The Godfather II game doesn’t follow the storyline of the original movie — moving scenes around, completely altering characters, and leaving out the Robert De Niro half of the movie.

Oh shit. Was that a spoiler? Oh well. Anyway…

There are two immediate schools of reaction that are possible here. First, the die hard Godfather fan in you can say “oh, COOL, something different.” Second, the die hard Godfather fan in you can say “oh, shit, it’s different. This sucks!”

I felt like the first half of the altered story, which begins in a Cuba scene that’s halfway through the Academy Award-winning film, was interesting. But I was left scratching my head. Godfather II is almost universally regarded as one of the best movies ever made. Why didn’t Electronic Arts take advantage of that?

You are Dominic, and you’re about to become the Don of the Corleone Family in New York. What follows is an endlessly repetitious repeat of the first Godfather game with about a third of the story elements that made the first game a hit.

This is a GTA-style sandbox game, meaning you get to steal cars and shoot things anywhere you want. But even though the game lets you explore three cities, there isn’t nearly enough room to maneuver in Godfather II.

Your mission is to take over and retain control a number of businesses and crime rackets, and that’s what you’ll spend nearly all of the day-or-so of gameplay doing. You attack a business. A rival family attacks you. You defend. You attack more businesses.

The early story elements show potential. We see Fredo’s character really develop in this game. We see Roth, the Floridian mastermind, in all his glory. You even get to take a shot at Fidel Castro. But the game just isn’t finished. The story elements just stop suddenly. You spend the first part of the game doing all these missions, viewing a ton of family dialogue, and then suddenly Michael Corleone orders you to basically hurry up and finish the game by giving you a mission to eliminate all your rivals. The dialog stops. The storyline stops. Suddenly you’ve degraded to a teenager who first discovered the Grand Theft Auto III PC cheat codes and starts blowing shit up with machine guns.

But that’s not the only problem. The gameplay is seriously flawed. You have to hold or tap X to run, but you also have to use the right thumbstick to control your direction. You only have one right thumb, though. Forget about driving. You’re going to crash and get stuck. Speaking of getting stuck, at least twice during my run-through, I became trapped between a wall and some sort of game element and had to blow myself up and die to get unstuck.

Shooting is also kind of worthless. You hold one button to automatically target an enemy — not the nearest enemy, just one enemy — and another button to shoot them. Repeat as necessary.

This game clearly didn’t have the budget it needed to live up to the movie. The game should have gone back and forth, just like the movie, between Michael’s and Vito’s storylines. I’d have also been really happy to see the game set only in Vito’s world as you grow and develop his crime empire.

The best part about the game is probably developing your own family and equipping, clothing, upgrading, and going to war with them. Each character of the dozens available has its own personality and skill set, and it provides some entertainment. But even this presents its own set of problems. You basically have to bring a bunch of guys with different skills on every mission. Some doors have to be blown up, some can be knocked down, and some can be lock-picked. That’s pretty stupid — I’m sorry. Now we’re just grasping at straws, trying to find some use for these guys specific skills.

The game just isn’t cerebral enough. It’s got guns, tits, swearing and explosions, but nothing about this game leaves me feeling as if I’ve accomplished something afterward.

This is a fuck up, EA. You turned Godfather II into Godfather III.

And you broke my heart. Now Al Neri is going to kill you on a rowboat.

It looks like everyone was saving the E3 news for Leipzig this year.

Electronic Arts and tis Black Box studio released some new details on Need for Speed: Undercover, which comes out November 18 in the U.S. for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 2 with PSP, DS and mobile versions available.

“Need for Speed Undercover has players racing through speedways, dodging cops and chasing rivals as they go deep undercover to take down an International crime syndicate,” the companies said Wednesday in a statement. “The new game heralds the return of high-intensity police chases and introduces the all-new ‘Heroic Driving Engine’ — a unique technology that generates incredible high-performance moves at 180 miles per hour during breathtaking highway battles.”

“Need for Speed Undercover puts you at the center of a big-budget Hollywood movie with all of the drama, action and dazzling chase scenes, right on your gaming console. The unique Heroic Driving Engine will give you ultimate control over the hottest cars and push you to use every ounce of skill to outrun the law and take down criminal adversaries,” said Executive Producer Bill Harrison.

The game will mix graphics/CGI with live-action movies with 80 miles of open-world to explore, to get the gamer to really feel the “Tri-City Bay Area” experience. It looks like GTA without all the guns.

“Need for Speed Undercover features more aggressive and intelligent cops whose sole purpose is to take down the player quickly and by any means necessary,” the statement read.

Cars featured in the game include the Audi R8, BMW M6 and Lexus IS-F.

EA is also unveiling information on the Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince game and Godfather 2.

Electronic Arts and Paramount Digital Entertainment announced Friday that a sequel to the hit movie video game adaptation “The Godfather” will be released, extending the original storyline of the game and building on the universe created by the Academy Award winning movies.

“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,” the companies said in a statement.

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.”

Geoff Keighley’s GameTrailers TV on Spike TV will have an exclusive premiere of Godfather II: The Game on August 15. The episode, entirely devoted to the game, will include behind-the-scenes features and interviews with the development team. The game’s trailer will also be unveiled.

The trailer will also be available on August 18th at: http://godfather2.ea.com.