There are a lot of games on the market at the moment that are vying for our attentions. Many of them are downright clones of the Grand Theft Auto style of gameplay and feature various spins on that style. EA have taken an ambitious step towards the melding of interactive entertainment and movies with the re-release of the Godfather on the Xbox 360.

If you have the Xbox version already then you probably want to swap it out for the Xbox 360 specific version of the game. It has tweaked graphics and gameplay along with extra missions and better controls.

I don’t go into technical details because I feel that you want to know how the game plays, if the game’s fun and if the replay value is there. For me the game plays well enough controls well enough and it has a definite style over the Xbox version graphics wise.

The Tiger Woods character creation utility is pretty cool, it’s certainly got more options on the 360 version and it controls a lot better. I am particularly impressed with the ranges of character types you can make with a little patience and definitely love the direction games like this are taking.

I loved that about Saint’s Row.

I feel that the game is an adequate one for a game that tries to emulate the movie. It isn’t a brilliant or great game by any means; it probably has 15-20 hours of gameplay in it. Seeing your own character in the game and interacting with the cast of the Godfather is about as strange as it gets, it sent shivers down my spine since I really love the movie.

You can see that EA have spent a lot of time adding new content into the 360 version of the game to improve it over the first. There are hireable homie-like gang members (thugs) and cops that you can bribe, these will fight alongside your character and can give you a good edge, since the AI for them works well enough.

There are new Blackhand attacks, and I won’t spoil this for you, you’ll have to play the game to find out more.

One area where the game really shines is the way that it drags you into the story; you never feel apart from it, you are a part of it. It will put you in cut-scene wise as close associate or someone important, you feel as though you’re riding along with the story rather than just another joe-schmo out on the street.

These narrative parts are great, but the game does have a bit of a problem when it comes to key parts of the Godfather. Being a fan of the movie probably doesn’t help there but there are some scenes that aren’t quite caught right by the game, this is a small thing in the end and doesn’t detract from the game too much.

As far as I am concerned I’m pleased to see the core story of the Godfather hasn’t been massacred by the game. Although there’s no Al Pacino and some of the female characters from the movie aren’t in it.