The Sopranos: Road to Respect

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The Sopranos: Road to Respect
This game deserves to be whacked.
Protagonist(s): Joey LaRocca Genre(s): Action-adventure Beat 'em up Platform(s): PlayStation 2 Release: November 7, 2006 Developer(s): 7 Studios Publisher(s): THQ Country: United States

The Sopranos: Road to Respect is an action-adventure beat 'em up video game based on the successful HBO television series The Sopranos. It 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.

Gameplay

The Sopranos: Road to Respect is a beat 'em up game that is played in linear levels rather than an 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.

Why It Lacks Respect

1. The main cover is poor and looks like something out of a Blast! Entertainment game, Tony in the cover box looks constipated.
2. The gameplay is boring, dull, repetitive, and simple as it consists of nothing more than just fighting someone, grabbing the loot, talking to someone, rinse and repeat for the rest of the game.
3. The levels are extremely linear, tiny, and have little to no exploration to be found.
4. There are numerous bugs and glitches such as the enemies having broken pathfinding or a man shooting his gun constantly even when he's running and the audio of that gun being broken, apparently, it doesn't hurt Joey somehow, there is even a video montage of glitches found in the game as an unlockable titled: Bloopers.
5. There are only 2 animated cutscenes, the intro and the game over cutscenes, most of the other ones are in-game cutscenes that have terrible and repeated animations.
   • The animations, in general, are also stiff and repeated, sometimes also awful such as the kids dancing like old people in their 80s during the party level and Joey can join them too.
6. The graphics are subpar even for 2006 standards, mostly notable for the character models that look very low poly. Other games such as: The Godfather (video game), Driver: Parallel Lines, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, Yakuza 2 (another beat' em up game but with open world elements) and Scarface: The World Is Yours (another game that had a canceled Xbox 360 port) all came out the same year and they look miles better.
7. Since this is a beat em up game, there are only two guns to use: The Pistol and The Shotgun (that you get after beating the game), and even those are useless since using them will decrease the respect resulting in a game over, the ammo for these guns are also too scarce, even though there is a special move where Joey can pull out his gun and kill them, doing that move will result in game over, there are also only two or three times guns are necessary to use, one being in the hotel level and the other time during the very final level.
8. Missed opportunity: This game could have been an amazing open-world game where you get to explore more locations based on the show, almost like The Godfather (video game) and Scarface: The World Is Yours but instead it's a linear beat' em up game with little to no locations to explore, just like Dragon Ball Z: Sagas.
9. Despite the show having more locations, most of the time in this game is spent in the strip club: Bada-Bing, The Deli, The Gym, and the Docks.
   • Speaking of locations, other ones from the show such as Tony's home are forgotten.
   • There are other locations to visit such as: the hospital, a party, the garage, the law office, and a p**n studio but you only go there only one time and never come back.
   • And in true shovelware fashion as mentioned above, there is also the docks level, which might as well also include a sewer level while at it.
   • The first docks level makes no sense, you have to get rid of the body that Joey killed in the previous level, but upon moving on, there are more guys you kill in this level which makes no sense, and apparently, the docks are the only way to get rid of a body.
   • The gym level for some reason reuses some posters from the Bada-Bing.
10. The game tries so hard to cash in on the GTA Craze at that time by including sexual innuendo jokes that feel out of place for a Mafia/Gangster-themed game, there is also gross-out humor that again feels out of place.
    • The writers behind this game somehow thought that the players of this game were not fans of The Sopranos show which is incredibly stupid.
    • There is also a sequence at the hospital level that makes no sense and feels out of place where Joey gets stabbed with a syringe by a doctor and now has a hallucination, it ends with Christopher shooting him.
11. Instead of playing Tony Soprano himself, you play an unknown character that never appeared or was he mentioned in the show: Joey LaRocca (Big Pussy's illegitimate son), not only is he a dull protagonist but he's also unlikable as he beats up everyone, including a homeless person.
    • Speaking of Tony, he only appears in cutscenes and doesn't get enough screen time, his son AJ also appears in only about three cutscenes, and one level where you have to help him with a certain party.
    • There are times when Joey sees visions of his dead father: Big Pussy, but it comes out as forced and out of nowhere because Joey doesn't give a damn about him.
12. The fighting in this game consists of nothing more than just mashing buttons and sometimes doing quick time events.
    • The fighting controls themselves are clunky and unresponsive making the combat extremely frustrating and tedious.
    • Fighting people can also be unfairly hard as the enemies will always try to tackle you to the ground and grab you and you have to escape from these attacks, not only that but these attacks do insane damage and it can result in a big stun lock, the only way to avoid this is by grabbing a melee weapon which makes escaping the attacks much faster.
13. The environmental kills are really bland, mostly notable for the TV kill in the hotel level where the TV won't break after the kill.
14. There is money in this game that you can earn by doing certain tasks and by looting beaten-up people, but it's extremely useless as there isn't much to spend on it aside from paying tribute to Paulie to raise up the Respect meter, a gambling minigame, badly animated lap dances and Texas Hold'Em game but the interface is so terrible that you'll have a hard time playing for more than a few hands, or just not bother trying to play it again.
15. The game is extremely short and can easily be completed in under four hours.
16. As mentioned before, the game was supposed to have a next-gen Xbox 360 port but that never happened, probably because of the poor reception it got, Not only that but it also never came out on Original Xbox and Microsoft Windows.
17. The linear missions are really bland to play.
18. The dialogue is full of awful lines that are mostly poorly hacked-together strings of various forms of the F-word and constant unnecessary swearing.
19. Terrible hit detection, as some attacks can go through people, and enemy gun bullets will not hit the player.
20. As mentioned above, 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.
    • The cutscene also doesn't make sense, when and how did Joey, Tony, and Paulie get on the boat instantly?
21. There are choices you can make between some cutscenes: Tough, Neutral, and Smooth, but these choices don't affect the storyline whatsoever, aside from some of the dialogues.
22. There is no replay value upon completing the game, as mentioned above, all you get is a shotgun.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The storyline is good, even if it's a bit short.
2. All of the actors in the show reprise their roles, and they still do a pretty good job.
3. There are unlockables in the game such as concept art and behind the scene videos that can be unlocked by paying tribute to Paulie.
4. Despite the character models looking awful. The graphics for the environments are actually good as they look exactly like the sets from the show.
5. The game is faithful to the show and includes most of the main cast reprising their roles.
6. You can interact with almost anyone in the game and sometimes earn money by helping strangers.

Reception

The game received "generally unfavorable" reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic. The game received poor reviews from gaming websites like GameSpot and IGN, which complained of overly simplistic gameplay, a small and linear game world with little ability to explore, blocky and unappealing graphics, marginal game mechanics, and various clipping and collision detection bugs. The voice acting contributed by Sopranos cast members received praise.

Trivia

• Just like Scarface: The World Is Yours, the game was meant to have an Xbox 360 port, but because of the poor reception, it got canceled.

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