The Sopranos - Road to Respect

The most unusual thing about this game is its premise: Tony Soprano is dead before you start. The story is told through a mob family's long memory, and the player is Anthony Jr.'s unseen rival, Joey LaRocca's son, a figure invented for the game and never part of the show. That alternate-universe setup lets the writers dodge the series' canon, and it gives the game a strange, almost fan-fiction air that you either accept or you don't.

What made it notable at the time was the cast. Much of the show's principal ensemble returned to record dialogue, and the game even drew on material from the series itself for its framing. In a licensed-tie-in economy that usually settled for sound-alikes, that counted for a lot. The voices carry scenes that the mechanics sometimes cannot.

The mechanics are where the trouble starts. Most of the game is third-person brawling, with a lock-on system, grabs, weapon pickups and environmental finishers, plus shakedown-style interactions where you lean on a debtor until the money comes out. Intimidation is the interesting idea: you collect cash and respect by roughing people up in the right way, and the game treats violence as a negotiating tool rather than a purely heroic act. The fights themselves are repetitive, though, and the enemy variety runs thin well before the credits.

The PS2 was crowded with crime games in the wake of Grand Theft Auto III, and this one chose a narrower, more linear path. It does not give you a city to roam. It gives you a string of locations, a lot of talk, and a rough sense of the show's tone, filtered through the cruder conventions of the genre. Critics at the time were cool on it, and a modern player will see why.

Still, as a curiosity it holds up better than its reputation suggests. It is a licensed game that tried to treat its source as something more than a logo, even when the brawling let it down. The cast sounds committed, and the ambition is easier to admire than the execution.