Awesome game. Needs to be bought.
You start the game making a character with MobFace. You get to completely customize his looks. Once you get some cash in game, you can even buy clothes, which will get you respect (more on that later) and make you look snazzy. Their is money in this game, but the more important thing is respect. Respect is mainly how you get money, unless you go on a wild shooting spree. You gain respect from going up ranks in the Mafia, completing quests, extorting businesses, taking over rackets, getting fancier clothes, and gunning down enemy gangster's. With respect, people will fear and basically bow down to you, depending how much you have. Or they will ignore or insult you. The more respect you have, the easier it is to extort a business and gain money from it.
There are several weapons, but not enough. You can upgrade them, but it costs loads of cash. But there is also an assortment of explosives to use. With which you can rob stores, banks, and blow up enemy compounds.
The cars, for the most part, go pretty slow. But hey, this is the '30s, did you expect them to go really fast. Which makes this game way better than GTA. The car speed is realistic. Now, the movement isn't, but it isn't so good in GTA either.
The sound in and of itself is great. Nice sounds for crashes, cop sirens, explosions, gun shots, and then it has the good old music from the movies. I love that music, some may not. But none-the-less, the sounds is good.
I personally enjoy this more than GTA, except there aren't enough weapons. This game is also more difficult than GTA, and I'll give it a hard rating, but it is actually just right if you get good at it. And it isn't that hard to learn the controls. It may take you 30 minutes to learn the controls, but doing the tutorial at the beginning really teaches you quite a bit.
One thing taht causes me to not give this game a perfect score is Michael Corleone. He bears no resemblance to Al Pacino, nor does he sound like him. Other than Rocco Lampone (who isn't that major of a character for it to matter), he's the only character who doesn't bear resemblance to his counterpart in the film. It was slightly disappointing, and since he is a major character, downs the rating majorly.
If you are a fan of GTA, the Godfather, shooters, or organized crime in general, this is a game for you. The plot is good, the graphics are lovely. I mean, in the first 5 minutes, you get a lovely picture of Marlon Brando, all marble-mouthed, delivering his lines like any good Mafia Don. Final word: Buy this game. Period.