To begin, I'd just like to say that this is a review I have previously posted on Love Film and am now reproducing here for the benefit of this community :)


OK, people love GTA.....why? I hate it. Some of them have been fun, but GTA 4 was appaling. Graphicly it was very weak, the choice of colour throughout the game was the worst I have ever seen. The game was dark, the story was long, slow and drawn out, and often directionless.
So why bring this up? Well, simply, because this game shows how an open world game told from the villains point of view should really work. Throughout this game you mix between fighting with other Mafia families over territory and businesses, finding and recruiting the right men into your family and corrupting government officials of different stature. Yes the progress through the story is linear, but the quality of the story is such that it is barely noticeable, which is understandable as it follows the progress of the film taken from the perspective of a random member of the family never seen in the films. The transition between following story specific missions, and continually building your empire is seemless and everything you do overlaps. The story was well thought out and prepared, things you do because you have to benefit you hugely in the game in general.
And yet, despite how good and how well paced the story is, it is arguably not the best part of this game. The building of your criminal empire is hugely rewarding. For any of you who have played crackdown, taking over a rival business in this game is very very much like taking out a subboss in Crackdown, only on a somewhat smaller scale. But not always. Some of the businesses that need to be taken over are large warehouses, or you have to trek across 2 or 3 buildings to find where the owner is hidden to 'persuade' him to let you run the racket.
The combat is simple, but incredibly entertaining. At first it reminds you of any other generic 3rd person shooter, GTA being a prime example. But like GTA4 there is a cover system in place, however I find this one to be much simpler, and much better for it. If its in the way, it blocks you from h itting or being hit, and you can use flat services as sidle cover ala Splinter Cell. This game even allows you choice for how you progress. Take over a business, do you want to order your men in alone? Sure, go ahead. Do you want to order an assault and join it? Yep, thats ok. How about going it alone? Well do you want to go in guns blazing or stealth kills with silenced pistols and garrotte wires? Both are available, or you can choose to go in as a small group, you and 3 of your 'made men' (sergeants for lack of a better word).
A game like GTA may well have better production values than this, but this game makes you feel far more like you are a crime boss running a criminal empire, rather than just a guy fullfilling missions that involve killing and stealing. Yes, sure you can have your part of running around fullfilling missions in this game, but you can also sit back and let other do the work, and manipulate the game through the management system called Don's View. Here, as the Don of a Mafia family, you can control how your game progresses. It is here you can choose which rival businesses to try to take over, or to bomb to disrupt their income and any bonuses they gained from having that business. You can also manage your own businesses to a degree. Choose how many men you want to place on a business to guard it, choose to add made men or not to boost their defence. The Don's View is essentially an overview of how your game is progressing, and from here you can see what you need to helpy our empire grow. It is not overly in depth but is very useful, meaning you can take abreak from the constant action to manage things. A nice dichotomoy between two distinctly different playing styles that ultiamtely makes a very absorbing game.

My only gripe with this game is that it is pretty short. However I enjoyed myself immenseley from start to finish in the 15 hours it took me to complete everything. By comparison I put about 6 hours into GTA4 and was intensely bored.

Overall, I can't praise this game enough, and can't help but wonder that it must be the pulling power of the name and the production values involved that has given rise to the higher praise that GTA4 recieves. A travesty really as GTA4 was not a great game, and this is far superior. It is a crying shame that EA have announced they are not making any more games in this series.