Scarface: The World is Yours

"Ok, what red-blooded action fan hasn�t wanted to do the Tony Montana "Say hello to my leetle friend" last stand at the mansion? That�s the first thing this game has you do. In fact, the game perfectly captures the spirit of the movie, as you get to play a posturing, swaggering, and swearing Tony Montana who offers women ice cream and calls people "cockaroaches" a lot. It�s a decent GTA clone, with a better targeting system for gun fights. But at the end of the day, it is another GTA clone."

Jason's Score:

7.5

Scarface is probably the ultimate "guy" movie. You've got one badass anti-hero who rises to the top of the criminal world, becomes obscenely rich, dresses in the height of 80s fashion, bags a young Michelle Pfeiffer, swears like five pimps, and goes out with a blaze of glory when it all falls apart.

As Tony Montana, Al Pacino gave a hyper performance so over-the-top that we're still waiting for it to come back down. What more could you ask for? I will admit to many occasions when a game gave me a very big gun and I shouted out "Say hello to my little friend!" I'll bet I'm not the only one. Yes it's cheesy, but Scarface is 100 percent pure machismo, and full of so many quotable lines.

That's the movie. What about the game?

Well, I'll say this for the Scarface: The World is Yours game. It perfectly captures the essence of the movie, and delivers the goods right away. One of the first things you do in this game is take over Tony during the climatic gun battle from the end of the movie. However, after much gunplay, swearing, and dubbing of would-be assassins as "cockaroaches," you escape. You must now rebuild your lost drug empire and put Tony Montana back on top. This means negotiating with suppliers for product, selling the drugs to dealers, conquering territories, and wiping out rival gangs or anyone else who objects to your entrepreneurial endeavours.

So let's get down to business. Yep, Scarface is another Grand Theft Auto clone, very reminiscent of Vice City. To be fair, Vice City stole a whole heaping of inspiration from Scarface, but that doesn't change the fact that you've played many games like this before, down to the 80s soundtrack.

However, Scarface does have its highlights. For one, Scarface continues the trend of GTA's imitators doing the running and gunning better than GTA itself. The shooting controls and targeting are tight and easy to manage. In addition, they added a "Blind Rage" mode. If you build up enough juice in your "Balls" meter (which you fill by shooting people and mouthing off), you can launch into a first person mode in which you're momentarily invincible. You can wipe out your opponents while Tony swears away, just like that famous final scene. That's a pretty fun and useful mode, and I'm glad they added this, rather than yet another Bullet Time mode.

Something a lot of GTA-like games have failed to do convincingly is what happens to your character once they start moving up in the world. After all, gang leaders don't go on hits themselves; they order them. Yet in most GTA-style games, you do every last bit of dirty work yourself. Scarface on the other hand somewhat addresses this by allowing you to buy specialists like the Enforcer or the Assassin. This will open up new mission types, and allow you to play the game as different characters. Or, you can continue to play as Tony and micromanage your cartel.

I particularly like how the game handles personal interactions. There's a timing meter for things like bartering and intimidation. You hold a button down until the meter fills up. If you release the button too soon or too late, you might not get a good price. Or you might lose some face, or piss someone off enough to touch off a Wild West show.

What I like about this meter is that it actually allows you to talk your way past certain situations. For example, let's say you've just killed five rival gangsters in the middle of the street and the police arrive. Rather than running away, you can discreetly tuck away your gun and attempt to bluff your way past the police.

That's the game's highlights. Now, for its lows. I wish the save points were a lot more plentiful. Sometimes you have to do an awful lot of traveling to find one. Also, the mapping system is not as easy to follow as it is in other, similar games. Yes, you can tag a spot on the map with a marker, and arrows will guide you to it. But the city is laid out in such a way that you have to go around waterways in order to get to where you're going, so following a compass won't show you the most direct route. I'd love to see the Saints Row or Test Drive Unlimited mapping system in this game (even if TDU's map is a major anachronism).

Despite these issues, I think devotees of the movie will love Scarface, the game. There are plenty of moments from the flick that are recreated over and over that fans will get right into. And surprise, surprise, the game's voice work is pretty good too. Although they did not get Pacino himself to do the voice of Tony Montana, the game has one wicked cast. Ice-T, Michael York, Robert Loggia, James Woods...they even got Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong in there. As for the Tony sound-alike, he does a very good job. It's hard to tell that it's not Pacino. The game is loaded with Montana-isms, some new, some straight from the movie (most of which are too dirty to repeat here). In fact, the game has lots of hidden conversations, so don't be afraid to run up to someone at random and start talking. The results can be pretty funny.

Those who find GTA a little too hard and overwhelming will probably enjoy Scarface, too. It's a little more straightforward in its approach, easier to control, and a little more forgiving of mistakes. Plus it's well put together, even if it doesn't blaze many trails into the woods of originality. For everyone else, it's the usual question: how are you feeling about open world Be-a-Criminal games? GTA, Saints Row, True Crime... If you've played your fill, there's not much new in Scarface besides the cool factor of being Tony.

Pros

Cons

Bottom Line

Jason's Score:

7.5