GTA but better
My investment was rewarded by one of the most addictive games I've played outside of Civilization. There are very few loading screens (only one when you load your game or start a new one, and one before and after the story cutscenes. But the latter group is only 5-10 seconds on my modest laptop so it really doesn't affect the experiance much) and that helps tremendously with the addictive quality. The first time I played the game I found myself looking at the clock wondering where the past four hours had gone, and that happened again every other time I've played it.
The combat is very good, the cover I especially like because I *hate* dancing back and forth between cover. While the lock-on makes the game much easier than it would be normally it gives a much more cinematic feel, and because of the level of realism given the guns damage (no matter how high your rank or how much health you have, if someone shoots you in the head you will die) that difficulty reduction is more of a boon than a bane.
I only had three big technical problems, one was the fact that I couldn't get out of a car once I got into it (I had to use a cracked .exe to fix that problem), the left-right axis of the mouse was mirrored (edited the .ini file to fix that), and the game got very choppy when driving at night (as of yet unresolved).
The Godfather looks very good as well as playing very good. My little laptop can play the game with an excellent framerate at near the top settings, and the loading screen time is minimal. The one beef I have with the graphics is that your character has much less texturing than the other characters in the game, but I guess the customization of your character means they can't spend as much time with the texture.
All in all, The Godfather is a well-rounded game. For anyone who ever played GTA or Saints Row as a classy mobster, this game is yours.