The only good thing about this game is the Godfather license.
The game starts nicely letting you create your own mobster which has a great amount of customization from the colors and items of his wardrobe to the size of his cheekbones and scares on his face. The game seems like it is all they made it out to be for the next hour or so where you get your first few tutorial type missions to get you familiar with the game-play.
Like a true gangster you get to rough up some store owners or try to talk them into paying you tribute, though the latter will only work later on in the game after building up a reputation for yourself.
After this introduction to the game you will soon discover with great disappointment that this is all there is to it. There is a thin line through the game giving you some direction and lets you play some of the events we did not get to see in the movies. For example you are the guy who plants the gun for Michael in the restaurant before his meeting with Sollozzo and the chief of police but these storyline missions are the minority of the game.
So what are you doing then? Well its mostly a repetition of the introductory tutorial and when I say repetition I really mean repetition in every sense possible.
You are running around collecting tribute from shops and rackets which all look alike. There are about 3 or 4 floor-plans for all the buildings in the game and about 2 or 3 sets of textures so they all look alike. The character models, except for the Corleone family, look all similar too, and so do the streets and the cars. This gives the game a very rushed and unfinished feel which is a total let down.
The build-up of reputation and rank could have been a bit more worked out as well. It is completely meaningless and does not give you any benefits or sense of accomplishment as gaining a new rank, other then having to pay less tribute to the Godfather, does not really give you anything. You also don't really have to work for it, just go on collecting tribute in the same cars at the same places from the same people.
Sure the gunfights are fun the roughing is brutal and they really give you a look at the cool and cruel aspects of the mobster lifestyle from the safety of your home but its lack of diversity in both graphics and game-play will turn it from a cool to a boring experience really fast.