Worth renting & playing, but a total letdown considering the classic movies it represents
To start with gameplay, lots of issues: lack of minimap customization (fix the north or rotate it as Rockstar lets us do with GTA for years); 6 button pushes--including waiting times and a few seconds to spot the most recent save--from DVD insertion to start of gameplay (whereas lots of games today, like Oblivion, lets you start to play by simply pushing Continue); and to save your game, there are also 6 button pushes with 3 waiting times, not to mention that you'll have to drive to a safehouse in order to save; firing crosshair is inaccurate: causes a lot of misery & waste of time when trying to throw molotovs around corners in warehouses; AI is bad: racket/shop owner once died when I planted a dynamite at the safe in his store although he was initially far from the safe when I planted it, and NPCs stand at doorways and block my passage again causing a lot of misery when I want to get out of the line of fire or escape a dynamite explosion, and mobs may stand there doing nothing and looking at me as I go trigger-happy at them, and the icing of the cake is that civilians sometimes stay in the line of fire as I and the hostiles keep firing at each other...they wouldn't crouch, lay down, or run away; auto-targetting works on civilians even when hostiles are present in my immediate vicinity...why on earth did the developers do that?? Again this caused a lot of frustration when I was trying to auto-target 3 or 4 hostiles shooting at me in the street with many pedestrians around; also police offers on foot shoot you without a split second of hesitation in the presence of half a dozen of civilians in the line of fire; NPC comments are often not in line with their body language: for example they would take the bribe from you snatching it with confidence saying "This arrangement better be worth it!" and immediately lower their heads and raise their arms defending themselves in fear, or they would say "Have mercy!" in fear then immediately make a rude gesture at you; in order to trigger the move of entering a vehicle, you have to be exactly near its door and facing it, not simply near enough to the vehicle as the GTA series got us used to; and when you want to acquire rackets or warehouse peacefully but you had to fight mobs from other families near the owner, there is no option to peacefully "Buyout" or bribe the owner, and you can only "Takeover" the property by force, but you can Buyout the property if you get out of it and drive far enough from the property then immediately drive back to it and go talk to the owner again: developer should've given us 2 options instead as multiple choices to either Takeover by force or Buyout peacefully. The bodyguard that you hire for a free is lost when you quit the game even if you save...why?? Lack of "Stay here / Follow me" orders to the bodyguards, instead of the almost useless "Go home / Stay" orders. Oh, and try one of those boxing fights while your bodyguard is around: it is an absolute nightmare...I ended up inevitably killing the bodyguard as he kept getting in the way of my punches. Then there was this illogical scene of those rooms or compartments in warehouses with two sheets of glass and no windows or doors...makes you wonder what the heck is that "thing" or cube used for. Well, one of them had a collectible that you can get by breaking the glass, but from a storytelling perspective, what is that thing??
Graphics: unimpressive when you consider a game like F.E.A.R that was shipped for the PC a year earlier than The Godfather, and its Xbox 360 version shipped almost at the same time was The Godfather.
Sound: some music was memorable and enjoyable, yet with a touch of irrelevance to the action and shooting going on; other pieces of music were acceptable and representative of that era; but overall I still felt the music was a letdown, especially when I remembered the music of the PC game, Mafia. Some voiceovers were really excellent, though.
Storytelling: frustratingly disappointing. There were jumps from certain events to others that made me go like, "What the heck??" I just wondered how that happened and what led to it. The developer didn't show us what led to certain events, neither by interactive storytelling as you act out the scenes yourself, nor by cutscenes. For example, when you eventually become the Don of NYC, they do not give any clue whatsoever what the heck happened to the previous Don, the son of the deceased original godfather. Storytelling was really the most frustrating aspect of this game for me, not only because I am a story junkie when it comes to games, but also because this game is like a re-make of a true classic in the history of filmmaking. The least they could do was to tell the story properly. I was very disappointed in EA, and today feel annoyed that they own the rights now, so we may never see a proper sequel unfortunately.