Scarface: The World Is Yours

"This game will leave you with mixed feelings."

Introduction
I am a huge fan of the film, like many. I am also a huge fan of free-roam crime games, like GTA. So when I heard they were making Scarface into a game, I just had to have it!

First impressions
The game starts from the mansion shootout at the end of the film. Instead of Tony Montana dying, you assume control of him and fight your way out of the mansion and rebuild his empire. Unlike similar games which have a slow start, this throws you straight into the action.

However, once I got onto the streets of Miami, there was something about the game that almost made me return it for a refund, something which I have never considered before throughout my gaming history.
5/10

Gameplay
This game is more or less similar to Grand Theft Auto, but does many things differently. You can obviously carjack, either by pulling the driver out, or by taunting the driver so they hand the vehicle over to you. There's also a great selection of weapons, ranging from lead pipes, pistols, sub-machine guns, assault rifles, rocket and grenade launchers, and a chainsaw although you can't carry them all at the same time.

You'll spend a lot of time using the satellite phone. This is where you get your missions from, buy weapons, exotics, vehicles, and pay down your gang or cop heat. A cool thing is that you can have any vehicle (or boat) you own delivered immediately to your location. These vehicles have a weapons locker so you can access all your weapons and ammo.

Money is very very important in this game, and the way to make it is to deal cocaine. By buying the white powder from suppliers, and dealing it to street dealers or your fronts for a profit. The game keeps track of two stacks of cash, the laundered money at the bank, and whatever you're carrying on you. If you die, you lose whatever money you're carrying, but you avoid this by laundering it at the bank. They take a percentage of the money, depending on how much cop and gang heat you have. This is also how you save your progress.

Another thing the game revolves around is a meter, which is similar to the kinds in football and golf games. The aim is to stop it in the correct place. You do this when buying cocaine, selling cocaine, laundering money, and intimidating gang members and police. If you stop it in the wrong place, you get a worse drug deal, have more money deducted when laundering, gain cop and gang heat, or even get killed.

The cop heat system is different from GTA's star system. A white line appears around the radar. During that time, if you put your weapon away, and a cop approaches, you can fast talk them by stopping the meter in the right place. This removes cop attention and decreases heat. If you fail you lose all cash and drugs you're carrying, and gain cop heat. If the white line completely surrounds the radar, it starts turning red, and then the police will try to kill you. When it is entirely red, the game says "you are ****ed" and it becomes practically impossible to survive.

There is also a balls meter. You can fill it up by shooting and taunting enemies, successful deals, and driving dangerously. Once its full, you can trigger Blind Rage mode. This is very useful for killing a lot of enemies when you're low on health. The view switches to first person, you become invulnerable, and you get health back for every enemy you kill.

The most important thing to remember is that Tony Montana cannot kill innocents. You can hit them but they never die, run them over and they get back up, and you can't pull a trigger on them. This is true to the film, as Montana "never ****ed someone over who didn't have it coming" however, you can purchase additional henchmen, and switch to them to go on killing sprees.
6/10

Story
I liked the start of the game, which rewrites the ending of the film. I appreciate that some people will never be able to get over that fact, but it is just a game really. I liked the ending, but didn't like the stuff in between.
5/10

Graphics
We all know that graphics are the most crucial part of any game, and if they are good, it guarantees that the game is good as well! Well, sadly it doesn't.

The game's graphics are good, certainly better than the GTA series on the PS2. However, in the cutscenes, the characters and especially their hands still look blocky.

There are frame rate issues. While not bad, it can drop a bit when driving. It is worse in large shootouts when it really starts to get choppy, causing you to probably fail.
7/10

Sounds
The sounds in this game are ok, the sound of weapons firing are good, but the sounds of the vehicles aren't varied enough. The voice acting is superb. There is a glitch with the sounds though, if you jump in a vehicle soon after the game loads, you won't hear the engine for a few seconds.
7/10

Soundtrack
The game has the entire soundtrack from the film, plus other music from the period. It also has much newer songs as well. I didn't feel that the music sets a good 80's atmosphere like Vice City did. You can make playlists of the songs in the game, choose whatever you want, and you can also listen to music when not in a car unlike GTA!
7/10

Missions
The first mission was quite enjoyable, but after that got too repetitive. They mostly revolve around killing an unrealistic amount of enemies, and dropping stuff off in a vehicle. Of course there are the usual frustrating missions where you have to protect someone from being killed, and that person usually has the worst AI in the game and they walk straight into the line of fire.

Aside from the story missions, there isn't much side stuff to do apart from races. To get your cocaine you follow a "Felix Lead" where you have to do a specific task, upon successfully completing you can then go to a supplier. These get repetitive really quickly though.

It seems to me that all you do is go to an area of Miami, talk to a front owner, do the mission, buy the front, and move on to the next. Once you have the area under control you do some separate missions and move to the next. I didn't find these missions fun or interesting, and actually got fed up each time I failed one and had to redo it.

