The Godfather is cut down for Sony's handheld

These new images reveal what EA's lacklustre gangster game, The Godfather, will look like when it arrives on PSP later this year. Titled The Godfather Mob Wars, it's a mix of card-based, territory map-fiddling tactics and third-person action that seems well suited to Sony's gleaming handheld.

Take a look at these shots and you'll see two types of gameplay. All of the travelling, car-jacking and street-pounding has been sliced away and instead you'll be lining up your grunts on the territorial map, shuffling cash and triggering missions - like bank heists, intimidations and brawls - by selecting a single territory and leaping straight into the action.

The card-based gameplay comes into play on the map screen. Each of the 250 cards gives a different bonus, so a bribe card sees the police ignoring your misbehaviour, while a favour card can give you an advantage during battles. Success in each mission earns you new cards and extra money, which you can use to buy weapons and all those other trinkets that gangsters splash their cash on.

While it might sound like the illegitimate son of Metal Gear Acid and Liberty City Stories, at least it's not a tired, half-hearted PS2 port. If the tactical challenge is strong enough and the action short, snappy and satisfying, The Godfather Mob Wars could earn a place in anyone's family of games.

Screenshots and News at Gamesradar

I think Scarface: Money, Power, Respect is going to be much better. It looks like it will have a lot of addictive strategic elements to it. Sort of like a "Sim City" for drug cartels.

Using my amazing Psychic powers, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict right now that this game will suck.

#1. It's trying to emulate too many different kinds of games.
#2. The Godfather game wasn't that good to begin with.
#3. Cards???

Metal Gear Acid was an ok game, and that was only because Hideo Kojima is a genius. But I really think Acid was the exception to the rule: Card Battle Games Suck.

GTA:LA showed that the PSP has plenty enough power to pull off a true Godfather conversion. They could have used the conversion as an excuse to fix all of the gameplay problems that pulled down the first release. But instead, they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater and started again, mostly by cannibalizing every popular game genre they could think of. It's all a recipe for disaster.