Most video games based on movies are garbage. They are generally some cheap, hackneyed cash grabber that gets released at the same time as the film, with obvious minimal production effort. The first Godfather game did not fit this mold - mainly because the film had already been out for over 30 years. It was an attempt at recreating art. It was something that did not have the deadlines and pressures of a parallel release with the cinema. Because of that, it turned into a solid product that worked a new storyline into a classic tale that everyone has heard. This was good, because it had big shoes to fill, and the developers realized this.

Straight up, I’m going to color my critique by saying I was a huge fan of the first Godfather video game - if that isn’t already apparent. I first played it on Wii, then re-purchased it on the 360 to play through again. There was tons to do, the story was acceptably true to the movie, and the gameplay was a blast. Given the success of the title and its critical praise, and the fact there are two other movies in the Godfather series (I know, you pretend the 3rd one doesn’t exist), a sequel was inevitable. A few months ago, it came out.

Gamefly finally got it in stock and shipped it my way, and here we are.

The story opens up a few years after the first game. Your first game character gets sniped (not a spoiler) and you head to New York to regain control of the city as a new fellow. Right away, Michael Corleone gives you a family and makes you the boss. My issues with the game started here. In the first release, you spent your entire time working up the ranks of the Corleone family to become Don. In this game, you’re a Don right away. You get a crew, you almost immediately have access to a full arsenal of weapons, and your crew members can take care of things for you that you don’t want to handle. Right away, a lot of the things you worked for in the first game were just handed to you.

So you’d think with that being the case, there ought to be different things you have to work towards instead - right? Sort of. Here’s the rundown of how the game works:

There are a few cities, but you start off in New York. You have family members that you gain and promote throughout the game. The ability to add more family members or promote people to Capo, etc. come automatically as you go through the story. Each character in your family has a specific skill (engineering, muscle, demolitions, arson, lockpicking, medic) which help you break into buildings, steal stuff, and otherwise survive. They also have all the standard skills like shooting, intimidation, health, and so on. All these skills can be upgraded with money as you move on. The game claims you have to be wise with your upgrades and choices, but you don’t really. Eventually, you’ll have a family member with every available skill. If you need a skill from someone not currently equipped in your crew, you can just swap them out on-the-fly, use their skill, then send them back - so long as they’re not off doing something else.

The structure of the game is much like the first. There is an overarching story, and inbetween tasks you go around extorting shops, taking over fronts and bombing compounds. There are less of them than in the first game, and they are pretty easy to take over. After you take control of a place, you have to equip it with guards, which costs you money. These guards protect the place if a rival family attempts to take it back. You can also deploy your family members to a place if it’s under attack, because they are stronger than anyone. You aren’t able to use a family member in your active crew if he’s off defending a location, but that’s no big deal.

Family members who die or get arrested are taken to their respective facilities for a certain amount of time until released, during which they can’t be used. Unless, of course, you have a favor to get them out…

Like the first game, you can do favors for people to get perks. These include getting people out of jail, out of the hospital, set up a sting on a rival family member, etc. Unlike the first game, you can use them at any time, which is handy. Unfortunately, this game is so much easier than the first one, you’ll hardly ever have to use them. I played for about 8 hours and had already taken down two rival families completely before I used my first favor.

The map system is pretty awesome. It’s three-dimensional and is the main control point for the game. Without going into boring details about a map you can’t interact with via text, it’s well designed and the hub for everything you do.

The story doesn’t follow the Godfather II film as closely as the first one did the original. It’s an interesting reimagining of the tale, but doesn’t do it a lot of justice. If you never saw the movie, you’d know nothing about it after playing this game.

Overall, the game is easy. It is made simple by the fact you have a strong crew with you at all times right from the beginning, the AI characters are weak, you are given lots of weapons and ammo way too quickly, upgrading skills is tactless and the design is fairly simple. Dying or getting arrested have no consequence aside from relocating you somewhere on the map. It very much feels like a totally different game from the first Godfather instead of a sequel. It is also short - after my first 2.5 hours of play, the progress tracker said I was 20% done. That is pretty quick for a free-roaming task-based TPS.

