The Godfather: Mob Wars review

While Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories proved that free-roaming crime games can be done on the PSP, that doesn't mean the handheld can do everything. It can't, for example, do The Godfather, at least not in the same way it was done on consoles. Why else would the driving segments and open world be ripped out of The Godfather: Mob Wars and replaced with turn-based strategy?

To be fair, Mob Wars does an impressive job of replicating the console Godfather 's action sequences. As a foot soldier in the Corleone crime family (not customizable this time, unfortunately), you'll run through a series of missions that have you beating down street scum, shooting up rival families and hiding horse heads between sheets. These are by and large identical to their console counterparts; not only do they look nearly as good, but even the more complicated actions - like aiming at specific body parts and strangulation - are easy to pull off with a little practice.

While the console versions allowed you to move freely around the city, however, Mob Wars sticks to a more linear progression. The game is divided into two segments, which you can switch between freely: Story Mode, which shuttles you along a series of missions that roughly parallel the movie's events; and Mob Wars, which replaces the free-roaming extortion and racketeering with a turn-based, card-driven strategy game that plays like a seedy 1940s version of Risk. It's actually a lot more fun than it sounds, and is much better suited for pick-up-and-play than the story mode and its long, unskippable cinemas.