The Godfather: Mob Wars review

Slick visuals and turn-based strategy keep this from crappy-port status

GamesRadar+ Verdict

Pros

  • +

    Sharp visuals for a PSP game

  • +

    Easy

  • +

    lethal aiming intact

  • +

    Still faithful to movie's spirit

Cons

  • -

    No multiplayer Mob Wars

  • -

    Long

  • -

    unskippable cinemas

  • -

    Driver's license revoked

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While Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories proved that free-roaming crime games can be done on the PSP, that doesn't mean the handheld can do everything. It can't, for example, do The Godfather, at least not in the same way it was done on consoles. Why else would the driving segments and open world be ripped out of The Godfather: Mob Wars and replaced with turn-based strategy?

To be fair, Mob Wars does an impressive job of replicating the console Godfather 's action sequences. As a foot soldier in the Corleone crime family (not customizable this time, unfortunately), you'll run through a series of missions that have you beating down street scum, shooting up rival families and hiding horse heads between sheets. These are by and large identical to their console counterparts; not only do they look nearly as good, but even the more complicated actions - like aiming at specific body parts and strangulation - are easy to pull off with a little practice.

While the console versions allowed you to move freely around the city, however, Mob Wars sticks to a more linear progression. The game is divided into two segments, which you can switch between freely: Story Mode, which shuttles you along a series of missions that roughly parallel the movie's events; and Mob Wars, which replaces the free-roaming extortion and racketeering with a turn-based, card-driven strategy game that plays like a seedy 1940s version of Risk. It's actually a lot more fun than it sounds, and is much better suited for pick-up-and-play than the story mode and its long, unskippable cinemas.

More info

GenreAction
DescriptionA trimmed-down genre-bender that mixes the shooting action of the PS2 game with card-based strategy.
Platform"PSP"
US censor rating"Mature"
UK censor rating""
Release date1 January 1970 (US), 1 January 1970 (UK)
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Mikel Reparaz
After graduating from college in 2000 with a BA in journalism, I worked for five years as a copy editor, page designer and videogame-review columnist at a couple of mid-sized newspapers you've never heard of. My column eventually got me a freelancing gig with GMR magazine, which folded a few months later. I was hired on full-time by GamesRadar in late 2005, and have since been paid actual money to write silly articles about lovable blobs.