This week’s Game of the Week The Godfather: Five Families was released on Google+ exclusively for 45 days. Kabam’s first major movie franchise aims to combine MMO-style play with social gaming.

Developer: Kabam
Genre: Strategy, MMO
Platform(s): Google+, web
Launch: 7 December 2011
Languages: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish
Monetization: Free-to-play with paid premium currency

What’s inside?

A complex multiplayer mafia social game build on top of The Godfather film series.

Players communicate via live chat.

The game is set during the prohibition era, ten years before the events in The Godfather film take place. Players get to choose which of New York’s five families they want to join as they war for domination of the city.

How to play

Players enter the game as low-level gangsters and join one of the Five Families (Corleone, Barzini, Tattaglia, Stracci and Cuneo), each of which confer unique benefits such as extra income from nightclubs and other illicit entertainment. Every family has a Don – a position held by the user who has achieved the most in-game respect through defeating enemies and conquering territories. Players climb the ranks and gain power by intimidating and collecting from neighbors while gathering weapons, skills and equipment to fight rivals.

The player gets assigned jobs but he can never finish- for each completed job another one is added.

Apart from joining a family, players can also form a smaller alliance, or Crew, with others. The Google+ integration uses Circles to share help, information, and experiences with their Family and Crew. Also, a live chat window lets Crews and families communicate in real-time.

The game has three main scenes: Estate, Neighborhood and City.  Each setting features countless different mini-missions or jobs, such as upgrading buildings, training thugs or researching techniques in the game’s library. All tasks take up a specific amount of time but each of them can be sped up using special boosters. There are four resources: Cash, Food, Steel, Cement and a premium currency called Diamonds which can be used in the shop to buy weapons time boosters  for quicker advance in the game.

The in-game shop contains an endless plethora of upgrades and boosters.

Bottom line

Kabam’s COO Chris Carvalho said at launch that The Godfather: Five Families has enjoyed the best ever beta period for a Kabam game. How this translates into actual numbers is hard to tell. The game combines social and player-versus-player mechanics with great atmosphere and graphics. But it could be just a little too hardcore for casual gamers who might not want to grapple with the overwhelming amount of options.