Off the Shelf Media

The Godfather: The Don’s Edition has absolutely no business being this good. Theoretically, there is a good game to be made here, but adapting one of the greatest films of all time from one of the greatest directors of all time and making it a believable and engaging video game was a tall task. It’s not quite a masterpiece like The Godfather, but it’s still way better than The Godfather Part III

If you’ve never played this game before, grab a controller and a cannoli because I have an offer you won’t be able to refuse. 

Gameplay: 1

Have you ever played a GTA or Mafia game? It’s like that with a few differentiators and tweaks around the edges. It’s an open-world action-adventure game where you play as a mobster working his way up the mob chain in 1940s New York City. You do that by finishing story missions, taking over businesses from rival families, and completing hits on rival families. 

There’s a lot to do in this game, and it rewards you when you do all of them. If you’re unfamiliar with Godfather lore, there are five mobster families. The Corleones, that’s you, the Tattaglias, the Straccis, the Cuneos, and the big bad Barzinis. They each own their own neighborhood. Tataglia’s own Brooklyn and Little Italy, Cuneo’s own Hell’s Kitchen, Stracci’s own Jersey, and Barzini’s own Midtown. Your job is to own all five sections and rule the city (and a slice of New Jersey). 

This is the backbone and driving force of the game. 

I can’t confirm this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone at Visceral Games came up with a great mobster game and no studio was interested, so they went back to the drawing board and pitched The Godfather IP to attract a big studio to fund the project. 

Taking over a neighborhood is a lot of work. The ground floor is going up to a business owner and extorting him to shift his weekly payments from one family to your family. You do this by finding his weakness, which means beating him up, threatening his customers, or breaking things in his shop until he caves. Be careful, though, if you push him too far, he’ll fight back, which means you have to take him out, and the store closes, and you’ll have to try again later. 

Oh, and the other families will have bodyguards outside the stores, so you may have to take them out before extorting the business owner. And if you didn’t bribe the police chief in the neighborhood, you may get an unexpected visit from the police, and they’ll either arrest you or take you out. 

If you target one family too often, you’ll piss them off, and if the heat bar goes too high, they’ll shoot you on sight. Once that bar hits the max, you start a Mob War. Mob Wars are brutal. The family will send a lot of guys after you and set up blockades along their businesses so you can’t get anywhere near them. 

A Mob War ends in three ways. 1. You bribe the FBI, and you win! 2. You bomb a rival business and you win! Or 3. You get killed and you lose. When you lose, you wake up and a handful of your businesses are destroyed, which means you lose a lot of money. 

Earning money in this game can be annoying. You get paid once a week from your rackets, and since you start as an Outsider, most of your money gets kicked back to the family. Yay! A mobster pyramid scheme! Once you work your way up to an Underboss and control a few neighborhoods, the real cash starts flowing. Money is used to buy new weapons, safehouses, which are important because that’s where you save the game, restore health and ammo, and lose your heat from the cops, so you’ll want to buy all of those. 

Taking over the city is a mix of patience and balance. From the jump, the Cuneos, Straccis, and Barzinis will be too hard to take over since they have more health and stronger weapons. So start with the Tataligas. They mainly use pistols, and once you get a shotgun and a Tommy gun, you’ll be good to go. 

The game has a great skeleton. The framework built around the five families and taking over the city works, but the issues come from the combat. I died a lot in this game. When I say a lot, I mean a f’in lot. Getting in and out of cover was difficult, and sometimes the camera wouldn’t move how I wanted it to. 

Later in the game, you unlock a sidekick who travels with you and a power-up where you call in an entire squad, which is critical when taking down a warehouse or a stronghold. Sometimes they’re great, and sometimes they are not. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten down to the last guy and my squad gets in the way, and I get killed. 

Before I move on, I have to commend the driving in this game. The speed and handling of these cars from 1945 are better than real-life cars today. So that was appreciated. 

Overall, the mechanics in this game were well thought out and balanced in a way that benefits the player. There is a clear sense of progression and reward for playing the game as the developers intended. The combat was shaky, and I didn’t even get to go on my rant about the Sixaxis controls on the PS3. Boy, am I glad that trend didn’t continue. What a disaster. 

