Earlier this year, a couple of game developers let me in on one of their secrets: They intentionally play bad games. They play the stuff you or I would avoid not to learn what to avoid, but to learn what to do and imitate. They told me that good ideas lurk everywhere, and no one else is looking in the bad games.

The game developers who told me their technique do not work for Rockstar Games. As far I know, they've had no hand at making Grand Theft Auto games. But if they did, I hope they would play EA's Godfather II, the most flawed of 2009's big-publisher open-world games.

Godfather II is a broken, sputtering jalopy of a game. To use a more apt metaphor, it is an open world beset by blight, the digital equivalent of a city where the bridges are crumbling and the water mains are about to burst. It has bland graphics, poor artificial intelligence, awkward story, etc.

And yet, after playing through it and THQ's new Red Faction, Sony's inFamous, Activision's Prototype and Rocsktar's Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, I believe Godfather II surpasses those more enjoyable 2009 open-world games in a crucial way: You matter in it more. It's more alive. It knows that you're in it. And it reacts to you.

Prototype's New York collapses to its red-sky ruin regardless of your actions. You surf its avalanche, chipping at rocks along the way, but the tumble is brutal and inexorable.

Red Faction's Martian colony towers do fall from your sledgehammer swings, but the swelling revolution that brings its citizens to take up arms against the police authority feels no more the product of your actions than a river's current feels determined by how you swipe your hand through the water.

In Grand Theft Auto IV, Liberty City stands unaffected by your mayhem, your impact noted only by new hysteria chattered on its radio stations. Like a good New Yorker, Rockstar's fake New York barely bats an eye at what you're doing in it.

The Empire City of inFamous bears more of your mark. The game comes closest to what Godfather II achieves, but it is still EA's crime adventure that manages to make its location feel most organic.

The method for the Godfather II's best success doesn't sound sexy. What happens in the New York, Florida and Cuba of the game is a property-control simulation. It's a dull-on-paper conquest of gambling dens, auto chop shops and whorehouses, committed sometimes at the hands-dirty ground level of the GTA games it apes. You, a mafia don, walk into a warehouse where a rival mob family runs guns and kill every rival mafioso who shoots at you before shaking down the warehouse's boss, extorting him, adding him to your income ledger and watching his property turning your color on the game's map. Other times, conquest occurs from the map's god view or, more likely, in the background, as the orders you delivered to the men in your mob family are executed off-screen. While you drive to one location for another mission that could have been in GTA III, you're notified that your capo took over a nightclub or that your foot soldiers stormed a waterfront factory. You told them to.

The prize accomplishment of Godfather II is that the mob families controlled by the game try to do all of that to you. They attack your properties. They try to take them over. They recognize your rising influence and push back. They necessitate that you send your underboss, who would otherwise be fighting at your side as a computer-controlled ally, from your ground-level crew to defend a money-making property. A rival capo you've marked for death and planned to throw off a bridge might instead show up storming the brothel you fought hard to take over. He's going at you on his own time.

The result is a game that registers the grand violence you perpetrate in its open world and retaliates. The results aren't smooth. At ground level, Godfather II crumbles. Enemies have poor intelligence; allies shoot at walls. Guns dropped by killed mobsters float in the air. The cities are cartoonishly shrunken, the game's graphics primitive and plain. But what is occurring within that mess and what is occurring off-screen feels like it has breath and life.

This landscape lives. Godfather's three regions are not prop cities or sets of cardboard walls. This New York is not just a doormat on which you may wipe your feet. It is a place that seems to know that you are in it and does something about it.

I'd rather look at Empire City. I'd prefer to drive through Liberty City or fight on Red Faction's Mars. I will, nevertheless, still yearn for the next open-world game that I play to react in the way Godfather II did. I want the game's world to remember the heat and stamp of my actions beyond the conclusion of the given mission I'm playing and to fire back. I want it all to feel alive. And I won't believe such things can be accomplished only or best in a broken-down Godfather game.

