The Godfather 2 Hands-On Preview

You Talkin’ To Me?

Of course, if you prefer to take a more hands-on approach to your combat and don’t want The Godfather 2 to become a numbers game then you can always get stuck in yourself and get your hands dirty.

This is what we elected to do in our stint with the game, hands-on. We may be big strategy fans when it comes to the likes of Red Alert and Sup Com, but the glory of Godfather 2 definitely lies in the gore, not the iPod white world-map.

Straight after the training mission we were promptly told that we had to get started right away by claiming our first bit o’ turf. The brothel down the road would be an excellent place to start said one faux-Italian voice actor from behind his digitised mask.

Fair enough, we wandered into the reception of our office and sized up several young hopefuls. With only the capital to hire one loon for the moment, we picked an appropriately greasy looking arsonist, bundled into the car and set off on our way.


When we did get to the supposed brothel, we were a bit confused. It looked more like a grocers. Urged on by our fellow-in-arms though, we punched away past the cheery exterior and into a palatial stripclub. With low-level pink lighting and some fashionable music it seemed unlikely that the neighbours had any illusions about this mob-owned grocers. There were more bouncing boobs than you’d see at Boris Johnson’s Nude Trampoline Party!

It was at this point that one of the games developers crept up and whispered in our ears that they had really wanted to open the game with a bang, not the disappointingly low-level missions of the first game. Or, at least, it was words to the effect. It’s hard to tell because we weren’t really paying attention. Boobs!

Spurred out of our reveries by the shocked murmurs on the other side of the room as another journalist got into a fistfight with a hooker, we continued on to the brothel’s nerve centre. Here we got into some fisticuffs of our own as one of the guards popped out a pistol and tried to ward us off, but we were able to knock the gun away and finish him off with some nice knee-stomps and headbutts thanks to the improved Black Hand fighting system.


Through the guards, there’s just the boss left – a handy person to test out the new intimidation system on. Intimidation in Godfather 2 is the quasi-mini-game that’s used to take over some businesses and basically involves grabbing hold of the area boss and bashing him around a bit.

That bashing is a delicate business though – and a bar in the top right will monitor the stress level of the bashee. Knock them around to much and you risk killing them outright, losing their co-operation and meaning you’ll have to re-invade at a later date, when a more lively person is in charge.

The secret to getting intimidation right is to learn how much punishment someone can take then, as well as their weaknesses. In some people you can illicit controllable climbs in their stress by slamming their head on a table, while others need to be verbally threatened or see their stuff trashed. Some will soil themselves at the site of a gun or a knife, while others are terrified of heights. Learning which buttons to push and how hard to lean on them is essential to growing your empire, as well as using the controller.