Score: 7

Electronic Arts has the ability to spit out games to see what will stick. Fortunately for them, they finally made a worthy The Godfather game after many tries on every console.

The Godfather Blackhand Edition is the Nintendo Wii version of the game, and, aside from a few extra missions and abilities, the real draw here is the use of the Wii controllers.

I'm sure you can imagine it now, extorting a business owner by grabbing him with both controllers and throwing him around like a sack of potatoes. Your goal, of course, is to scare him badly enough that he'll want to pay you protection money. This can be done by slamming him into wall (flicking both controllers away from you), punching him (swing your arms), or aiming a gun at him (point the controller at the part of the body you want to threaten...I found the kneecap to work well).

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Extorting businesses isn't all you'll be doing. The story missions tend to be a combination of driving to talk to "x" mobster, getting a job from him, such as taking out a business or rival, driving to said destination and then blowing up the building or taking out the rival.

While the missions do become rather rote after a while, you can at any time break off from missions and take on a variety of side missions such as hit jobs, extorting business and rackets, robbing banks, bribing cops and the feds, and generally causing havoc for the other four families of NYC.

Blackhand does contain several new missions and allows for new abilities such as the use of a hit squad: fellow thugs that you can hire to help you on missions.

The game's plot follows that of the movie quite closely. You'll play out many of the famous scenes including placing a horse's head in a bed, hiding a gun behind a toilet for Michael, and taking down all of the rival families.

Being a fan of the movie, I found this to be quite fun and the story is very engaging. In fact, if you had trouble following the movie, the game really breaks it down for you and involves you deeply in the inner workings of the Corleone family.

In addition, driving around a 1950s NYC is very enjoyable. Whether it's taking the Hell's Kitchen loop or driving through Columbus Circle to the Brooklyn Bridge you really get the feel for the way things were. Every time I drove down 34th St. all I could think of was Miracle on 34th St.. Impressively, the Wii handles rendering the city on-the-fly without any loading times.

In the end, I find myself longing to play the game just a little more, in an effort to extort just one more business, to shake down one more Cuneo family member, and to threaten one more kneecap.

If you have a Wii, and you enjoy The Godfather, you should pick up this game.