Several months late and with the stinging criticisms from the movie trilogy's director, Francis Ford Coppola, still ringing in its ears, The Godfather has a big point to prove. The point being that the good name of the revered films won't be tarnished by a crude videogame cash-in project.

With such baggage weighing it down it'd be easy to dismiss The Godfather, but even purists will have to drop at least one disapproving raised eyebrow at the result. Instead of harming the legacy, the game clearly has a lot of respect for its source material, and doesn't shy away from the violent and gory subject matter. It's even got the confidence to dispense with much of the trilogy's talkiness and concentrate on ramping up the violence even further, creating a veritable bloodbath of an action game.

Marlon Brando's death soon after recording his lines for the game also gives this an almost macabre appeal - although whether they all made it, we're not sure. It's Brando's Don Vito Corleone who takes your character under his wing at the beginning - an obligation forced upon him after you witness the murder of your old man at the hands of gangsters as a nipper. Your long-term goal is to usurp Vito as the head of the Corleone family, and then eventually become the Don of New York.

Before any of that you get to create a character from scratch - your angry young man not actually existing in any of the movies. Using a similar system to that found in the Tiger Woods games, you can model the way your character looks and more importantly dresses, shaping everything from how hollow his cheekbones are to the colour of his slacks. Whatever looks, clothes and haircut you select, that's how your character appears in all the subsequent cut-scenes. It's just a pity there isn't a system whereby the smarter you look, the more respect you earn right from the beginning. Still, we defy anyone not to go on an ego trip and create a version of themselves.

Classic Italian-American looks and style are one thing, but you're still a nobody until you've earned the trust of the family and helped raise its reputation. To rise through the Corleone ranks you'll need to take on a mixture of main story missions and side missions, exploring every aspect of the game to reach the very top.

Scenes from The Godfather movie appear as missions, with your character initially taking a backseat role but eventually making a more active contribution to the most famous bits. For instance, in the early training missions you witness the stabbing in the hand and strangulation of Luca Brasi, and must gun down the henchmen who carry out the act before escaping by car. Later, you're the person who keeps watch and creates a safe passage for another grunt to behead Khartoum the racehorse and deliver it to the bed of Woltz, the movie producer. And later still, you're the guy who hides the gun in the cistern in the restaurant, allowing Michael Corleone to collect it and kill Sollozzo and McClusky. It's just a shame that Al Pacino chose to lend his likeness to the Scarface game instead.

Sensibly, EA has done much more than cherry pick the best bits from the film - since despite the three-hour running time it'd make for a pretty short-lived game if that were all there was. Your actions in this living, breathing city have a definite impact on how people act towards you, and how tough it is venturing into certain parts of town. Kill too many innocents or steal too many cars and your heat level rises, forcing the cops to arrest you or even shoot on sight. That said, you can bribe cops to turn a blind eye to your activities, with higher-ranking officers bending the rules for longer. Wasting too many gangsters from the same family also makes life harder since you risk turning manageable rivalries into all-out vendetta warfare, leading to a situation where you can't walk through a neighbourhood without being shot at. This ebb and flow of heat and vendettas helps prevent the game from becoming stale or repetitive.

You'll spend a lot of your time extorting businesses, which is your main source of income. Uncooperative owners can be dealt with in two ways, either by beating them to breaking point (but not going overboard so you end up murdering them or they refuse to co-operate altogether) or destroying parts of their shop. Once a shopkeeper is on your side, a backroom door in the building may also be unlocked, behind which you'll find a controllable racket. If you want to earn even more pocket money you can try to take over an entire chain of rackets, and even control the warehouses and transport hubs along the supply chain. Plenty of firepower is needed for these larger operations though, and it isn't worth your while attempting them until you've earned plenty of respect and got your hands on the bigger guns. Still, the fact that the game gives you the choice is pretty impressive.

Melee combat is handled fairly unusually in The Godfather. Like the Fight Night games, moving both analogue sticks controls all your attacks. A quick push toward an enemy on the Right stick performs a standard punch, while a stronger blow calls for the same stick to be pulled back first and then released - as if you're winding up a big punch. Pressing the Left and Right triggers together grabs an opponent, allowing you to hit him, throw him, strangle him or slam him into parts of the environment. Our favourite? Throwing a pug-nosed mobster into a baker's oven. It's quick and leaves no traces. The controls take some getting used to, especially if you haven't played Fight Night before, but in allowing you to manage the level of violence in each fight there's no other workable system.

Less successful is the driving, which fortunately doesn't take up too much of the game. At least not in terms of actual missions, though there's plenty of to-ing and fro-ing to be done behind the wheel in order to get around the huge city, and reach each mission location. The cars feel extremely flimsy and lightweight, and also manage to reach speeds way above what you'd expect cars from this period to be able to make. Furthermore, the cops who often give chase after you complete a job are a bit on the dense side, often slamming head-on into vehicles coming the opposite way even when there's plenty of room either side of the road. In this respect it's no GTA, or even Driver for that matter.

But as clones go, The Godfather is one of the better ones. It's got a unique atmosphere all of its own, due largely to the quality period setting, and manages to stay faithful to the film while carving out some interesting takes on classic scenes. It just looks and sounds very professional. There's plenty of extortion, murder and exploring on the side to occupy your time too, so you'll never get bored of doing the same thing over and over again. Not the most ambitious or original of games, but very well made and definitely not the travesty fans of the films were expecting.

1. The Godfather films were extremely violent, so anything less in the game would be unrealistic. Fortunately, it doesn't hold back.
2. Marlon Brando, James Caan and Robert Duvall reprise their roles as Don Vito Corleone, Sonny Carleone and Tom Haggan.
3. Scenes from the film appear as missions, with your character becoming more involved as his ranking and reputation increases.
4. There are tons of side missions to help you become Don of New York, with one of the most important being to extort businesses.

1. The driving model isn't the best, with cars shoved aside too easily (including your own) and the AI lacking.

A highly polished game that makes good use of the Godfather licence without really offering anything we haven't seen before.