Excellent attempt, but unfortunately, The Godfather does not deliver, no matter whih console it is on.
Like GTA: San Andreas your character is customizable, though in a slightly different way. After the initial cutscene, the game allows you to alter the appearance of your character in many ways: Height, weight, an extensive array of facial features and hair, various types of clothing to buy, etc... This is a nice feature, and can be fun to experiment with. It can be interesting to change the appearance of your character as the story unfolds, and compare his appearance at the end to the beginning, adding a nice little self-induced cinematic flair to the proceedings.
The visuals in The Godfather are fairly well done, in that they are atmospheric and the character's facial textures in particular are very true to their real-life cohorts (with the exception of Michael, of course). There are some areas of the game that look a little underdone, as I mentioned before with the vehicles in particular. In general, though, the city looks great, and most of the characters look good despite the lack of variety in enemy/pedestrian models. The game scales decently well on lower end PCs, so you shouldn't have to worry too much about if you can run it or not.
Audio for the most part is good. There are nice combat sound-effects which correspond well with your actions, and all the guns sound appropriate. There is a decent amount of variety in the conversations of pedestrians, but needless to say they are no-where near as quirky as those in the GTA games. The music in the game is dynamic, dramatic, generally well composed, but often inappropriately applied. There are strange moments when you'll be hearing very intense music in a relatively peaceful period of gameplay, and visa-versa.
The Godfather is a decent and enjoyable package from EA and was certainly a welcomed idea to the gaming community. Unfortunately, the game is the victim of many flaws, and also the victim of comparison. When someone has a product and slaps the name of a franchise as synonymous with greatness as The Godfather, there is an inherent expectation from consumers that the product be at least somewhat as great as its title. Alas, this is not the case here. When the big picture is looked at, and the movie license is stripped away, The Godfather is a merely decent game which relies far too heavily on its title for value. I would certainly recommend it to fans of the series, as it does capture some of the Coppola magic from the films and it does have many intriguing gameplay features which add to its overall value. There are, though, similar games on the market, most notably the Grand Theft Auto series, which offer the same basic gameplay in a much more enjoyable and thorough package. I would give this game a rental if you're interested in it.
P.S: for PC players...don't be surprised if the game doesn't support your gamepad...EA's marvelous track record for glitches is in full force in this game, too.