The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (GC, PC, PS2, XBox, GBA)
It’s kind of cheating, sure, but this game features beautiful cinematic cutscenes directed by Peter Jackson and narrated by Sir Ian McKellan. How in the hell are you going to beat that? Considering this is just seven years after Resident “Don’t Open That Door!” Evil, that’s like going from crawling to running so fast your bones come out of your body. That could really happen. What I’m saying is, this game is incredibly immersive, and I was always afraid to run that fast as a kid, because of the bones thing.
I remember when Uncharted 2 was described to me as a game that would blow your mind with the seamless way it transitioned from cutscene to playable sequence. And that’s exactly the impression it made on me. Return of the King does the opposite. This game blows your mind when it clearly becomes a video game again and says, “Here, you take the wheel for a while.” The image on screen morphs from filmed footage to your controllable polygon characters, and it’s a rush every damn time.
The episodic game tasks you with navigating three storylines to their shared conclusion. You’ll fight as hobbits, heroes, and Gandalf the wizard as you reenact a bunch of the movie’s incredible fight scenes.‘Epic,’ is a ruined word, but this game feels epic. I just think it’s so cool that Return of the King doesn’t have to embellish the action of a movie to make it a worthwhile video game. Also, if you’re anything like me, you’ll put off the giant spider bit for as long as possible. Fuck all that.
The game benefits from your assumed familiarity with the source material and sort of gets to fast forward around to get to the parts you’d most want to play. Some of the scenes feel like they kind of overlap each other, but maybe that’s just to make sure you’re getting it. Or because everyone’s storylines overlap from time to time. What are ya gonna do?
Return of the King also has a replayability that few of these games have. Things like local co-op, replaying levels as different characters, and permanent upgrades are enough to inspire many comforting replays, not unlike the rewatchability of the Peter Jackson films. Basically, this is everything an adaptation of an Oscar winning movie should be. Now would someone make a Gladiator or Braveheart game?
The Godfather (PS2, PS3, Xbox, 360, Wii, PC, PSP)
It’s crazy that this even exists, and isn’t surprising at all to find out that this game pissed Francis Ford Coppola off something fierce. This is from the PS2 era of movie games that I think of as “Yeah, But What Was Everybody Else Doing?” Games. Not a conventional retelling of the movie, or an imagined sequel ala Ghostbusters: The Video Game or The Goonies II, no, these were games that showed you what a bunch of minor characters did while pivotal events of their movies happened to the main characters. The Godfather, Reservoir Dogs, and Enter the Matrix all did this to various degrees, and it’s certainly an interesting approach, banking on players wanting to hang out with the supporting cast of their favorite stuff.
With that, there’s a lot in The Godfather for the Sonny Corleone-heads of the world. The opening cutscene sees our protagonist watch his father get gunned down in an execution that is not quite as excessive as James Caan’s in the film, but recalls it nonetheless. Similarly, the game’s hand to hand combat is seemingly modeled on that one scene where Sonny kicks the shit out of that guy in the street. You just wail on these guys, man. It’s wild.
In addition to nods like that, the game also cleverly sets its opening scenes at Connie Corleone’s wedding, same as the film. It’s easy to make fun of stuff like this if you want, but I thought it was a pretty unforced way to do this, and seeing Vito Corleone take other requests on the day of his daughter’s wedding day than what we see in the film makes perfect sense. Sadly though, by the time you’ve stashed a gun in a restaurant bathroom and put a horse’s decapitated head in a Hollywood producer’s bed, it starts to wear a little thin. You eventually realize you are actually the Forrest Gump of The Godfather films. I’m surprised there’s not a tutorial scene that has you deliver a stray cat to Don Corleone.
Fans of the movie will probably appreciate all of these details, just as they’ll probably say “Oh no,” when they realize you’re taken under the wing of Corleone enforcer Luca Brasi, AKA “Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes,” AKA one of the most famous murders in cinema history. So yeah, this guy gets brutally murdered, too. We have ourselves a plot.
Spending the game’s first few hours watching everyone you love get brutally executed gangland style definitely endears you to the character, although that is undone a little bit by the rest of those first few hours being spent pummeling local shopkeepers and college kids that don’t fight back. But hey, you’re a wiseguy. Pressing triangle to extort people is actually a rather prevalent part of this game. I like that there’s no pretense of a morality system here. You will go to the bakery, you will shake the man down, you will kill his friends when they try to help him. Have fun!