I got going on this idea because my first night on the job for Kotaku — covering a Godfather II event — I sliced my foot open and spent the next week limping from junket to junket. But whenever I thought I had it bad as a games journalist, I'd always remind myself that journalists in video games usually have it way worse. They wade through zombies, deal with emotionally unstable people and more often than not wind up on the front lines of wars and stuff. They're the ones that deserve a bottle of Cristal and a hug. But instead, they get this photo gallery.

Taylor — Suikoden 5
[Image Cred]

Irene Ellet — Valkyria Chronicles
[Image Cred]

Frank West — Dead Rising
[Image Cred]

Elena Fisher — Uncharted
[Image Cred]

Joseph Schreiber — Silent Hill 4

Keith Helm — Disaster Report
[Image Cred]

Ben Bertolucci — Resident Evil 2
[Image Cred]

Ulala — Space Channel 5

Everyone — Michigan: Report From Hell (never came out in North America)
[Image Cred]

Madison Paige — Heavy Rain
[Image Cred]

Laura Parton - D2

Keats — Folklore
[Image Cred]

Maya Amano - Persona 2: Eternal Punishment

Alyssa - Resident Evil: Outbreak
[Image Cred]

I give honorable mentions to the news announcers in King of Fighters 12, the sportscaster characters in any sports game ever and one to Reuben Oluwagembi in Far Cry 2 (couldn't find a good enough picture of him). Other than that, these are all I've got — hit me up in the comments if you think of more. Owen Good nominated Paperboy I assume on grounds that he would have been promoted to copyeditor by now, but I don't know...

P.S. I still have the cork from that bottle of Cristal in my purse. It reminds me of everything that's happened in the last year and how much of it I owe to Kotaku. Here's looking at another year of blogging!

The representative that contacted me said that the company wanted to make sure that the brass knuckles were "properly disposed of." He declined to comment any further. Contacted by email Friday, an Electronic Arts spokesperson verified that the company is asking that all of the brass knuckles shipped out be returned.

Brass knuckles or metallic knuckles are illegal in many of the states that they were shipped to. They're also illegal in California, where EA is based.

In Colorado, possessing an illegal weapon is a class 1 misdemeanor, according to a Denver police spokeswoman. Illegal weapons are defined as a blackjack, gas gun, metallic knuckles, gravity knife, or switchblade knife.

Electronic Arts did not respond to emails seeking comment about the legality of the items they shipped and whether they faced any legal actions for shipping them across state lines.

UPDATE: After a little research we found that according to California Penal Code even shipping brass knuckles may be illegal.

According to California Penal Code Section 12020(a), it is illegal to for someone to:

Manufactures or causes to be manufactured, imports into the state, keeps for sale, or offers or exposes for sale, or who gives , lends, or possesses any cane gun or wallet gun, any undetectable firearm, any firearm which is not immediately recognizable as a firearm, any camouflaging firearm container, any ammunition which contains or consists of any flechette dart, any bullet containing or carrying an explosive agent, any ballistic knife, any multiburst trigger activator, any nunchaku, any short-barreled shotgun, any short-barreled rifle, any metal knuckles, any belt buckle knife, any leaded cane, any zip gun, any shuriken, any unconventional pistol, any lipstick case knife, any cane sword, any shobi-zue, any air gauge knife, any writing pen knife, any metal military practice handgrenade or metal replica handgrenade, or any instrument or weapon of the kind commonly known as a blackjack, slungshot, billy, sandclub, sap, or sandbag.

The law is punishable by a imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year or in state prison.

We've contacted EA for comment and will update when and if they get back to us.

Thanks to Jesse Ma for additional research for this article.

The upgrade packs will go on sell on April 23 on the Playstation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace and will sell for $4 to $10.

The Pentangeli Map Pack ( $6.75 / 540 points): Download for the all-new Cuba multiplayer map and the Junkyard multiplayer map.

Level 4 Weapons Bundle ($4.00 / 320 points): Download this collection to receive the Modern Dillinger, the .700 Magnum Impact, the Herzstopper, the MG-S1 Sniper Wolfe, and the Street Sweeper.

