No respect deserved
Based on one of my favorite and the very successful HBO television series The Sopranos, this game was developed by 7 Studios and published by THQ on November 7, 2006 on the PlayStation 2. The announced Xbox 360 version was in development, but was never released. This is Road to Respect, a beat 'em up game that is played in linear levels rather than a open world like in The Godfather. The player takes missions from characters from the show like Tony Soprano, Paulie, Silvio and Christopher to further progress the story. The player controls Joey LaRocca, the illegitimate son of Big Pussy from the TV show, as he does several missions and tries to make his way up the Soprano crime family.
The main cover looks poor, Tony looks like he's constipated.
The game is faithful to the show and includes most of the main cast reprising their roles. In fact all of the actors in the show reprise their roles, and they still do a pretty good job. The graphics while good for the environments that look exactly like the sets from the show, the character models look low-poly looking and do not look good even for late 2006 standards. What's worse is that like many other licensed video games, only 2 cutscenes are animated in which are the beginning and game over cutscenes. The rest are done by the game engine, in which are terribly animated.
Gameplay is beyond boring, repetitive and simple: it can easily be completed under four hours. It will take less than only eight hours to finish. The story-line is good, even if it's a bit short. But the linear missions are really bland to play. There are tiny levels with little to explore, and little use of guns since this is a beat 'em up game. Besides constant fighting, there's very little to do such as collecting loot which is pointless since the money in the game is useless. The game contains only a few things to spend money. There's also a Texas Hold 'Em game included in the game, but the interface is so terrible that you'll have a hard time playing for more than a few hands.
The combat controls are too clunky and unresponsive which makes the combat frustrating and tedious. The weapons in the game aren't fun to use at all, and the environmental kills are really bland. The collision detection is terrible, as some attacks can go through people, and enemy gun bullets will not hit the player.
You can interact with almost anyone in the game and sometimes earn money by helping strangers. The dialogue is unfortunately full of awful lines that are mostly poorly hacked-together strings of various forms of the F-word.
Over time, you will lose respect and need to pay tribute to Paulie to raise it up. If the respect meter empties, then a unique cutscene will trigger where Joey is on a boat and is shot dead by Tony and Paulie.
If you're into The Sopranos, then don't even bother with this.