Review

Don't worry too much about dying, though. Although it's a blow to your confidence, chances are you're going to be dying a lot while playing through The Godfather. But that's okay, because if you do run out of health you will be revived at the nearest hospital for a nominal fee. Best of all you get to keep your weapons and just try again. Better yet, if you die in the middle of a mission you will only have to start over at the checkpoint, which can make things a lot easier. As the game winds down you will probably pass on more than you would like, but only after the game decides to go from normal difficulty to hard (and cheap). Still, The Godfather is never too frustrating and can easily be beaten if you have the patience and can put up with a few frustrating game play hiccups.

 

The most noticeable improvement to this Xbox 360 version of The Godfather is the graphics. While the game looked pretty good on the PS2 and Xbox, this Xbox 360 port manages to look substantially better. The game's graphics are nowhere near as impressive as those found in Ghost Recon or Gears of War, but they certainly look a lot cleaner and more detailed than they did six months ago on those other consoles. The Godfather ends up falling into all of the traps so common to next generation ports of current generation games. Like so many ports that came before it, The Godfather's graphics look pretty good when you're playing it, but it's hard not to be a little disappointed that it wasn't built from the ground up. Had this originally been an Xbox 360 game I can only imagine how much better it would have looked, but that's not the case and instead we're stuck playing a game that isn't terrible looking, but won't impress your friends looking to see what all the fuss about the "next generation" is all about.

 

Sadly there aren't a lot of incentives to pick up this Xbox 360 version over the versions released six months ago. The game does come with a bunch of achievement points, including a few that require a lot of time and effort on your part. On top of the points you can also upload your stats to an online leader board, something I didn't find to be all that exciting. There's also some downloadable content you can buy on the Xbox Live Marketplace. While there isn't a large selection of stuff to purchase, you can pick up game cheats and upgraded guns not found on the $60 disc.

 

Believe or not, this is the third time I've gone through The Godfather. I feel it's a solid action game that is well worth playing regardless of what system you own. But when it comes down to it this Xbox 360 version is a tough sell. This version of the game is going for a steep $60, a good twenty dollars more than it is on all of the other systems. There's a good time to be had here, but I can't help but feel like this is a bad deal. If you don't mind spending the money then you'll have a lot of fun beating people up, getting chased by the cops and becoming the Don of New York City. Everybody else should just check out the cheaper current generation version that packs the same content with slightly worse graphics.

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