Many would say that that ‘Godfather Blackhand Edition’ is a bit of a ‘Grand Theft Auto’ rip off. I’m going to try my best at reviewing this game without mentioning the three letters G, T or A, in fact, not even mentioning other platform versions of this game.

In the beginning, you start off with a nice little cut scene showing your father being bit up in an alley. Moments later you get to take control of your father and get your first experience of beating up the bad guys in this game. You’re given on screen instructions and after locking on and throwing a few punches by punching the air you’ll have your foes down.

Roll on a few years and your character is introduced to the game. But before you get to grips you get to create your own face. Pretty much like any other create your own character, you chose from a selection of face shapes, hair styles and so on (you can even add moles and scars) However, it does get a little too detailed when you can start to put in bags under your eyes! You also get to select the colours of your clothes, but until you earn some money you can’t change your outfit. Strangely, for some unknown reason your character can do something that wouldn’t go a miss on The X Files. Whenever you continue a game you can change the entire image of your character i.e. different hair, face colours, body shape. Change it all and no one will notice or say a word.

When you first get to take control of the new you, you are put through a few combat scenes which get you to grips with grappling. This is simply done by holding down the Z - to lock on - and B buttons to hold someone. You can then throw them against walls, head butt, throw them to the floor or strangle. Overall beating people up with my bare fists or swinging a golf club is my favorite way of taking people down. This can be a lot of fun when taking down a small handful of unarmed bad guys but a little tiring with large groups. When you get a bad guy down to little health, “Execute” will flash on the screen. This allows you to press the A button and then following the on screen motions you can pull off some really good finishing moves to make sure your victim wont be getting back up.

The driving handles pretty well, it’s actually quite fun! Although when beeping your horn and watching every car make the same move to the side does show how dumb the other drivers could be. But who cares as they won’t be in front of you for too long.

Now down to the shooting. After negotiating a few basic missions, you’ll get to grips with your pistol. Aiming in this game is very precise with the wiimote. It can be a little annoying the moment between pulling out your gun and getting the sensor bar to recognize your wiimote. But if you pull your gun out early you can have a lot of fun wondering through business ready to whack off any rival gang members.

Overall the controls are responsive. And although it can be a little taxing trying to remember which button does what, (draw gun, duck, aim, lock on) once you are used to the setup the game play can be a lot of fun.

Another nice advantage is the games role playing element. You can level up many stats like negotiating, health, violence and many more. I opted for getting my health to maximum level first as you can’t take many shots before being sent to the morgue otherwise. When dead you come back straight away though, just with a little less cash but all your weapons intact.

Within the game play you are encouraged to go through missions. But you don’t have to accept the mission straight away. You can drive around and take over various stores, gambling halls, hotels and clubs etc. Taking over these venues will earn you respect and a weekly income. To make a character respect you, you just need to beat them up or smash up their shop - much like something out of the film. If you do this too much the negotiation bar will go in the red and the victim will react. Owning bigger buildings will need you to hire a larger mob to follow you round and help with the shootouts - which costs a lot of money. If you need a lot of cash fast you can just drive in to any truck you want making it stop, take out the guards by Tommy Gunning their knee caps and win over the driver to hand you the keys and drop off your truck.

There are plenty of stats to keep you happy also. How many Executions have you completed, shops taken over, hidden film reels found, cops bribed and my personal favorite - safes bombed? It is actually the small things like this that gave the game more to do and can keep you entertained for many hours.

Overall Godfather is a great edition to the Wii library and a game that shines. The controls are fun to get to grips with and easy to execute. The AI does let the games down in some of the battles, but that’s easily looked past. We have here a game you can either sit down and spend time progressing through the missions, or just pick up for ten minutes and attempt to take over a few extra shops to earn more income and respect. Which ever of the above two you prefer, you’ll have a lot of fun doing this - Capiche?

If you don’t like it, you can sleep with the fishes.

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