Jack of All Trades ($4.00 / 320 points): Download Jimmy Lira – the Jack of All Trades to have this character in your family. Jimmy Lira starts out with the arsonist, engineer, medic, and safecracker specialties and comes equipped with a level 2 machine gun – the MP38.

The Corleone Bundle (All of the above) ($10.00 / 800 points): Download the multiplayer map pack, the level 4 Weapons Bundle, and the Jack of All Trades (Jimmy Lira) crew member.

So on launch day you can download a free multiplayer mode for the game, and now EA is planning on selling weapons, maps and a character? Sounds like they're experimenting with DLC. Thoughts?

EA Announces The Godfather II Premium Upgrade Packs

EA head-honcho John Riccitiello announced that the game was going to be delayed at the beginning of the month saying that the game needed "a better launch window and more time for longer lead marketing."

He was also concerned that the game was initially set to launch into "a very cluttered, price reduced, excess inventory channel both in North America and Europe in a heavily competitive environment."

Now it looks like their main competition will be The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, Madworld and Velvet Assassin.

But what does the executive producer of the game think about all of this? He's so relaxed he oozes quotes about how wonderful his title is.

"The Godfather II is taking the open-world genre in an entirely new direction by combining the furious combat of acting like a mobster, with the strategic gameplay of thinking like a Don," says Hunter Smith, Executive Producer for The Godfather II. "As game makers, when we looked at what lies at the heart of the Godfather universe, we discovered a game focused around organized crime. The Corleones and all the other families schemed and fought to gain access and control of different territories, so that they could control the flow of money in those areas. This underlying battle cloaked secrecy is what The Godfather II and mafia life is all about, and we wanted players to be in control as a Don and make those strategic decisions to lead their families to success."

The estate of Puzo, who died in 1999, sued Paramount Pictures Corp., which licensed the game to Electronic Arts. The two sides appeared headed for trial until the agreement late Friday. Its terms were not disclosed.

"We think it's a terrific settlement," said Bert Fields, the lawyer for the Puzo estate, Bert Fields. "This involved one of the most admired films of all time."

EA was not involved in the lawsuit. The litigation has nothing to do with the game's delayed release into April. EA moved it out to make sure its release wasn't going up against the likes of Killzone 2, Halo Wars and Street Fighter IV.

Godfather Estate Settles Video Game Lawsuit [Agence France-Presse at Yahoo! via VE3D]

Players will be able to act like a mobster and think like a Don come late February, as the Godfather II ships to North American stores on the 24th, with Europe following soon after on the 27th.

Players who pre-order the game will be able to recruit Tommy Cipolla to their crew, a special multi-talented mobster who is both a medic and an arsonist, the two great tastes that taste great together. Tommy also comes equipped with a level 2 shotgun, whereas standard recruits only start with level one firearms. In the game, this means you gain a strategic advantage early on in your criminal career. In real life, Tommy would have just shot you and continued on with the game himself.

Build Your Crime Family in EA’s The Godfather II
Exclusive Crew Member, Tommy Cipolla, is Available Upon Pre-Order

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) and Paramount Digital Entertainment today announced that The Godfather® II videogame will be shipping on February 24th in North America and on February 27th in Europe. The Godfather II allows players to both act like a mobster and think like a Don, by immersing them in a 1960’s organized crime world. As a Don, players can build a crew and grow their family in an effort to become the most powerful mob syndicate in America. Players will be able to choose how and when to use their Made men, either by commanding them directly in battle as part of their crew, or by sending them to do a job in another part of the world – bombing rival family rackets, attacking their businesses, or defending your own.

Players who pre-order The Godfather II at participating retailers worldwide will receive an exclusive crew member, named Tommy Cipolla, to hire into their family. While the other soldiers at the start of the game come equipped with one specialty and level-one firearms, Tommy will be the only crew member to possess two specialties – arsonist and medic – as well as carry a level-two double-barreled shotgun. With Tommy in your family, players will have a strategic advantage in the game, using his advanced skills either directly in battle, or sending him to take over and defend rackets on his own.

