Godfather II for PS3 is Bloody Good Fun

The gaming universe has seen it's share of movie-licensed video games that have gone down in flames in recent years due to the fact that most game publishers pay huge bucks in licensing fees to Hollywood studios so that they can develop a movie-based video game very quickly before the popularity of that particular movie dwindles down. This causes the final game that is released far too quickly to be filled with programming bugs, horrid story lines and inferior graphics, which results in poor sales and a critical lambasting of the game in question.

Thankfully, the new video game that is based on the spectacularly successful Mafia franchise, "The Godfather" series, stands heads above the rest. "The Godfather II", developed by EA Redwood Studios and distributed by EA, is a hard-shooting and blood-soaked action game that really puts you in control of the Corleone family of mobsters like no other game before it. The game's open-world element is the main catalyst in allowing you to hijack any car you want, grab a machine gun from an angry enemy of the Corleone family and start blowing up other mafia family's businesses and compounds, effectively putting you in the shoes of an underling mobster engulfed in the flames of the ultra-violent world of the "Godfather" movies.

United you stand, divided you die!

A very satisfying game element of the "Godfather II" is the game's ability to allow you to gather up as many henchmen as you need as you play along this action-packed game, which means that no matter how hard a particular mission in the game is, you can always count on your own crew that you hand-picked to annihilate any enemies that you need to, even before you have stepped in the room to defend yourself against your many enemies. But you have to make sure that you have upgraded your own crew member's abilities to shoot as straight as possible and to have their overall skill levels one-upped every time you gain money by robbing a bank or finishing a particularly difficult mission.

You start out the game playing as Dominic, a Corleone relative that is very eager to work his way up in "the family" business. You have to complete a few simple missions first, such as killing a few enemies of Michael Corleone and Hyman Roth, the two mob bosses you will be working for at the beginning of the game, before you will be able to pick some gangsters from the canon of hot-headed criminals that are mostly protecting some Corleone properties.

Your very survival depends on picking the right guys to bring into your crew, such as a medic that will heal you completely even after you have been blasted with a shotgun to the chest and are at death's door, or by picking a demolition expert that will blow a hole into a wall, allowing you access to even the most impenetrable mafia-owned fortress.

A few glitches here and there...no game's perfect!

Even though the game will envelop you completely in it's blood-soaked world, there are a small number of game issues that will annoy any gamer out there who is looking for perfection in every video game he purchases. While playing through the first hour or so of this game, I noticed that the game's map does not allow you to increase the size of the map at all, which means that you can only detect where you are at any given time by glancing at the extremely small map in the right-hand corner of the screen which does not even show where your own car is when you are trying desperately to go to a "safe-house" that will protect you from the gun-happy police.

Another small issue I had with "Godfather II" for the PS3 was the fact that after spending about fifteen minutes on a highly intensive mission in which I had to kill about 13 armed-to-the-teeth gunmen to take over another mob family's business such as a brothel or diamond-smuggling warehouse, I could not find the one man who owned the place, which means that I could not take over the business at all! It's hard to believe that the mission's hardest part would be just to find the owner of a business property, but the game's programmers made that error in "The Godfather II", and they should be taken to task over it.

Get ready for true carnage when you purchase this bloody game.

For the video game enthusiast who wants to experience what it's like to gradually build up a massive mafia empire of brutality while taking sheer delight in killing off all of your enemies one by one, this game is for you. While I did have some issues with the game's playability as I alluded to earlier, I found that by the end of this game I was not wanting the crime spree I was currently on to finish any time soon.

But if you are squeamish when it comes to playing a game in which you constantly blow huge chunks of flesh off of in-game character's during every heart-wrenching moment of an action video game, I would tell you to stay away from "Godfather II" without question.

However, I had a bloody great time building up my own character's gun skills and going after every mob boss and mafia henchman that Micheal Corleone and Tom Hayden wanted me to kill. Even though some other video game critics have been less than kind about this game, I found "The Godfather II" to be a completely satisfying mobster video game that should be high on your list of games you need to purchase if you crave the gangster lifestyle without actually signing up with your local Mafia gang of hoodlums.