Keeping it in the family...

There are films for which the idea of a licensed game makes sense, and there are those for which the idea is quite frankly, sickening. And I must admit that I did wretch slightly when I saw that this particular untouchable was in the works.

But I'm pleased to announce that my initial nausea was mostly unfounded. This is actually a very solid entry into the slightly over-crowded sandbox-crime-shooter-with-driving-bits-in-a-"persistent"-city genre. Sure, it has its flaws but they're quite heavily outnumbered by the things that it manages to do right.

The primary reason that the use of this license isn't as gut-wrenching as expected is that while the main characters are all prominent in the story, you play a mafioso of your own design. Your own story runs parallel to the plot of the films (up to a point anyway, it takes some creative license and allows you to become the Boss in the latter stages) with your character carrying out some of the operations that are mentioned in the movie (i.e. in one mission you have to break into Jack Woltz's house and place the infamous horse's head in his bed).

The much publicised use of certain stars to provide voices and likenesses for their characters again is a nice touch, and one that really helps you to slip into the universe of The Godfather with ease, although the notable absence of Al Pacino as Michael Corleone does jar slightly when his revamped character model appears on screen. As you'd expect from such star quality as Robert Duvall, James Caan and the late, great Marlon Brando the voice acting is superb, and all credit to the graphic design team as well, the renderings of their characters are faithful and impressively detailed.

As is the city. The 1940s New York presented here is a large and thoroughly textured play area with plenty of traffic (but not so much as to make driving anywhere a chore a la The Getaway) and people to extort. Navigation is made easy thanks to the handy map in the bottom corner and the clear waypointing system. The variety of different vehicles is slightly disappointing but those that there are easy and fun to drive, and while the handling model is hardly realistic it does make getting around the place enjoyable rather than a necessary evil.

Crime pays...

So that's the driving bits covered, now for the "crime" and "shooter" sections, which pleasingly, is where the game truly succeeds. The main story missions which drive your progression up the ranks of the Mafia hierarchy are engaging enough to keep you coming back, and varied enough to avoid annoying repetition. In addition to these there's various secondary missions like extorting local businesses and carrying out hits on specified targets. While the assassination missions are somewhat standard, if enjoyable diversions, the extortion system works very well and surprisingly for a game of this ilk, it's based on threats of possible violence to come. To extort a local business, you need to locate the proprietor, and then locate his weak spot. In the early stages, simply grabbing hold of a local butcher and threatening to break his face is usually enough to ensure that he shoves a wodge of cash your way every week but later on in the game things get slightly more complex. However, there's something else you have to take into account - your victims breaking point. You have to carefully calculate your coercion techniques, as if you push a man too far he's likely to snap. And then you're just going to have to kill him, and dead men don't tend to pay the bills.

It's the idea of threatening violence which sets this aspect of the game apart from the other crime sims out there. To throw a punch, rather than simply pushing a button, you have to pull back your fist and then thrust it forward in two distinct actions, in not too dissimilar a fashion to the system used in EA Sports' Fight Night series. This means that you can grab someone and then wave your clenched fist in front of them before asserting yourself and bloodying their nose. There's a plethora of other ways to secure cooperation as well, such as slamming them up against a wall, driving their head into tables or holding them over a ledge until they submit.

While the use of ranged weaponry isn't as well developed as its melee counter-part, the lock-on aiming is sensible and although not fool-proof will mean that you hit the mark more often than not. One "feature" that is slightly confusing is the fact that if you have a gun equipped and you press fire while not locked onto a target or in the free aim view, your weapon discharges into the floor rather than into whatever is directly in front of you. This led to me emptying an entire Tommy gun clip into the floorboards during one particularly intense shootout; unfortunately my adversary had no such issues with his control system and therefore shot me in the face.

The combat system is supplemented nicely by the one-button context-sensitive executions that you can perform on any character you come across. These are particularly brutal killing moves which, while mostly being a case of style over substance, can help you get out of tricky situations. There's also the obligatory, but surprisingly well-implemented stealth sections requiring you to take people down quickly and quietly, a feat made easier by the strangle move, the inclusion of a piano wire garrote and an intuitive wall-hugging interface that allows you to look round corners and line up shots before ducking out and knee-capping a wise guy.

In all, this is about as good as a game of this license can get. While it rarely breaks new ground, it competently treads the old and misses the many potholes that other games that have tried and failed often fall into. My main gripe is that it's possibly too short, with the main story being done after about 6 or 7 hours of gameplay. That said, there's always the wealth of opportunities that are open to the imaginative criminal to keep you playing for much longer.

GAME's Verdict

• Faithful, intelligent use of the license.
• Intuitive, comprehensive combat system.
• Varied missions provide excitement throughout.

• Disappointing graphical glitches spoil polish.
• Seemingly random difficulty spikes.
• Too short, the story mode being only 6-7 hours long.

Review by: Iain Thomas
Version Tested: PS2 Review Published: 30.03.06