The Godfather II takes the open-world genre in an entirely new direction. Part of the fascination with The Godfather fiction is the feeling of power that comes with being the Don of an organized crime family – and The Godfather II game puts the control in your hands. While at its heart The Godfather II remains an action game, it also features deep new strategic gameplay mechanics never before seen in an open-world game. The strategic elements to the game allow you to extend the fantasy of building and running your own organized crime family. This means that you have to build and invest in your family, manage your businesses, and reach out to corrupt officials – all of which is done through the revolutionary Don’s View. The Don’s View is a 3D representation of your criminal empire in all three cities; it allows you to coordinate your strategy, plan hits on rival Made men, attack enemy rackets, and much more. The Godfather II delivers the ultimate organized crime experience by allowing you to call the shots.

Developed at the EA Redwood Stores studio, The Godfather II will be coming to the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, and PC. The Godfather II has been rated M for Mature by the ESRB and 18+ for PEGI.

For more information about The Godfather franchise, please visit http://godfather2.ea.com and/or the EA press website at http://info.ea.com.

Now, five months later and following a real hands-on with the multiplayer, I can say the honeymoon is over.

Godfather II’s multiplayer is tied to the singleplayer mode in two crucial ways: money and gun licenses. In each of the six – count ‘em, six – multiplayer maps, players earn cash for killing other players on the opposite team, for performing any of their special abilities like healing teammates (Medic) or blowing things up (Arsonist), or for pulling off execution moves like stuffing the barrel of a Tommy Gun in someone’s mouth and pulling the trigger. The cash carries over into the singleplayer game, making it worth your while to cut fences and kill ass in multiplayer even if you can’t stand playing with real people just so you can buy the pimp hat and other cool things for your crew in singleplayer.

The second thing you earn by grinding in multiplayer are Honors, which also carry over into singleplayer by unlocking gun licenses for your crew to use. Each firearm (Tommy Gun, Sniper Rifle, etc.) has three levels that make the gun increasingly awesome as you earn the licenses for each. The level three sniper rifle can one-shot kill someone even if you don’t get them in the head.

“Why do gangsters need gun licenses?” fellow games journalist Adam Pavlacka quipped.

Why indeed. And why are there baseball bats? I never saw those in in any of the Godfather movies and I’m damn sure I never read about them in the book…

But I’m getting ahead of myself in the outrage department. I actually didn’t have a problem with the concept of carrying cash, gun levels and benefits back and forth between multiplayer and singleplayer – it sounds like a good idea. Singleplayer also ties into multiplayer because you’re choosing guys from the crew you create in singleplayer to use in online matches. Any levels or abilities they gain in singleplayer and whatever you customize about their “RPG stats” and costumes are carried over and can be crucial in forming a cohesive online team. You wouldn’t want to run a Fire Starter mission without an Arsonist, would you?

There are four online game modes to go with the six maps – Fire Starter, Demolition Assault, Safe Cracker and Team Deathmatch. Fire Starter is a race between the Blue and Red teams towards gas tanks marked on the map. Only characters with the Arsonist ability can set them alight – and can do it faster if they’ve got a stat buff in singleplayer. This is a big deal because it takes time to get that blaze going beneath a propane tank and while you do it, the other team will be trying to shoot you.

This is where your teammates come in – they’re supposed to protect you while you set fire to things. Each gas tank you burn grants you a cash multiplier and makes a green flame appear beneath your feet. If you get killed, you lose the multiplier and have to start setting things on fire all over again to build up scoring potential for your team. Demolition Assault and Safe Cracker are essentially the same in terms of goals, strategy and multipliers – only you’re blowing things up or cracking safes instead of setting gas tanks on fire. Meanwhile Team Deathmatch is exactly what it sounds like.

In Godfather II, the multiplayer is all about teamwork and strategy. Online Lead Designer Greg Rizzer said they didn’t want to create a multiplayer just for the sake of having a multiplayer – they wanted a system that was true to the “think like a Don, act like a gangster” motto of the Godfather II game. To that end, the maps are carefully balanced, entirely symmetrical and come with a recommended player number for maximum fairness. There’s also team chat which lets you talk to your crew or trash talk enemies that you’re standing near, and match-making options that let you exclude players with too high or too low a level.

