While The Godfather II comes with its own familiar cinematic strings, it's impossible to cruise the streets of the Big Apple without humming the Fun Lovin' Criminals song, "King of New York". At least we found ourselves doing so in this sequel from EA which tasks the player with running his or her own crime empire.

The Godfather II is undoubtedly reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto. It's a third-person shooter with a healthy sprinkle of brutal melee combat, and a dose of stealing cars and driving around, tuning into different radio stations while occasionally running people over. The difference is there's an added overlay of crime strategy, albeit with quite simplistic mechanics.

Each location (you begin in New York, then move on to Florida and Cuba) consists of a number of crime businesses, including prostitution, gun running, money laundering fronts and so on. Control of these can be wrested from rival dons by storming in and shooting the place up, backed up by computer AI controlled 'made-men' from your crime family. Grabbing an entire ring of businesses generates bonus rewards, such as bullet-proof vests, ammo belts and armour plated cars.

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Naturally, the other bosses can attack your businesses, so muscle has to be paid for to protect them. The game's strategy involves balancing your income with the number of guards hired, bearing in mind that money can also be used to upgrade your made-men's skills and weapons. These family members can be sent to respond to attacks, or you can personally turn up and lead the defence if a lightly guarded business is hit.

However, you'll generally delegate defensive duties to concentrate on spearheading offensive tasks. Hostile take-overs of new businesses are always a primary concern, but there are also opportunities to take out rival made-men (which weakens an opposing don's potential to cause trouble).

Furthermore, favours can be earned: scratch the police chief's back and later you can call in an early prison release if the cops nab one of your thugs. Or you can just forget any diplomatic shenanigans and head out to rob a bank if the family is really short on dough.

Early on in the proceedings this all seems like an enticing amount of variety, but it soon becomes apparent that The Godfather II is quite repetitive by nature. It essentially boils down to this: hit a business, perform a favour to obtain the location of a rival made-man, then do the hit on that person.

The game begins to feel quite linear, with the plot-led objectives and set-piece encounters reinforcing that aspect. For example, in one section you're running from the police and step-by-step objectives point out the exact staircases to run to and doors to open. Which is taking the spoon-feeding a bit too far.

The gun battles are also rather too easy, particularly if you develop your AI team-mates' shooting accuracy and kit them out with good weapons. It's a shame, really, as we can see the developer's intention to produce a streamlined and playable action-strategy hybrid, but unfortunately it falls foul of being a little too simple and repetitive.

Snaking your mobster tentacles out across the city and grasping control from your rivals is initially quite engaging, but unfortunately that doesn't last. The various missions become distinctly samey after a while, and the overall level of challenge errs on the easy side.