Preview: The Godfather II multiplayer

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That’s right, boys and girls, The Godfather II is getting itself a multiplayer mode, and it’s not going to be an afterthought like many felt Grand Theft Auto IV’s was! People are actually going to want to play the multiplayer, as all of the money and honors you earn during it will transfer back to the single-player game.

There is a catch, though — you can’t actually play the multiplayer right away. You have to play the single-player game first, up until you get to New York (which takes about twenty minutes so it’s not a real big deal). Why? Because you can only play multiplayer as one of the seven crew members from your family.

Hit the jump to find out all about how single-player and multiplayer intersect with each other in The Godfather II.

Like many of you out there, I played Grand Theft Auto IV’s multiplayer a few times. It was fun, but after the fourth time playing online, I found myself getting really bored of it. I think the main problem with it was that all of the multiplayer modes were all in Liberty City. Freedom is nice, but when you have an entire city like Liberty City as your map, it can get pretty annoying.

With The Godfather II, the multiplayer is all set on maps designed to best take advantage of your crew. Maps will range from small-sized maps suited for four players, to large maps suited for 16 players. Maps are also designed around the various skill members of your crew.

There will only be four game modes in the initial release of The Godfather II, and three of them are based on your crew members’ abilities:

  • Fire Starter: Crew members with the arsonist skill need to run around on the map setting key objects on fire. Unlike the other modes, players earn a multiplier every time they set something on fire. Players with a multiplier will glow green and whoever kills said person will receive the opponent’s multiplier.
  • Safe Cracker: Guys with the safe cracking ability will go around cracking open all of the safes on the map. The other team can take safes back and it’s a tug of war as safes are constantly switching ownerships until the end of a round.
  • Demolition Assault: Each side has three locations that each team needs to blow up. Players have to guard their own locations as well as launching attacks against the other team.

The fourth mode is the requisite team deathmatch mode. All of the multiplayer modes are team-based, and there won’t be any type of Free-For-All gametypes. Don’t expect any racing modes, either, as there won’t be any cars in multiplayer.

I stressed in my earlier preview that it is important to upgrade your crew members, as they are extremely helpful to you in the single-player game. All of the stats, upgrades, and skills your crew have from the single-player mode will transfer over to online play, since you’re playing as one of the crew members. All of the money that you’re earning in multiplayer will also go back to the single-player game. With all of the extra money you’re earning, it would be wise to upgrade your crew members’ stats. It would make a world of difference if you were to upgrade the arsonist’s use-time, so instead of taking five seconds to start a fire, it would only take three.

You’ll also be able to obtain stronger weapons through the multiplayer. In the beginning of both single- and multiplayer, you’re stuck with level-one weapons. You can find stronger weapons within the game world of the single-player, or you can earn better weapons through the multiplayer. Earning honors in the multiplayer will get players access to stronger weapons in the single-player that they can then bring back with them into the multiplayer.

All of the weapons I used with were only level-one items, so I’m curious to see what the higher-powered weapons will feel like.  Players won’t have auto-locking in multiplayer, by the way, which is good as it would have reduced the challenge.

Previewing the multiplayer mode, we had the option of choosing from characters that have two skills, or going with the characters that have all six skills from the start. Everyone kept picking the guys with six skills, so it was difficult to gauge any element of strategy in the multiplayer modes.

It will take players a while before they can get their own mobster with six skills, as it will be a pretty significant time investment. Most players will begin with only one skill, so they will really need to act as a team when playing online. Say you’re playing on a Safe Cracker gametype, but you only have the demolition skills. That’s not a bad thing, as all of the maps make use of all the skills. You can blow up a couple of walls as the “demo,” which can create a shortcut for everyone — for example, it lets the safe cracker get to safes faster. Plus, you’ll want to guard the safe cracker while he’s busy cracking a safe.

Executions are in the multiplayer as well, and it’s so much more satisfying shoving a machine gun barrel in someone’s mouth while online. When a player has taken too much damage, they have three options. They can wait for a guy with a medic skill to come heal them, they can furiously press the Y button to make the death countdown timer go down faster, or they can watch as someone violates them in some manner through an execution. There will be proximity voice chat, so expect a lot of smack talking happening during final moments.

Overall, I really liked the multiplayer mode. I can see people coming back to it time and time again, as they will actually have a good reason to do so. My major issue here is that there is so little coming with the game when it ships. There’s only a handful of maps and just four game typesw, which doesn’t seem like enough. There will be DLC, of course, which is sadly probably the reason why there isn’t much to the multiplayer from the start.

The Godfather II is developed and published by Electronic Arts. It will be out February 2009 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.


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