The recommended player thing is definitely important. We got to try out Jungle Fortress – a level designed by Medal of Honor level designer Scott Swearingen – where the recommended number of players is six to eight. We were playing with a 16; the max amount Godfather II’s multiplayer can support. This turned our Fire Starter game into Deathmatch because we couldn’t take more than five steps without running into the enemy; never mind getting all the time we needed to set fire to gas tanks.

I was actually really frustrated at this event. I could see that the levels were intricately designed with hidden passageways and carefully placed cover items (walls, sandbags, etc.). But I felt like I couldn’t take advantage of them because 1) I didn’t have enough time to learn the maps, and 2) we weren’t getting to strategize with our teams (the venue was too noisy to use team chat and we had no idea who was who when we actually got in the game). So each match turned into every-man-for-himself shootouts and lurid explosions from overpowered Molotov cocktails – which made me die a little inside because Rizzer said the multiplayer wasn’t supposed to be a hackneyed throwaway mode.

I bet the multiplayer is great when it works – when you’re talking to your team, when you’ve figured out the maps, when you actually go by the recommended numbers. I really respect the amount of effort Rizzer and his team put into balancing the multiplayer and making it matter to the singleplayer mode.

But (here comes the outrage), the biggest failing of the Godfather II’s multiplayer mode is that it makes me feel like this is not a Godfather game. I had this feeling at the first Godfather II event – back then we were looking at the beginnings of singleplayer. But now that I’ve seen multiplayer, I really feel like this game has little if anything to do with the Academy Award-winning film on which it’s based beyond the voice talents of Robert Duvall. Instead of cunning subtlety and slick negotiations within the dual storylines of Vito Corleone and his son Michael, we get loud explosions and gratuitous gunplay to go with the disinterested voice of Tom Hagen plus Joe Blow and whatever dudes he pulls in off the street.

The multiplayer, while not horrid, only drives this point home like a shard of glass driven into my heart by a sledgehammer. And the fact that it’s tied into the singleplayer so directly only rubs it in that this game has more in common with Grand Theft Auto than it does with Mario Puzo’s masterpiece. I know it was that way the first Godfather game – but is it really so wrong of me to expect a sequel to improve where the original failed?

P.S. For fans of the hand-to-hand combat from the first game – yes, you can punch people in multiplayer, but there’s no grabbing. And the garrote only the works if you can sneak up on someone or are about to do an execution move.

Pictured: Online Lead Designer Greg Rizzer and The Ham.

EA isn’t pleading poverty when it comes to putting on this less-than-lavish multiplayer event (although the declining economy certainly has hit them in other areas). Rather, says PR Manager Scott Gamel, the publisher wanted to choose a venue that suited the game.

“It’s a multiplayer event,” Gamel said. “We wanted to pick a place [journalists] could get to from all around [San Francisco]."

As for the ham, he explained that the theme of this Godfather II shindig was “Cuba.” Other themed offerings included rice and bean dishes, chorizo sausage on toothpicks, and strawberries with pineapple and coconut.

It’s hard to make a case about publishers possibly stinting games journos on swag, food and drink – it’s all free, right? And it’s part of some diabolical scheme to make us like their games better anyway; so if we go without, we’re being more honest about the games we’re looking, right?

Oh, here's the t-shirt they gave me:

But I wonder how hard the economy is really hitting this narrow section of the industry. How much money would EA save by scaling back on the promotion events? And who, pray tell, decided to serve ham this close to Hanukkah? They have Jewish people in Cuba, you know.

New screens below and check out my multiplayer impressions.

Today, though, Electronic Arts officially unveiled the game which will go beyond the second film's story and have gamers take on the world of organized crime in 1960's Florida, Cuba and New York. After taking over New York in the first game, players will work to expand their organization to other cities through extortion, crime rings and wars with other crime families.

