When I woke up this morning, the teardrop in my eye was caused by this game. It was so bad it brought me to tears.
Ten hours later, I was left on my couch, watching the credits after I had beaten my way through the game. I dropped my controller on the ground, which fell somewhere near my jaw which was already ON the ground, thinking to myself, "damn, I could've gotten something ELSE for Christmas."
The story itself is fairly interesting; you play the part of Tony's nephew, who starts in the family as nothing more than the... how can I put this... the dog of the family. Through it all, you join other members from the family on missions which take you through settings like hospitals, harbors, and a gym. Each level has you beating random enemies to a pulp with a skill known throughout the gaming world as "button mashing" -- and the collision detection is so horrible that even the fastest mashers are seemingly put to shame.
In addition, the combat system, which is the mainstay and heavily featured... feature in the game, has some serious problems. Along with the collision detection, there comes a time when enemies gang up on you, backing you into a corner with no way out. It kills you -- literally -- and leaves many moments of frustration in the game. In fact, I found myself cursing more than Tony Montana towards the tail end of the game out of frustration for those three clowns that backed me into a corner and punched me until all of my health was basically gone.
Graphically, the cutscenes look plain embarassing. Many of the main characters do resemble their likenesses on the show, but just barely. Although the show's cast lends their voice talent to this game, it's really the only thing I can actually praise about this flop. Though, I'm not really a fan of the show, so it had little effect on me in terms of fan worship, but it was still pretty good.
The storyline itself is pretty engaging; the writers did a pretty good job with this game, despite the flaws. Unfortunately, as previously stated, you should probably be finished with this game in about a day, if you don't get frustrated by the horribly frustrating gameplay.
Overall, this game looks great on paper. But lack of free roam, extremely limited playability, and bugs galore overshadow the good things about this game, making it definitely worth ignoring.
Unless you've got eight bucks burning a hole in your pants, then rent it. Just sign up for anger management classes ahead of time.