My biggest gripe is that families don’t get as extraordinarily pissed off at you the way they did in the first. In Godfather I, if you took over a number of rival family businesses, that family would make it nearly impossible for you to accomplish anything else unless you paid off an FBI guy and turned down the heat. You would be constantly paying off cops and Feds to lose family heat and get some peace. That just doesn’t happen in this title.

Another bummer is that some family upgrades rely on your accomplishments in online play. This sucks for people who don’t pay for LIVE, or for those who just don’t want to play online. You can still upgrade these family members - if you come across someone in-game who has better attributes than one of your current guys, you can kill him off and recruit the new one - but you also lose any stats you’ve paid to upgrade for that guy.

Now that a lot of bitching is out of the way, let me say that this is still a fun game. It’s worth putting down a few bucks, and worth playing. Most of my criticism has come from comparison, which is justified as this is billed as a sequel. Even some of the things that have been addressed as negatives, like sending your crew members to defend a place when it is being attacked, are cool at the same time. It adds an element of RTS to the game - but takes away the sense of urgency and protection from the first game, where you’d have to physically drive to and defend a place yourself.

There is a nifty new method of taking down rival family members that goes beyond simply destroying their compound. You are able to view the family tree of each gang, and each member has to be killed in a certain way. As you wander the world, you’ll come across people who need favors in exchange for a “kill condition.” If you do the favor for them, they’ll tell you a certain method by which a rival family member must be taken down. Some need choked, others need hit with a bat, some need sniped, and a few even need killed by being hit with a bottle. Kill the family member in the correct way, and he’s down. If you take them out before attempting to blow up the compound, it’ll make that effort easier. It also serves as one more string of tasks that are available to complete. Unfortunately, the downside is that you aren’t required to do them. If you go blow up the compound without the individual family takedowns, they’ll all be dead, and that’s that. There isn’t much of a reward for hitting them all individually.

All in all, if you were a fan of the first title, you’ll be left wanting when you play this game. That said, it’s still worth playing. Definitely worth a rental, or if you can find a used copy somewhere, pick it up for a few bucks. It’ll entertain you for a while, as long as you don’t expect too much complexity or difficulty. If you’ve played the game, let me know your thoughts.

Army of Two, Electronic Arts
Battlefield: Bad Company, Electronic Arts
Devil May Cry 4, Capcom
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Sony Computer Entertainment America
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, Konami
Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Sony Computer Entertainment America

One or two of those titles only shaved $10 off its price for this markdown, but the presence of MGS4 is the star of this list. For those of you who thrive on buying used games, these price cuts help you out as well, as it comparatively lowers the value of a used copy.

Looking to pick up a copy of Red Faction: Guerrilla for your 360? The fairly well-reviewed game was released less than two weeks ago, but is already seeing price cuts from major online retailers. And we’re not talking about a dollar or two here; NewEgg has it cut to a super cool $39.99.

Many retailers selling the game at a lower price have received tremendous response, selling out or going very low in quantities as a result. The PS3 version of the game hasn’t been included in these price cuts, as it appears to be a 360-only deal.

The game’s sales haven’t been quite up to par with what THQ was hoping/expecting, so this isn’t super surprising. Price cuts are fairly common these days for monetarily underachieving games, and with the economy as it is, consumers are often quick to respond.

So go hunt down a discount copy and get to smashing the hell out of everything you see.

This year, Microsoft’s XBLA will be running another “Summer of Arcade” lineup. The games set to be included are:

‘Splosion Man
Shadow Complex
TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-shelled
Marvel Vs. Capcom 2
Monkey Island Special Edition
Trials HD

For many, one of the major parts of that list is Turtles in Time. The full title of the remake is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled, which is fantastically long, but what looks to be an ultra-cool HD remake of a great Turtles classic.

There will be an online co-op mode built into the game, which is good for replay value, as you’ll probably beat it rather quickly. Reports have it that the game suffered slowdown and crummy performance during E3 demos, and the graphical upgrade done to the game may result in an overly high price tag. Since there is no confirmable information regarding whether or not the bugs have been improved, or the cost of the game, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Seemingly out of nowhere, gamers were recently given a glimpse of an upcoming Playlogic title called Fairytale Fights. The game apparently takes common fairy tale characters and allows you to control them through a world where you must encounter lots of bloody maiming yuckiness. Sounds awesome.