As Luke mentioned, the game will include an strategy-heavy Don's View:

To help players manage their empire, The Godfather II introduces “The Don’s View” – an innovative strategy meta-game that allows players to oversee the entire world as they grow the family business. Using the Don’s View, players will be able to build, defend and expand their crime rings, while keeping an eye on the movements and plans of the rival families. Players will also learn to master the business of organized crime by building a family of Made Men, hiring crew, handing out orders, and promoting their best men up the ranks.

The lengthy and detailed release is on the jump.

EA and Paramount Digital Entertainment Invites Players to Run the Family Business in The Godfather II
New Game Extends the Original Story with Rich Experiences in Florida, Cuba and New York and Introduces New Action-Strategy Gameplay

REDWOOD CITY, Calif.—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) and Paramount Digital Entertainment today revealed the first details of The Godfather® II videogame, the sequel to the 2007 multi-platinum hit. Inspired by the film and Mario Puzo’s Corleone family drama, The Godfather II game goes beyond the film’s story by setting players in the world of organized crime in 1960’s Florida, Cuba and New York.

After being promoted by Michael Corleone to Don of New York, players expand to new cities, as they build up their families through extorting businesses, monopolizing illegal crime rings and defeating new families in an effort to become the most powerful mob family in America. To help players manage their empire, The Godfather II introduces “The Don’s View” – an innovative strategy meta-game that allows players to oversee the entire world as they grow the family business. Using the Don’s View, players will be able to build, defend and expand their crime rings, while keeping an eye on the movements and plans of the rival families. Players will also learn to master the business of organized crime by building a family of Made Men, hiring crew, handing out orders, and promoting their best men up the ranks.

Set in a stunning open-world environment, The Godfather II expands on the popular gameplay mechanics of the first game and doubles down on the series’ signature BlackHand control scheme, which now features even more visceral hand-to-hand brutality at your fingertips, introducing a new combo system, pressure tactics and executions. In The Godfather II, players will fight alongside their hand-picked crew, who have their own skills and expertise. Each family member specializes in a specific field such as demolitions, arson, engineering, first-aid and more. As The Don you control the family, sending some of your men on missions while heading off into action with others. The combination of strategic organized crime gameplay and brutal BlackHand action sets The Godfather II apart from other open-world games.

“In the 1960’s, a mafia Don was only as strong as his family,” said Hunter Smith, Executive Producer of The Godfather II. “We found the hierarchical culture of organized crime intriguing. Running an organized crime family in a world defined by family loyalty is something that we felt could introduce a new strategic element to the genre. That is what the Don’s View is all about — laying out a strategy to pick off the competition one by one. The Don’s View is so unique, it could fundamentally change the rules of open-world games by blending action and strategy to create something entirely new.”

“The Godfather has become an exceptional gaming franchise for the Studio,” states Sandi Isaacs, Senior Vice President of Interactive & Mobile for Paramount Digital Entertainment. “The videogame takes the story and gameplay to the next level with an innovative open-world action strategy that is both compelling and intriguing for gamers.”

The Godfather II will premiere exclusively on GameTrailers TV with Geoff Keighley on Friday, August 15th on Spike TV. The entire episode will be dedicated to The Godfather II including behind-the-scenes with the development team, the debut of the game trailer and a first look at the game itself. The trailer will also be available on August 18th at: http://godfather2.ea.com.

Developed at the EA Redwood Stores studio, The Godfather II will be coming to the Xbox 360® videogame and entertainment system, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, and PC in February 2009. The Godfather II has not been rated by the ESRB and PEGI. For more information about The Godfather franchise, please visit http://godfather.ea.com and/or the EA press website at http://info.ea.com.

We'll be checking out the game first-hand next week, so stay tuned for our impressions.

Godfather II: First details [CVG]

You can play this game both at the street level, much like a GTA-style game, but you can also play it top-down, almost like you're in an RTS, controlling the strategy of the boroughs so you can see what's going on..

So...there are parts where you play, and parts where you command at a more strategic level? So...X-Com, with mobsters? Neat idea, if they can pull it off.

EA Talks "Godfather II" [Next-Gen]