The Godfather: Mob Wars works quite a bit differently than the console releases of The Godfather. While the console game was an open-world title, Mob Wars works on a mission-by-mission basis, and you're never given the ability to fully explore the world. What's more, you can't even drive cars in the game, which would make exploring the entire world tedious anyway. Many of the action mechanics work the same way however, allowing you to grab and throw men into the environment to rough them up, use wall cover to fire off a few safe shots from your pistol or take a bat to someone's head.
The hook here is that aside from the shooting missions that very much mimic the same segments from the console game, you're also able to play the Mob Wars mode. In fact, after playing a few of the regular missions, you'll be forced to partake in a Mob Wars round.
The Mob Wars mode is a turn-based strategy game type. On any given turn, you can hire new thugs (only one per district, however), play one of the cards you've acquired by running an outfit of some sort (gambling, bars, diamond and jewelry rackets, etc.), or move into another territory. The thing that's rather odd about this setup is that while your decisions are turn-based, some of your actions aren't. That is, whenever you move into another territory you'll actually control your character like you would in the standard action mode, thereby negating much of the strategy element and leaving it as an odd if somewhat interesting mix.
While this could have wound up resulting in a nice mixture between action and strategy, there are a number of areas where the ball was dropped. For instance, you don't actually control what sorts of rackets are run in any given area, nor can you fire one of your soldiers if you wanted to hire a better one. The playing card element is interesting in that each one gives you the ability to perform some sort of special move for a bit of change from your bank account, but it doesn't really help it rise above mediocrity.
As mentioned, the action missions are essentially ripped straight out of the console version of The Godfather, cutscenes and all, though they've had to be chopped down as the game doesn't allow for really any amount of wandering nor can you actually hop into a car (other than to end a mission). In other words, the structure and flow feel very A to B, and while these sorts of overly simplistic missions may have worked inside the package of an open-world game, you don't have that here and it simply feels both boring and contrived.
The two modes play off of each other in a small way, allowing you to earn points and such to upgrade your character, but when you're actually in either one you never really feel the effects of the other. It's somewhat obvious that EA decided that since it wouldn't be able to include the ability to take over businesses in the action section of the game, it delegated said mechanic to the Mob Wars mode. But while the action segments and racketeering fit together fairly well on the console game, they seem disconnected here.