound when you try to take their compound. Once they are weak enough, you can attack these rackets and try to defeat them and make them your own. Taking a territory doesn’t guarantee its safety though, and you will have to hire guards in case someone tries to take a territory from you. Depending on number of the guards you set for your territories, they will cost you money and reduce your daily payout. When another family invades your rackets, you can either go and defend it by yourself or send one or two of your family members to defend the business, because usually, ordinary guards won't last long in a full scale attack. Taking over all the crime ring areas rewards you with a bonus like armored cars, brass knuckles, bullet proof vests, etc, depending on which one you take over. After taking over all rackets of a family, they will go defensive in their compounds. You can go there and destroy their compound with a bomb, and then, they're done for ever and the former compound is yours. As said before, rackets have related activities, and taking over a ring of rackets with the same activity will reward you with items and circumstances that reduces the game's difficulty. The crime rings are listed below:

1. Gambling- Rewards incendiary ammo.
2. Arms Smuggling- Rewards increase of explosive carriage.
3. Diamond Smuggling- Rewards Bulletproof vest for your family and guards.
4. Chop Shop- Rewards armored car parked in front of them and every airport as well.
5. Adult Entertainment- Rewards reduce of Guard payout.
6. Prostitution- Rewards Brass Knuckles.
7. Drug- Double's the income cash from this ring.
8. Constructions- Your businesses will recover quickly.
9. Gun Running- Increases ammo capacity.
10. Extorting Business- 9 Shops including bars and electrical stores, only increases money.

Families are listed below:

1. Carmine Rosato Family- New York
2. Tony Rosato Family- New York and Miami
3. Mamango Family- Havana and Miami
4. Almeida- Havana and Miami

There are other activities than racketeering as well. Some pedestrians will give you intel and money if you do them a "Favor". They can be burglary, murder, sabotage, and other crimes. Intel that they'll give you is a "Kill condition" for another family's made men. If you don't kill a made man with their special kill condition, they'll disappear from the map for a brief time, then return. They'll disappear for good if you follow the "Kill Condition" instructions sharply. For example, hitting them with a car or throwing them in a river. Other favors will give you money.

The Black Hand controls make a return in this game, in which you use the triggers to grab your enemy and beat them with your fists, or environmental objects until they agree to cooperate with you. A new feature added to this section is "Weak Point". Every shopkeeper and business owner you're intimidating has a personal weak point witch you can discover and use to increase their payout. For example, some shopkeepers are afraid of physical attack, some will agree to cooperate with you after you smashed their goods or consumers and many other various weak points.

This time around you will be able to create your own family. in order to expend your family, you should search cities for guys with a dollar icon over their head. Once you approach them, you can ask them about their specialties. There are six kind of made man you can hire:

1. Demolition: Bomb experts. you can use them to rig cars and bring rackets and compounds down.
2. Arsonist: You can use them to ignite a place.
3. Safe Cracker: They will open locks and safes for you.
4. Engineer: They can use tools and hardware to make your job easier, for example, cutting a fence to open up your way through them.
5. Buiser: Bull guys, they can be useful during a combat and they can kick down weak doors.
6. Medic: they can revive your family member defeated in a combat. otherwise, you have to do it yourself.

Each class will help you during a battle and they won't be a weasel. They will talk to you and give you tips about things. Simultaneously, you can have three of your seven made men following you. You can use rest of them to defend your turf, as said before. You will be able to manage your criminal empire with "The Don's View" where you can see all the statuses of your crime rings, battles in progress, locations of your jobs, and contacts. You can decide actively which crime ring to go after, hire guards for your critical rackets, deploy your made men, and finally place hits on your rival families. Don's View is a three dimensional map that has your interest points marked in it. Also, you can set a waypoint in it. When you're in the Don's View, by pressing a button, you will be taken to your territory console. You can see your family tree in there, using it to promote, discard or upgrade a made man. (You can upgrade your own skills too). Skills that can be upgraded are various, Health, Survival, Speciality upgrade, Aim Accuracy, etc. You can see another family's tree as well. Once you killed a made man from that family, their picture on the tree will be covered with blood, indicating that they're finished. From Don's View, you can view the active favors. Favors are marked with a lip-lop shaped circle on the map. You can access you inventory, and see where the "Corrupt Officials" are. Corrupt officials are officials that will help you if you do a favor for them. For example, a cop will call back his friends if you smash a shop for him, a construction site boss will send his workers to rebuild your damaged business. You can travel between the cities by airplane and in each of them, you can access another city through Don's View. "The Don's View" gives the game an RTS feel in some ways.

