Consider it a favor for the family

Named after one of the greatest movies ever made, I was praying that this game did not fall like a ballsy shopkeeper. After spending many hours running through 1950's New York City, it was an above average game, but not great.

At the beginning of the game, EA did a thorough job with their create-a-character utility. You can change anything from skin color to facial bone structure. No, you can't make him a her or remove his Italian appearance, but theoretically you could make him so tan he's nearly black or so white he's been bleached.

The whole point of the game is to become the Don of Dons. Obtaining this illustrious title is time-consuming and difficult, mainly because you're left to the task of extorting EVERY business and racket by yourself. That's right, there are easily more than a 100 combined fronts and hidden businesses to "protect".

Thankfully this task is made a little easier courtesy of the map. Any building with a racket not run by the Corleones has a little shield of the operating family. It's not impacted by extorting the shopkeeper, but that's typically an easy job unless you're facing the Barzini's with no crew and limited life.

You can, however, hire crew members once you get your first promotion. Fortunately, the AI is pretty good all the way around, including your hired help. Unfortunately, EA refuses to let you hire more than one person at a time. So if you're a capo, like I am, you can't hire the capo, solder and associate, even though they're all open to be. Doesn't that challenge the Godfather mentality, since the capo is supposed to oversee many mobsters?

In addition to doing your own thing, the game has a main storyline that keeps everything moving. You take the role of an outsider and rise to the top, witnessing Luco's death and planting Michael's gun on the toilet. From what I've read and seen, if you ignore all of the side quests, you end the main storyline as an underboss with the Corleones as the number one family.

This bothers me, since you're asked to assassinate other mobsters, as well as crooked cops and the like, as well as perform favors, which can range from destroying a drug ring to breaking up a union strike. So as you're taking over the legal and illicit businesses of New York, killing families and turning the city into your design, the main story line continues on linearly ignoring all of your efforts to take over Gotham.

There are only a dozen or so weapon types, and the average player will get their hands on all of them fairly quickly. Melee weapons can be swapped for another, i.e. from baseball bat to shovel. There's no appreciable difference other than appearance. However, you can upgrade the guns, for a price. The level two firearms typically go from $10 k to $50 k, and either fire faster or stronger while increasing the size of the magazine. The level three guns generally cost no less than $200 k and can be devastating - the dreaded "Street Sweeper" is a level 3 shotgun.

Unfortunately, bombs are annoying to get your hands on. It's not hard, but buying up to your tiny limit that the game imposes requires tracking down a black market seller on your map. There's nothing more frusterating than being in an enemy business and not having a bomb to end a mob war. The game literally limits you to just one at the beginning, and requires that you upgrade one stat frequently to carry just a few. It's dumb, but hopefully you're too busy taking over businesses and don't really need to worry about bombing too often.

One of my biggest beefs with the game is game design and programming. Most of the time, like the game as a whole, it's well done. However, there are plenty of times where you have to drive a million miles just to pull a hit and it really seems like they could have made it more accessible. What's even better is how the game will occasionally put you in a position where dying is beyond easy and frusteratingly confusing. Eventually you'll figure out why the game is forcing you into a certain chain of actions, but you'll die several times in the process, forcing you to watch the ICED screen for a good 10 seconds and getting back to the location.

Another problem I have is the complete lack of multiplayer - local or online. Sure, you can load your game up in Corleone Challenge mode and complete a task in the fastest time, but you might as well just be playing alone - oh wait, you are. This game reaks of GTA, yet they haven't tapped into that series' ability to hook up online.