Story: 1

It’s hard to screw up the story given the source material. The Godfather won the 1973 Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, as well as the novel by Mario Puzo, so it was hard to screw this one up. 

Cudos to EA and Visceral Games for getting James Caan to reprise his role as Sonny, the great Robert Duvall as Tom, and the legendary Abe Vigoda as Tessio. It’s almost enough to forgive them for butchering Michael, but that’s because they couldn’t get the rights to Al Pacino’s likeness or his voice. 

Even with amazing source material, it’s hard for a game to do the story justice. The story and the framework are there, but you need to find a way to tie in the game mechanics to the major plot points of the story. 

Once that’s figured out, you need an original story and original characters fit in a world that’s beloved with characters who are beloved even more. It’s not easy, but the game does a decent job.

You play as Aldo, a man who was taken in by Don Corleone after his father was gunned down in the streets. All Aldo wants to do is rise the ranks of the Corleone family and do his father proud. From there, Aldo takes part in all the major moments from the movie. The death of Luca Brasi, the hit on Paulie, and even the famous horse’s head scene with Woltz. 

There are original characters like Monk and his sister Frankie, whose side story is a giant meh and is mainly there to fill space and action in gaps between the main story. 

Points for being clever in weaving Aldo into the Godfather story in a believable way, but minus points for boring original characters and a lame secondary story. 

Atmosphere: 1

I like driving around New York. The shops and stores all look similar, and the map can be difficult to navigate, but repeatable mechanics can cause reputable locations. Other than New Jersey, Little Italy looks pretty similar to Brooklyn. 

The graphics are great for a PS3 game from 2007. Everything is properly rendered, and I didn’t notice any lag or glitches in my playthrough. The cutscenes used similar shots from the movie, which is a nice detail, and I have to give props to the voice actors yet again. 

There could have been some differentiators to the four other families outside of the color of their clothes. I get why video games do that, but it’s more variety from the factions would have been cool. At least every NPC you shoot at has a unique Italian name. As an Italian myself, I thought some of the names were hilarious. 

Before we move on, I have to warn you. If you don’t like the Godfather theme, then this game may not be for you. You will hear the trumpet…a lot. Way way way way too much trumpet. I was hearing it in my sleep. It got so bad that I had to play certain parts of the game on low volume or mute. SO. MUCH. TRUMPET. 

Value: 2

There’s a lot to do in this game. Some of it is repetitive, but the reward is worth the slog. The level tree weapons are worth the endless Mob Wars and constant FBI bribes. 

This game would have been $60 in 2007, and when I first played this game back in 2011, I thought it was a risk buying it on sale. However, once I played through it, I thought it was worth every penny. 

The game is dense, and there’s a lot to love. 

Duration: 2

There are only 18 story missions in this game. If you only focus on the story, it will fly by. So my advice is to take in the world and enjoy the side missions because it doesn’t just pad the runtime, it makes you feel like a mobster climbing the ranks to overtake NYC. 

Yes, the game will force you into some of these side-quests or business takeovers to progress the story, but I felt like a true Don when I took over every business, stole every racket, destroyed every safehouse, and became a master of New York. It was a lot of work for a 45-second cutscene, but damnit, I earned it! 

Besides, it’s not like they had a mechanic where the other families attack your rackets and take them back. That would be dumb and a stupid way to pad the runtime because there was a lack of writing and story to fill the gaps. That’s what The Godfather II is for! Oh man, I can’t wait to roast that game to a crisp. 

Total Score: 7/10

I was surprised by this game when I first played it in 2011, and I’m still surprised by it on my replay in 2025. If you’ve never played this game, I recommend it. It’s an open-world crime game set in a world we all love from the movie. 

It has its flaws, but the organized and well-thought-out mechanics are enough to overcome messy combat or reused assets. 

I’ve been doing something different, friends. In honor of the 25th anniversary of Pokémon Gold and Silver, check out that review here, and don’t forget to read my homage to the PlayStation 2 for its 25th anniversary as well.

I’ll see ya there, but until then, y’all take care.