You can simultaneously carry four kinds of weaponry. Three kind of explosives, including Dynamite, Cocktail Molotov, and Bomb. One melee weapon, like a pool cue, baseball bat, or a garrote wire for a stealth kill. There are also projectile weapons. Each type of projectile weapon has three tiers which upgrade your previous weapon of the same type. For instance, your default Tommy Gun can be upgraded by finding a MP38 which offers a better magazine size. These different weapons can only be found in certain places in the game world. Projectile weapons are:

1. Pistol: Pistol (Level 1, Default), Silenced Pistol (Level 2, Florida- On table during your rescue mission for one of Hyman Roth's men), Delta M1911 Silenced (Level 3, Florida- Second Floor of Mangano Compound)
2. Magnum: .357 Magnum (Level 1, Default), .44 Magnum (Level 2, New York- Second Floor in Carmine Rosato's Compound), .501 Magnum Enforcer (Level 3, Cuba- Located inside Battaglia Quarry Chop Shop near Lighthouse)
3. Machine Gun: Tommy Gun (Level One, Default), MP38 (Level 2, Florida- Second Floor of the Granados Compound), Modified AK-47 (Level 3, Cuba- Battaglia Masonry, Go inside smaller room, turn left and climb down the ladder, then follow the tunnel underground)
4. Shotgun: Shotgun (Level 1, Default), Sawed-Off Shotgun (Level 2, New York- Use arsonist to burn bushes near Corleone Compound), Schofield Semi Auto (Level 3, Florida- Inside Global Storage Chop Shop on wall in the right side building)
5. Sniper Rifle: Sniper Rifle (Level 1, Default), Spitzer Centerfire (Level 2, Florida- On rooftop of Emilio's Packing Company, use engineer to cut fence), Vintovka SR-98 (Level 3, Cuba- On second floor of Almeida Compound)

With these weapons you can also use brutal executions on enemies. These brutal executions provide a more graphic or gruesome way to kill your enemies. Just weaken the enemy substantially, but don't kill them. Go up to them and click in the right stick to use an execution on the enemy to kill them in a more gruesome way. Every type of weapon in the game has their own unique execution.

Just like the original, you can drive vehicles in the game. The variety of the cars can't be compared to a game like Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, but they're still away from being frustrating after a while, which was one of weak points in the original one. Controlling a car is much easier, and you can avoid damage easily because in corners, optionally you can make the car to turn by itself. (developers didn't mean that straightly, of course).

Multiplayer

There will be an online option as well that will be able to support up to 16 players. In this mode, you will be playing as the made men. All the abilities you earned in single player will appear online with your made men. In return, rewards from online play called "Honors" can then be used to get more upgrades for your made men in single player like advanced weapon licenses and more powerful firearms. The online modes include Team Deathmatch, the bloodiest of the modes, Fire starters, focusing on setting the most fires and maintaining score multipliers with your arsonists, Demolition Assault, the most team centric mode where players have to destroy three enemy controlled points on the map using their demolition expert, and Safe cracker, used to control the most territory using the safe cracking specialist. After it's first day of release, EA patched the game with a new multiplayer mode called Don Control where up to 16 players wager money that they earned in the single player for the ultimate control. As a Don, players will compete to recruit members online and if you lose as the Don, your money in the single player campaign is wagered away and your single player empire is hurt.

The servers for the online multiplayer component of Godfather 2 were turned off on April 13th, 2012.

Story

Unlike the original game where the beginning scenes coincided with the beginning of The Godfather, the story of this sequel starts with the visit of Michael Corleone in Cuba unlike in the movie where the film begins with Michael Corleone's son's first Communion in Lake Tahoe. The game also never mentions the other half of the movie which documents the rise of Vito Corleone when he first comes to America. Michael and several other Dons are there in order to make a deal with an older gangster, Hyman Roth. Unlike the movie, the Cuban revolt begins to gain success faster than seen in the movie: the revolutionaries interrupt Roth's birthday and take over areas of the city. Dominic (the player), Michael and Aldo (the protagonist of the original game, now a don himself) have to make their way to the airport and fly back to New York City. Before they enter the airport, however, Aldo gets shot and immediately dies. On the plane ride back, Michael offers Dominic to take Aldo's place. With help from Frank Pentangeli, who currently runs Corleone's businesses and assets in New York while Michael is in Nevada, Dominic hires a soldier to become a made man and begins to take over the New York by weakening the other families.