This doesn’t look like a twisted American Mcgee concept, but something that applies a lighthearted juvenile animation style to adult content. The world is powered by the Unreal Engine, so it’s obviously built on something constructed for rather brutal combat. Weapons include axes and swords, as well as lollipops and carrots. Attacks are controlled by the right stick, and there are plenty of enemies, hazards and other traps to get in your way. It handles like a classic beat-em-up with a little bit of Castle Crashers flair.

Each level is based on a particular fairy tale setting, like Hansel & Gretel - but you know, with giant saws and deathtraps and such. You can literally slice every living creature in the game to bits, even if it isn’t an actual enemy. The slicing mechanism is very accurate, and responds to every body part of the enemy (or other creature) you are attacking. Lob off an arm, and it’ll fall. Just what you’ve always pictured Snow White doing in her spare time - cutting up children and other organisms.

There is co-op play, which is lovely, and the game features over 100 weapons. How can you really go wrong with this? No release date yet, but it’s set for 360 and PS3.

Perfect Dark was an insanely awesome Nintendo 64 game. It gave us a solid FPS solo game, a stellar character with fun weapons, and ingenious multiplayer action with tons of bots boasting their own fancy skills (remember the slapping one that made you blind? Wasn’t that a pain in the ass?) The XBLA port is supposed to jump up several more levels of pure awesome, rendering full HD visuals at 60 FPS. The game is to include all of the original Perfect Dark features and gameplay, along with a few bonus boosts for the 360 release.

The title is supposed to come out in “winter,” according to the always-specific Microsoft. Whenever it comes out, it looks like it’s going to be sexy as hell - in more ways than one.

Lots of gamers have it out for the new Left 4 Dead title being released this November. People are blasting the game, the company, and have formed official boycott groups against the sequel.

We’re hearing things like it’s too early for a sequel. It will diminish the first game. Valve is no longer Valve.

A Steam group called L4D Boycott (NO-L4D2) exists with thousands of members, focusing on nine particular issues:

• Significant content for L4D1 was promised, and never delivered
• Valve put little faith in L4D1 since they almost certainly started working on L4D2 right after release
• The fact that L4D2 is nearly identical to L4D1 will decimate the community for both games
• The announced date is not nearly enough time to polish content or make significant gameplay changes
• The new character designs seem bland and unappealing so far
• L4D2 is too bright to fit in with L4D1’s visual aesthetic
• The fiddle-based horde music is extremely disliked, though the differently orchestrated music is otherwise welcome
• L4D2’s release will result in a drop in quality and frequency for L4D1 content, even compared to before
• The community has lost faith in Valve’s former reputation for commitment to their games post-release

Clearly the group feels that a sequel this soon will not only be unjustified and poor in itself, but will harm the quality of and stop any continued development for the first game.

Members are getting reprimanded on Steam, people wonder why this game’s content couldn’t just be a DLC, and many die-hard fans of Valve’s legendary focus on continued development and community respect are second-guessing their favorite company. Thousands agree the timing is off, the characters seem lame, the aesthetics of the new game being in the deep south is not L4D-esque (yet it can’t be too similar or it fuels the pointlessness of the release). Valve seems to be in a tight spot.

Clearly the game deserves a sequel - but are things being handled the wrong way? What do you think?

One thing’s for sure - Hitler is pissed about the news.

This gem is of Super Mario Galaxy 2, something with is super fantastic and is looking like it could end up being a swell title. The worlds look splendid, the characters are doing all sorts of fun things, and there is no sign of any Haunted Mansions in sight…

Guess who is making the next Castlevania title? It’s not who you’d think - in fact, it’s Kojima Productions. It seems Hideo is addicted to being busy, and Lords of Shadow will become part of his production team’s upcoming production portfolio. Kojima himself will be a “support” to the development team, whatever that really means. The title was originally teased as MASK, but has been revealed as a brand new piece of Castlevania goodness. Koji Igarashi will not be involved with the project at all. This could certainly lead to a very different Castlevania than we’re used to. Hooray for East-West cooperation!

The game is to take on a 3D God of War feel. It is being developed by MercurySteam Entertainment (American McGee’s Scrapland, Clive Barker’s Jericho).

Patrick Stewart will be providing voices, so you Jean Luc Picard fans out there can squee with delight knowing that your favorite English baldie has a new job. The game is slated for a 2010 release on both PS3 and Xbox360.