Games time forgot: The Godfather: Blackhand Edition

6:24 PM on 07.03.2007   |   Anthony Burch

43 comments

I'll be the first one to admit it -- I talk about this week's forgotten game far too much. I've off-handedly mentioned it in official Destructoid reviews, I've frequently touted it as an example of what Wii ports should be, and I once devoted an entire Rev Rant to it. 

Yet in the same way that men who have just gone through messy breakups will invariably mention their ex in asides and digressions in the secret hope that someone will ask them to express their true feelings at length before giving up and deciding to divulge their feelings themselves, I now find it necessary to stop the tiptoing and devote an entire GTF article to a game that I personally feel is the single best title on the Wii.*

If you wrote off Blackhand Edition as "just another port" or "just another crappy GTA clone," then hit the jump for the details: it ain't perfect, but it's one hell of a fun ride.

I'm also aware that this game might be considered far too new to warrant a "games time forgot" entry, but consider it -- have you played the game? Do you know of anyone else who has? I fear that for all its strengths, Blackhand's status as "yet another Wii port" might have helped the majority of gamers forget it already. Anyway, there's a jump. And you should hit it.

*Longest. Sentence. Ever. 

Story:

Just to get the game's faults out of the way as quickly as possible, it has a positively horrendous story. While it does a decent job of following the events of the film (the player will avenge Luca Brasi's death, chase down Sonny's murderers, and take part in every murder shown in the baptism montage at the film's climax), the rest of the story leaves much to be desired.

The protagonist, an Italian-American of with a user-defined appearance and name, is a positively irritating character thanks to his sole personality trait of blind obedience. The voice acting from Robert Duvall and James Caan is awkward. The moments where the game story overlaps with the film story are forced and illogical (why would Michael Corleone force one man, and one man alone to kill the other heads of the five families?). To put it simply, you won't be playing this game for its engaging storyline.

Gameplay:

The good news is that, apart from the storyline, the game is fun as hell. The Godfather was decently entertaining on its other systems (PS2, PS3, 360) through its GTA framework wrapped around a gameplay style heavily reliant on business acquisition. It's still an action game at its core, but it does, on occasion, reward diplomacy over violence (legitimately buying a storefront will earn you a greater return on it than if you had chosen to muscle the previous owner into giving it to you). Like GTA: Vice City and Scarface, the game also does an adequate job of making the player truly feel like he or she is building a vast empire: with every enemy warehouse taken down, and every storefront purchased, the Corleone family's influence gets larger and larger and larger.

But all that said, the Wii edition is where the title truly shines: in addition to adding more missions, characters, and sidequests, The Godfather: Blackhand Edition exhibits the best Wiimote utilization yet seen on the system. 

Keep in mind that I am not exaggerating when I say this. There are two main problems with Wiimote controls in Wii games, be they ports or original titles:

1. The Wiimote gestures only function as a replacement for button presses (swordfighting in Twilight Princess or Red Steel)

2. There isn't enough variety in the Wiimote gestures (combat in Spider-Man 3)

Thankfully, Blackhand Edition avoids both of these pitfalls. As the above video shows, the controls can be somewhat unresponsive at times, but once you've got the hang of them you'll wonder how you ever worked with a traditional dual-analog remote. To further elaborate, I'll tackle each aspect of the Wiimote implementation individually:

Shooting is handled using the Wii pointer. Nothing special, but it does the job adequately.

Melee combat utilizes Wiimote gestures, but rather than a slapdash "shake the Wiimote to attack" method of combat, each gesture does something different. Jabbing the Wiimote forward results in a jab, moving the Wiimote across your body results in a cross, and bringing both Wiimote and nunchuck down at the same time deals a power smash. While this is technically the same as Red Steel's broken swordplay system, the controls feel much tighter, faster, and more accurate in Blackhand. Even when using the baseball bat or the garrote, the Wiimote gestures do a great job of matching what happens onscreen, resulting in a tactile, visceral, and brutal combat system.

Grabbing is a simple Wii manuever that makes a world of difference. Target a baddie using the Z button on the nunchuck, and grab him with the B button on the Wiimote. Since both of your hands are tightly gripping the controllers and their buttons, the game essentially recreates the feel of grabbing something. After an enemy has been grabbed, the player can literally move his hands to the left or right to shake the enemy to the left or right, punch the baddie, slam him against tables, walls, or countertops by using a "slam" motion, headbutt the bastard (quickly move Wiimote and nunchuck up so they're parallel to your head) or -- my personal favorite -- you can throw him.

Essentially, the player grabs an enemy and quickly moves his hands in one direction, as the onscreen avatar swings the grasped baddie to the left or the right. Instead of continuing to hold onto the Z and B buttons, however, the player lets go of both buttons, and the avatar similarly releases his grip on the baddie. Since the player let go of the baddie as he was being swung in one direction, the baddie continues moving in that direction, having essentially been "thrown" by the player. It may sound complicated written out, but in the context of the game, it's a simple, streamlined process that feels completely natural. The Wiimote and nunchuck truly feel like extensions of the player's hands, and before long the average player will effortlessly grab people and throw them around without a second thought. There were many times when I found myself unable to resist the urge to grab a baddie atop a high-rise building, say something clever, and throw him over the edge whilst cackling maniacally.

And, of course, you can choke bitches.

In addition to the fact that you will be realistically reproducing these violent moves with your own two hands, the player's avatar can also be catered to look exactly like the player, thus adding another level of immersiveness. It's an oddly cool feeling to punch an imaginary mobster in the real world, and then see an identical virtual representation of yourself (in much nicer clothing) recreate the same movement within the confines of the game. In other words, the controls and character customization are the exact sort of thing that would have gotten the game banned in Europe, had it not been virutally free of blood or nudity. 

Granted, the gameplay is not perfect by any means -- while you honk by thrusting the nunchuck forward, actual driving is handled using the boring old analog stick; many of the missions are repetitive; and many of the storefronts and warehouses look almost identical to one another -- but what flaws are there are pleasantly easy to overlook in favor of the title's fantastic controls and its overall immersion factor.

Why You Probably Haven't Played It:

As said earlier, Godfather: Blackhand Edition is spectacularly easy to ignore. Most all other Wii ports suck, and while calling the game a GTA clone isn't exactly incorrect, it ignores the fun to be had in building a vast empire and hanging around in 1940's New York City. 

What I find most irritating is that gamers -- not just Wii bashers, but gamers in general -- continue making statements in the vein of "there are no violent games on the Wii," and/or "the Wii is just for kids." I have to imagine that these people have never experienced Blackhand; while the game doesn't actually contain that much visual gore, the tactile interactivity of the controls adds a whole new level of brutal, visceral violence to the game -- it's very difficult not to perform an execution move with a baseball bat without exclaming something along the lines of "JESUS CHRIST IN A GODDAMN CHICKEN BASKET." The level of physical immersion will no doubt serve as fodder for anti-game crusaders in the future, but its implementation in The Godfather makes an otherwise average game something truly memorable. 

Again, Blackhand's Wii controls are the best available out of any game in the entire Wii library: fun as Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition is, its Wiimote implementation doesn't hold a candle to the gesture use found in Blackhand. The Godfather: Blackhand Edition was literally redesigned from the ground up as an entirely new game for the Wii, and it shows: none of the Wiimote actions feel like unnatural replacements for button presses. To be completely honest, I can't recommend it enough.

For a port, it isn't exactly cheap ($45 on Amazon), but it's definitely worth the price. It's not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but given Wii's current library, you could certainly do worse.