The first family you must take over is Carmine Rosato's family, who took over some of New York's territories after the death of Aldo. After taking over some of his territories, Carmine offers a sit down to make peace between your families. Dominic goes with Frank Pentangeli. Of course, the sit down is a trap and you are almost killed along with Frank. After Dominic escapes, he takes over the rest of Carmine's rackets in New York and takes down the Carmine Rosato Compound, thus eliminating the family.

Dominic is then called down to Florida to meet with Hyman Roth. He asks you to rescue one of his men and after you do so, he gives you a safehouse in Florida. Dominic then battles against the Granados Family and Tony Rosato's Family, the brother of Carmine. After substantially weakening the two families and possibly destroying them, you are called back to New York by Michael. Unfortunately, there is a strike at the airport. There you meet Hyman Roth again, who introduces Dominic to Agent Henry Mitchell of the CIA who tells Dominic to kill the instigator of the strike, who he calls a Communist sympathizer. After you take him out, Dominic can finally travel to New York.

Once in New York, Michael tells Dominic that the Corleone Family is under investigation by a Senate Committee and that they have a witness in Frank Pentangelli who survived the attack against him and now believes that Michael betrayed him. He then gives you Tom Hagen to be your Consigliere. Hagen then tasks you with getting a senator, Pat Geary, on your side. To do this, Dominic allow Geary access to one of the Corleone's brothels. When Geary is there, they make him believe that he killed one of the prostitutes. Once Geary is on your side, he informs Dominic of a new family in Miami called the Mangano family. Dominic initially starts an alliance with the Manganos, but once Dominic is attacked in his safehouse, he suspects the Mangano family is responsible. He attacks one of their warehouses and the Manganos break off the alliance, telling Michael that they were not behind the attack.

After Dominic goes to war with the Manganos, he goes to Hyman Roth and Agent Mitchell to help him. They tell him that Dominic must go to Cuba to assassinate Fidel Castro in order for them to help in Dominic's war. Dominic goes down to Cuba and kills many of the government's dissidents to make them believe that he is on their side. After he is allowed in the presidential palace, he attempts to kill Fidel Castro with a sniper rifle. Unfortunately, he fails and an associate of Castro, Don Almeida tries to kill Dominic, but he escapes.

Once back in New York, Michael must escort Vincenzo Pentangelli, Frank's brother who will try to influence Frank into not testifying, to Michael's trial before the Senate Committee. Unfortunately, he is kidnapped and Dominic rescues him. He brings him to the Senate Committee and gets Frank to not reveal secrets about the family. After the Committee, it is revealed that Roth and Mitchell have gone against the family and that Fredo has unwittingly betrayed Michael to Roth. Michael then tasks Dominic with taking out the rest of the families in the three cities and killing Agent Mitchell. After killing the rest of your enemies, you are then tasked by Michael to kill Roth who is returning to America through Florida's airport. Dominic fights through security and Roth's men to take him out. When he encounters Roth, Dominic demands to know why he betrayed them, to which Roth replies that "This was the life we chose". Dominic then takes out Roth and escapes the police to the former Mangano compound where Michael congratulates him and offers him one last task. The final cutscene of the game depicts Dominic assassinating Fredo while they are fishing on Lake Tahoe.

System Requirements

Minimum

• OS: Windows XP SP2/Vista
• Processor: Pentium 4 @ 2.8 GHz/AMD Athlon64 3000+
• Memory: 1 GB for XP/2 GB for Vista
• Hard Drive: 9+ GB Free
• Video Memory: 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 6800 or better/ATI X1600 Pro or better
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c

Recommended

• OS: Windows XP SP2/Vista
• Processor: Athlon64 X2 235/Intel Core 2 Duo processor Memory: 2 GB for XP/4 GB for Vista
• Hard Drive: 9+ GB Free
• Video Memory: 256 MB NVIDIA GeForce 8500 or better/ATI RADEON HD2400 Pro or better
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
• DirectX: 9.0c