An exciting and brutal adventure with excellent graphics, but unfortunately not without some disappointing shortcomings.
The driving mechanics seem less impressive, they are particularly clunky and difficult to control with some of the slower cars, of course the old 50's cars wouldn't have had the best handling to begin with.
One thing that really bugged me throughout the experience was rocketing at high speeds down the motorway only to blast into a telephone pole at 100mph and die a horrible and VERY frustrating death, especially if you are in the middle of a mission which usually requires the player to start much of the work again, or even worse, requires the repeat of the same driving sequence.
Some of the game world wasn't fleshed out enough in certain aspects, as an example pointing a huge pump-action monster at a civilian provides no effect, no screams of fear, no cowering on the floor and no orifice leakage whatsoever, they will just walk around you.
The main cast of characters are an interesting and colorful bunch, everyone remembers Joe the lovable scamp who has killed many a mobster and Vito's sister "Frankie" to name a few. Unfortunately when I got deeper into the game more and more names were introduced to the point that I simply ignored them, few are interesting or memorable. The story provides lots of opportunities to be violent and "stabby" (despite there being not a usable knife in the game) , but it somehow feels that you are just watching a movie at certain points throughout. You join your respective crime family with the player being given almost no backstory or information about said family, (I can't remember the name of the syndicate that I've joined!) you do a few crimes here and murder a few guys there but the game doesn't seem to make any effort to connect you with this underworld, things just seem to happen without your involvement.
These few shortcomings stop the game from reaching it's full potential but it's still a satisfying adventure and defiantly worth the £25 it is now.