The Godfather: Blackhand Edition

This is our new video-game reviews column written by Stephen Lea Sheppard, the actor behind two of our favorite characters of all time. First he was Harris Trinsky, the wise-beyond-his-years, flowing-haired Dungeon Master in Freaks & Geeks, then Dudley Heisenberg, that weird kid Bill Murray studies in The Royal Tenenbaums. In real life Stephen lives in British Columbia and writes tabletop role-playing-game books for lines like White Wolf’s Exalted and World of Darkness. He also serves on the moderation staff for the RPG.net forums. We don’t know anything about RPGs so we’re excited to have someone of Stephen’s expertise to keep us from sounding like a bunch of noobs and lamers. Plus, it’s Harris—Harris! We’re pretty starstruck.

THE GODFATHER: BLACKHAND EDITION

Platform: Wii

Publisher: EA

The Godfather: Blackhand Edition

is an engrossing game, despite completely missing the point of the movies and pretending to exist in a genre I like in theory but not practice. Why? Because it’s a turn-based strategy game about seizing territory, except not turn-based and

disguised

as a

Grand Theft Auto

clone. The heart of the game is extorting businesses and expanding the Corleone family’s influence into the territories of New York’s other four families. Capturing territory gives you more income, which you can use to buy better weapons and also teleport points (cunningly disguised as “apartments”). Doing stuff in general gives you experience points (cunningly disguised as “respect”), which you can use to upgrade your character. In between capturing territory, there are some missions I don’t care about that give me an excuse to try out the better weapons I’ve been buying. The missions interweave themselves poorly with the plot of the first movie, with decent voice acting by a Marlon Brando sound-alike and well-performed but atrociously written James Caan dialogue. It’s a credit to the latter that he did so well with what he had, but I still want to punch the Sonny polygon model in the face.

None of the associated crap matters. Expanding your territory is fun. Seizing the compounds of the other four families is fun. Driving around in a reasonably flavorful recreation of 1940s New York is fun. Choking a guy using the remote + nunchuk to make an actual choking motion is, uh, actually sort of disturbing, but I keep doing it. A

Godfather

video game could have been a miserable failure, and the elements I feared would make it such a failure are present, but underneath is a solid play experience to which I keep returning.

PS: I rented and watched all three

Godfather

movies before I played this game. I figured the game would be full of spoilers. I was right. I would advise anyone else in a similar position to do as I did.

STRANGLEHOLD

Platform: Xbox 360

Publisher: Midway Games

Stranglehold

is the video game sequel to the movie

Hard Boiled

. Like

The Godfather

, I hadn’t seen

Hard Boiled

until asked to review this game. Unlike

The Godfather

, I played the game a bit before watching the movie. I wish I hadn’t, and I won’t make that mistake again.

Stranglehold

is more fun knowing what it’s based on, and I went and formed my first impression without that knowledge. Oops.

Essentially,

Stranglehold

is

Max Payne

, with current-gen graphics, controls optimized for console play, John Woo directing, and Chow Yun-Fat lending his voice and likeness to the protagonist.

Stranglehold

seems to rip a lot of things directly from

Max Payne

(like the shoot-dodge, where the game automatically goes into slow motion when you leap), except leaping sideways out from behind a table with two guns blazing is something

Max Payne

either ripped straight from John Woo or ripped from a source that ripped it from John Woo, so I’m not complaining.

Enter the Matrix

didn’t steal

Max Payne’s

bullet time either.

I own

Max Payne 2

for Xbox, and hate it. I played

Max Payne 1

on PC at a cousin’s house and didn’t hate that, so I blame the console controls. But I don’t hate

Stranglehold. Stranglehold

is almost an intuitive joy to play—the only problem is the “leap” button and the “get on top of a narrow ledge or railing and run along it” button are the same button, and sometimes when I want to get on top of a narrow ledge or railing and run along it, I leap instead. Instead of being an intuitive joy, it’s just pretty fun.

Considering that

Stranglehold

is supposed to be

Hard Boiled

’s sequel, the characterization of the police chief annoys me a bit. He falls into the Dirty Harry, stupid, by-the-book chief stereotype (“I’ve had it, McBane! Give me your badge!”) a bit more than I can stomach. But this game seeks to embody genre clichés rather than surpass them. The plot of

Hard Boiled

didn’t just have more depth than the plot of

Stranglehold

, it raised more intelligent questions (actually

Stranglehold

doesn’t raise any questions, not even dumb ones), so the game is pretty lackluster as a sequel. That’s sort of sad—I’d like to see a game that’s not just a sequel to a good movie, but a worthy sequel. That’d be neat. This isn’t it.

But those complaints are minor. The gameplay is repetitive and imperfect, but good enough. Chow Yun-Fat seems to be having fun with the voice acting—the lines are cheesy, but he sounds like he’s delivering them with an impish grin. It’s short, it’s not the next blockbuster multiplayer or sandbox hit, the story is not especially gripping, the graphics are not mind-blowingly exceptional for an Xbox 360 title, and there’s not a lot of replay value, but I enjoy the interface, I enjoy the mechanics of play, I enjoy the performer, and I enjoy his performance.

Stranglehold

is as worth playing as any video game is.

NEED FOR SPEED: CARBON

Platform: Wii

Publisher: EA

My previous experience with racers has been limited to the

Mario Kart, Extreme G,

and

F-Zero

games, the N64

Cruisin’ USA

port, the original

Gran Tourismo

, and

SSX3

(which isn’t cars). So I was surprised at how much I like this thing, especially since I’m terrible at it. I’m still mastering basic concepts of pacing and traction, and I can’t win waypoint races to save my life nor evade police pursuit once about eight cars are pursuing me, but I keep putting the disc back into the machine. It’s because I suck that it’s so much fun—every time I run a race I get a bit better. Right now it’s my third most played Wii game, next to

Resident Evil 4

and

The Godfather: Blackhand Edition

.

STEPHEN LEA SHEPPARD