The Godfather - Shattering review at Eurogamer
Hmm, I thought this game might be interesting, but after reading this article I changed my mind.
Here's some quotes:
Looking back, the promising pre-release chat spoke of how it was a game that would stay true to the story, where morals counted, where you "feel the consequences of your decisions", where the game world has a "memory". Despite all the movie tie-in let-downs over the years, we wanted to believe it. When EA put the game back five months, it looked even more likely that the company was serious about its ambitions.EA knew what it had to do, but the fact is it didn't even come close to realising most of these lofty ambitions, and we're left reflecting on another glorious missed opportunity.First of all, the game's main story mode is simply way too short. Although 25 missions might sound reasonable, the first quarter are exceptionally brief and straighforward tutorial escapades that run you through the basic melee combat, extortion, shooting and driving mechanics. With that under your belt, you'll blitz the rest in five or six hours, leaving you with little more than a big clean-up operation that's only a challenge because of the sheer volume of tasks to complete.Once you've got the main story mode cleared, the game tempts you with the prospect of so much more to come. It coaxes you into believing that something magical awaits players who want to 'own the map' and becoming the Don of NYC, then utterly fails to deliver. The map certainly gives you the impression that there's loads to do, as do the game stats that claim you've only cleared 30 per cent.
For a start, there's all those extortions to pull off (83 of them), rackets to uncover (56 in total), warehouses to take down (eight), hubs to infiltrate (four) and eventually the ultra-heavily guarded compounds (again, four - representing each of the main rival families).
But, coming back to the point about repetition, doing all of these tasks takes iron will and persistence - not because they're tricky, or in any way annoying, but just because you literally have to do the exact same thing over and over and over and over and over and over... 15 hours on, you'll be Don of New York, but you'll wonder why on Earth you went to all that effort. There's no payback, no awesome sense of completion, just a map with nothing more to do, and some stats to look back on. Hrmph.Now wouldn't you know... Who would've thought EA would bugger up this one?What we've ended up with is game that offers a decent amount of fun, with great combat, occasionally inspired set-pieces, but sub-par driving and a half-baked story mode with barely enough variety to fill a long evening. Beyond a few hours with the game it's abundantly clear that what's left is so repetitive and so lacking incentive to finish off, it's like you're playing a game that was some way off being finished. Whatever the truth of the matter, it's painfully evident that EA has much to learn from its first steps in this most lucrative of genres, but has done just about enough to paper over some of the cracks. Worth a rental, for sure, but more than that is questionable.
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