The Godfather: Blackhand Edition (Wii) Review

To (badly) adapt a well-known phrase, the first few months of Wii games could be summed up, in part, by saying ‘ports, ports everywhere and none of any worth’. Of course we’ve had the quality first party titles with the likes of Zelda and Excite Truck, and there’ve been worthwhile third party efforts in Eledees, Sonic and EA’s own SSX Blur, but there has also been a swamping of quick ports to cash in on the start of the system’s life style. When announced, it seemed almost inevitable that The Godfather would be added to this pile of ports – not bad games as such, just ones clearly not designed with Wii in mind. EA, respectably, have not taken this route and re-jigged the entire game to make the port more than a lazy rush-job and earn its new Blackhand Edition moniker.

As soon as you hop into the main game it’s plain to see that some real thought and effort has gone into Blackhand Edition – this much is swiftly exemplified by the control scheme. While driving is much the same, no longer do you merely tap a button to take a swipe at somebody’s cranium, but instead carry out offensive manoeuvres with your own hands. By locking on to a target by holding down the Z button on the nunchuk, the game activates motion controls, allowing you to physically punch with either arm to carry out a similar technique in-game (or, if you’re feeling lazy, you can just flick the controllers forward). Grabbing makes you feel like you’re actually holding somebody by their collar as you hold down on Z and B in each hand, and from this position you can either continue delivering the pain with your fists or fling your foe around with a thrust forward or swing to the sides and a timely release of the buttons. It’s also in this holding position that you can flick your controllers outwards and inwards rapidly to tighten your grip and shake the controllers to brutally strangle a man with nothing but your own two hands. Charming…

The controls are just as good when you’re using weaponry as opposed to your bare hands. While it’s extremely satisfying to grasp an enemy, beat them to their knees, lift them to their feet again (simply moving the controllers upwards quickly, as if you’re literally dragging them up) and slam them into a wall until they’re no longer a bother (push them towards a wall and make a slamming motion with both nunchuk and remote), it can be just as rewarding to use some instruments along the way (not that we‘re sadists, you understand). Baseball bats and pool cues can be added to your inventory and pulled out to deliver some blows by swinging the remote; small objects such as bottles can be thrown at enemies by targeting them and making a throwing motion; more choking is possible with the garrotte wire; and the obligatory guns take advantage of the pointer functions. A free aim mode can be employed with a tap of +, but the default system asks you to lock-on to your foe – once this is done, you can specify the area on their body that you want to target by pointing, which is very accurate in both modes of aiming thanks to the infra-red sensor. While the fighting and non-projectile weaponry does not have the coveted 1:1 motion detection, it’s far more accurate than the waggling antics that you’ll find in Zelda: Twilight Princess and your character carries out offences differently according to how you move. Unfortunately, sometimes controls aren’t recognised as readily as they should be (particularly in the case of the executions), but for the most part they work brilliantly. Controlling the game in this way opens up slightly disturbing ethical worries in how fun it is considering it’s moving more towards realistic controls, but it’s probably an issue to worry about more with Manhunt 2 in the future than here - though the all-new Blackhand executions could be considered to be a tad too far for some people, calling for you to use a variety of motions to slap people down and break their necks with a stomp of your foot, twist peoples’ necks out of joint...lots of neck-snapping, generally. The same thought can be applied to the (scarily enjoyable) choking methods – sometimes we think it’s best that Wii doesn’t have the graphical capabilities of its rivals…

Gameplay-wise, the main game stays in tact – as in the other versions, you still start off as a small-time associate of the legendary Corleone family and must earn your keep and their respect by carrying out missions for them and extorting local businesses to get them some extra scratch, while avoiding/bribing the long arm of the law and avoiding/murdering rival gang members. Some of the reason that The Godfather games work well is because you’re not placed in the role of a major character in the series, instead being a random unknown that plays a part in the events of the films, which also gives EA some creative licence to expand the storyline, and while there is clear inspiration from the Grand Theft Auto series the gameplay is far more subtle – playing with all fists flying for a significant amount of time isn’t likely to get you as far as taking a softly-softly approach. Each borough is massive, combining to create a huge city with very few noticeable loading times (in fact, loading only really tends to occur at the start of the game, otherwise the city streams through constantly). To further improve the Wii’s Godfather title, a bunch of new missions have been added which lengthen the game a considerable amount over the originals, and an RPG-style system has been put into place. By earning respect points, you level up and can boost attributes such as persuasion techniques, gunplay, driving, etc. Of course, because we couldn’t help but randomly beat people up because of the excellence of the controls, we instantly maxed out our fighting abilities and ignored all ideas of tact. A problem does arise from the control method: we found it far easier to get distracted into running off and doing our own thing rather than actually carrying out the missions, and the large city size meaning that missions are spread far apart doesn’t aid this either.

There are not many noticeable graphical differences between last generation’s versions of the game and the Wii edition, which basically means you have a game on level with a fairly nice-looking Playstation 2 title; though the character models appear to have been cleaned up a little, and there are some rather tasty fire effects. One major criticism that can be levelled at the game is the blandness of the city, with much of it looking similar. The map can be a bit useless as well, leading to us getting lost a number of times. On the other (black) hand, the sound is superb, with the signature music making timely appearances, a fully voiced city and a number of lovely sound effects. The character creator used to form your new addition to the Corleone family deserves a special mention also; you can create an impressive range of people who all fit into the game well and don’t stand out ridiculously.

If ports must exist on Wii, then they should be created with the approach that EA has taken with The Godfather: Blackhand Edition. Taking everything that made the originals what they were while adding and refining content, the result is a fine game that provides many hours of entertainment and proves to the cynics that Wii is perfectly capable of delivering longer gaming experiences. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have some garrotting to do…