This game is shock and awe
The game map is pretty damn big. My guess would be about 5+ square miles. It's a little smaller than San Andreas, but definitely gets the job done, since the max speed on vehicles in the game is 85mph! You get to go to 5 different areas around New York, each with their own controlling mod family. Your goal is to take them out via taking over their businesses and ultimately their compounds. This can be difficult seeing as how they get a little pissed when you kill their men, and will start a mob war if you kill more than a dozen or so. While taking over businesses, you extort business front owners into paying you protection money, blow up safes with dynamite, even blow up bank vaults to rob them, use bombs and explode drug fronts, and a buttload more.
The graphics in Godfather are rather appealing. The faces all look very realistic, easy to recognize from the movies, and the world around you is well detailed. In addition to the top knotch voice acting, the great original score from the movies, and the fact that there's pretty much no loading what-so-ever, even when you go into buildings, makes for an outstandingly cinematic gaming experience. Then you throw in the experience system. As a step up from the GTA games, in Godfather, you earn respect points from just about everything you do in the world, and when you level up your respect, not only are business owners more likely to lie down and give you their business, but you also get to level up skills from fighting, shooting, health, speed, and street smarts. Leveling each as you see fit is a great way to personalize your character.
If you look at the boards, you'll see a lot of talk about glitches, either through the controls, or just the way things run. This is true, the controls have their highs and lows, the fighting system is EA style, with the right stick being the hit stick, it's a lot of fun to use, but some of the other controls can use a bit of work, but nothing too frustrating. One thing that did bother me was when I had the fastest car in the game and rival mob members or cops were chasing me, somehow they could travel about 10 times as fast as me to catch up, and there also seemed to be no end to them. It was very unrealistic, and heavily detracted from the individual parts of the story.
Another part that many of us aren't much appreciative is the downloadable content. Those who did buy the game are pissed to find find out that they have to shell out another $10 to buy the rest of it! That's right. On the marketplace, they sell a number of things: several addition Favor missions, the only way to get the most powerful weapons in the game (and you still have to spend a lot of ingame money to get them, more than you'll probably have until the end of the game), and get this, you can actually buy in game money. Yeah, uber lame EA, no thanks! (although I am such a sucker, I did buy it just to enhance the gaming experience :sad:)
But, beyond that, it really was a great gaming experience, with tons of stuff to do. I completed the game entirely in about 35 hours, while others spent upwards of about 100 hours on it. Either way, you're going to get great life out of this game. I highly recommend atleast renting this game if you're in any way a GTA or Godfather fan. Thanks for reading.