As for the setting, the New York City portrayed in the game is alive. Like, really alive. Mostly with criminal activity. Other gunfights are happening, and people are routinely running through the streets screaming about some shit that has nothing to do with you. It’s infectious, and I would often join in, just for the fun of it. There are a lot of elements that make this game feel like Grand Theft Auto, but at times like this, it feels more like State of Emergency. Remember State of Emergency? No? Okay. That’s fine.
The Godfather has some things going for it, namely inspired source material and A-list actors reprising iconic roles, all in a genre that was relatively well-suited for it, but the overall experience gets lost somewhere along the way. As a Godfather adaptation, it’s a bit inconsistent, balancing movie easter eggs with an original plot that sees you climbing the ranks of the mob, going from iconic moments to uninspired filler. As a Grand Theft Auto clone, the world looks nice, but aside from some standard collectibles, there’s no real inspiration or reward for exploring the open world freely, as pivotal a part of the GTA experience as the cars, guns, and paper-thin satire.
Ultimately, as one of a dozen games like this that came out that year, it’s fine, above average really. As an adaptation of one of cinema’s finest achievements? It uh, sleeps with the fishes or some shit.
The Godfather, Part II (360, PS3, PC)
Okay, how many of you knew about this? I had no idea. I knew about the first one despite never playing it, and this one is hardly some obscure indie game, but I had no idea they made it. I almost turned this in two days ago with a whole damn game left off it. Now I’m having nightmares that I’ll publish this and be notified in the comments that there was actually a pretty fun Super Dances With Wolves game on the SNES or something. Sigh.
Anyway, after having spent some time with this series, these are actually pretty interesting games. Of course they are Grand Theft Auto ripoffs, there’s no way around it. Pull people out of their cars and take those cars to meet a guy to get your next mission. I’m not here to challenge that narrative, but I do think it’s fascinating that both of these games actually predate the specific title you’d think they jacked.
The Godfather is set in a grimey New York City, with many a sepia toned beatdown taking place underneath the L train as you start small and claw your way up the criminal underworld. It couldn’t evoke GTAIV any more than if a drunken Roman stumbled by and asked you where the girls were. And here Godfather Part II’s setting expands to two more locations, incorporating criminal adventures in Miami and Cuba now. Not the same as three controllable protagonists, but the bouncing around between three locations is very, very Grand Theft Auto V. To go back and play these games now, it seems obvious which specific games they took inspiration from, but The Godfather beat GTAIV by two full years, and Part II beat V by four years. So yeah, I’m gonna say it, Grand Theft Auto games are nothing but Godfather rip-offs. Rockstar just has too much power to ever be taken to task. It’s over for the little guy.
Like its source material, The Godfather, Part II is a creative evolution of what came before, unlikely to win over any new fans or disappoint many that played the first and are seeking out the further digital adventures of the Corleones. Once again, the game’s plot slots nicely alongside the movie while awkwardly telling a new one of its own. Naturally, it gets more ridiculous than the movie. As much as I would’ve liked the film to end with a hot young mafioso taking down and blowing up every rival mob faction in three distinct parts of North America, I get why Coppola cut that stuff out of the script. It’s just a lot of explosions for a meditation on death and betrayal.
The game’s closing moments highlight a shortcoming of the GTA style games. Missions in games like this often see you accumulate a body count in the dozens, ping ponging between murder sprees destined for history books and outrunning cops from one to the next. There’s no weight to any of it, it’s just what you have to do to move on. Mario collects coins, Duke Nukem collects ex wives, and people in games like this blow up entire city blocks if their boss asks them nicely. It makes sense, and I wouldn’t have it otherwise, but these games always go from shit like this to cut scenes where one specific death is supposed to be impactful. I killed a thousand men, but the only emotion this game evoked from me is a parting shot at the end, featuring Fredo in a canoe.
Also, there’s no flashback stuff. So while Robert Duvall and Abe Vigoda once again bring an authenticity and familiarity to the affair, there’s no Sicily stuff, no young Vito stuff. I don’t know what I would’ve had them do, but they could’ve found a way to fit the whole movie in there. Boo!
This game underperformed, causing EA to announce they weren’t going to make any more Godfather titles. That’s right, those filthy pigs would’ve tried to sell you a Godfather, Part III game if they had half a chance. Now, who are the real criminals?
