The Godfather review

Join the family, crush your enemies and live La Cosa Nostra

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The urban landscape is dotted with small businesses, nearly all of which are fronts for illegal rackets that you can take over and extort money from. Usually this involves terrorizing a shop owner into paying protection by smashing up his business or his face (or just talking to him, if you're respected). He'll then unlock the back door, and you can shoot your way through whatever thugs are guarding the prostitution, gambling or smuggling rackets behind it. Intimidate or buy out the racket boss, and you've won another territory for the Corleones.

This gets repetitive after a while, and the enemies in each racket type tend to attack in the same predictable patterns. Even so, single-handedly seizing rival operations and watching your influence spread across the map is uniquely satisfying.

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GenreAction
DescriptionA great (if repetitive) car-crime game that immerses you in the movie's 1940s gangster drama.
Platform"Xbox","Xbox 360","PS2","PC"
US censor rating"Mature","Mature","Mature","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.