Video game review by ERIK LEIJON

One of the many benefits of print media is you won’t be subjected to any horrible Don Corleone impressions. The Godfather: The Game (Xbox, PS2, PC/EA, Redwood Shores) could have easily been a huge failure. It’s an ambitious project from the publisher who desecrated the James Bond licence, and the movie-to-game transition has been tough even for mindless action films, let alone a staple of the American cinema (one I’ll admit I’ve never seen). Thankfully, Redwood Shores had a bulletproof game plan: unabashedly recreate Grand Theft Auto, but add more generic Italian accents.

GTA’s prints are all over this game. The open-ended story, vehicle hijacking, the map-centric gameplay, it’s all here. Technically, that’s a bad thing, because the game will in no way come across as original. But using the beloved Grand Theft Auto as a base while adding some fantastic character designs and mimicking the film’s art direction gives the proceedings a distinct feel. The presentation is the big draw here, since all the characters and their voices are incorporated (excluding Al Pacino, but including Marlon Brando, in what will go down as his final acting performance), and look exactly like their silver screen counterparts. I mean, that’s really Abe Vogota! And he’s talking to me!

Like GTA, The Godfather also succeeds in immersing gamers into its world: 1945 New York City. You are a low-level nobody with the Corleone family, and you spend your days wandering the streets of New York, which looks authentic in its dreariness, and includes all the real locales. The game has frequent cinematics involving the movie’s characters, and strewn across the big overworld are film reels from the actual film for your viewing pleasure.

The great look and feel will draw you in, but I do have some reservations about the gameplay. The controls take a while to get into, since they don’t feel particularly natural, and it can pose problems because I found myself killing people I didn’t want to, and losing fights to people I wanted to whack. The fight scenes are fairly decent but a bit simplistic. It’s the typical find, cover and shoot when you have the chance battles, but it is possible to go guns-ablazin’ and still accomplish your task.

The missions mostly follow three different formats: extortion missions, shooting missions or driving missions. The extortion missions are the best, and beating on local business owners and taking your cut is fun and profitable. You have to scare them into giving in without motivating them to fight back, but it’s quite easy to get them to accept your “protection.” Eventually, the idea is that you take over enough businesses and rackets that you become the don, which is really something to strive for.

Like GTA and its clones, the game allows you to go at your own pace, and there are always a good variety of missions to do. Whatever problems with cops you have can normally be solved with a simple bribe, but if they do happen to kill you, the game sends you back right before where you died (so there’s little repetition).

The Godfather: The Game is a movie-based title that didn’t get the kiss of death. It’s got all the brothels and bloody battles you’d expect from a mafia game, and the licence is used perfectly to appease film buffs.

Ubisoft hits PS3

Game Developers Conference 2006 (GDC) yielded more info on the Ubisoft Montreal PS3 project, Assassin, although no new screenshots are available yet on the Web. It promises to be a more realistic action game in terms of character movement and fighting. Look for more info at E3 in May.