The Xbox 360 Version
Like many Electronic Arts games initially published on current gen consoles, The Godfather is essentially the same game with minor visual and gameplay upgrades. If you played the current-gen version, this plays exactly the same as the first game, but every so often you'll see or experience a surprising little tweak. The 360 version now packs new special visual effects, additional missions, tweaked AI, Xbox Live leaderboards and Achievements, and most significantly, hirable crew members. There are other minor additions, but these are the most substantial ones. These additions bring the game up to par with next-gen Xbox 360 titles, but they don't push the game into any unexplored territory.
Visually, The Godfather won't garner any medals from the Annual Graphics Tart Critic Awards, but there are some standout qualities. These include outrageously cool new fire explosions, enhanced particle effects and facial texture maps on key characters, a cleaned-up map, dynamic weather, self-shadowing, and persistent face damage. Of these, the explosions are freaking radical (blow up a car with a few Molotov Cocktails and you'll see) and the weather is likeable. You'll drive down the street, see lighting flash across the sky, hear thunder a few seconds later, and then rain will come pouring down. Simple stuff, really, but it adds a little touch. The self-shadowing is adequate, while the facial damage looks more like your character just slept in a pig trough or smeared his face with Nutella than suffering actual facial injury. EA made a bunch of nice additions to the Mobface tool, including a better interface and more clothes, hats and items to distinguish your character.
The Achievements (explained below) are smartly distributed, so Achievement freaks will need to hunker down and play a lot of The Godfather to collect them all. But it's the homies, or I mean, the new "hirable crew members," that add one of the biggest tweaks to gameplay. Once you earn the rank of enforcer, you can hire a thug to follow you around and kill other Italian mobsters. The AI works well enough. They'll follow you almost anywhere, except for save spots and some missions, and they deliver a beating and take shots for you too. You can revitalize them, too. Crew members are particularly helpful with warehouse and compound raids, which helps a lot. EA also added new blackhand attacks and the ability to have bribed cops fight alongside you, which notably enhance the game.