There are also gangs scattered around that can cause problems. If you clear them it counts towards 100% completion and gives you a good amount of money, drugs and balls.

I do believe, that since GTA3 came out in 2001, this type of game has been done too many times. You are essentially doing the same thing over and over in each game, and of course it is going to get boring.
4/10

Controls
The controls in Scarface are pretty good, you won't be making mistakes, or get confused. However you can't really customise them apart from inverting the look controls.
7/10

Shooting system
This is significantly better than GTA. When you auto-aim it usually locks on to the correct person. You can also manual aim, which does give you more balls for the rage meter. The best part is you can target specific body parts, such as the arms, legs, left and right kidney, groin, head, and even the left and right nut! You can target and shoot from the comfort of your car as well.
9/10

Driving system
I considered returning the game on this point alone. Sliding round corners at 15mph might be cool to some people, but not to me. That seems to be the only plus point, along with how nicely most vehicles steer.

I was surprised that the accelerator and brake controls weren't pressure sensitive at all. Press X and the wheels spin and the vehicles launch rather quickly. This makes it hard to reach a constant speed or have a smooth start. The brakes are much the same, press it and the vehicle stops harshly. There is cruise control to maintain a certain speed, but that just isn't as good as having proper control of your speed. The cars also steer poorly at low speeds. All this makes it rather hard to navigate tight spots , which you will be doing quite often.

Another disappointment was the driving view. In any driving game, I use the first-person view. This makes it easier to see ahead, or just to see the road when driving a large van or truck. This game doesn't have it. The other views were a disappointment. I prefer the views to be fixed, but when you drive, the view seems to go a lot further back on acceleration, and zooms onto the vehicle when braking. When the road climbs or dips, the view doesn't go with it, which again means you can't see where you're going, unless you adjust the angle with the right analogue stick.

It is worth mentioning that there are repair garages scattered round. Like GTA, you drive into them and the car magically gets repaired. However, the only time I tried using it on a cocaine distribution mission, it said "you don't have time for this" when I urgently needed to repair the car. That's the only time in the game I think the garage is actually necessary. The cars don't show much damage, but will blow up once they've taken enough damage. There are also repair garages on water, but again, if you're coming under attack from pirates, it is best to keep going, than to try repairing the damage.
2/10

Free-roam aspect
I wouldn't recommend the game at all if you're just going to use it for free roaming. There's no planes (well there is a floatplane, but you can't actually fly it, it only takes you to destinations) no helicopters, and no motorbikes. Combine that with the fact there is no jump or climb button, and although the city is large, it is essentially just a few long roads, with smaller roads coming off it, and surrounded by water. The use of space is as bad as, if not worse than Vice City. The surrounding islands look nice, but again there's nothing much to do there either.

Although you can buy some nice cars, and have them delivered anywhere, the vehicles on the road aren't impressive, and they're not varied enough.

The lack of freedom will affect the replayability of the game.
3/10

Replayability
I liked the start, and end of the game, but found everything else in between was extremely boring, and repetitive. There are some missions that I just wouldn't want to do again. It seems that once you complete a mission, there's a way you can play it again by going to the cheats page. I just can't think what mission I'll like to do again though.

I have 100% in the game, and there's nothing else to do but drive around. As said earlier, you can't get into a huge shootout with the police like in GTA, because the game doesn't let you. All these affect the replayability a considerable amount.
3/10

This game is often compared to GTA, and especially Vice City. Some will say that this is a much better game because this is the original story, and that it is more realistic. Some will say Vice City totally ripped this game off. None of that is really true. Sure, there were loads of Scarface references in GTA Vice City, including the final mission of the game. If anything, Scarface rips off the Vice City story, because Tommy Vercetti survives the mansion shootout at the end, and Tony Montana didn't in the film.

There's no doubt in my mind that Vice City was an infinitely better game than Scarface. It had a better story, more characters, and you could feel progress in the game. More weapons, more choice of vehicles, basically more stuff to do and plenty of replay value. I don't see how either game is more realistic than the other, but one certainly is more fun, and has more to offer, than the other.

This game should take about 20-30 hours to complete. I did 100% in 32 hours. GTA Vice City took me 24 hours to achieve 100% completion in, however, Vice City was more varied and didn't feel like you were doing the same thing over and over, and left you wanting more. San Andreas beats both by quite a large margin though.

There is certainly a lot of unnecessary stuff in Scarface. You can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on "exotics" some of which are useful like cars and investments or just fancy stuff for the mansion, but there's a glitch that causes some items to disappear. You only need them if you really want, or for 100% completion. You can buy security for your fronts, and henchmen to defend it, but they are sitting ducks and only give you more time to get to your front before it gets destroyed. The game tells you to clear gangs before starting distributing missions, but even if you do, your fronts still get attacked.

Just to loosely cover all pros and cons:
PROS:
Graphics
Can have any car or boat you owned delivered practically anywhere.
You can deal cocaine
Lots of guns
Playing as the legendary Tony Montana
The often excessive violence.
The shooting and targeting system, as well as the weapons
Being able to taunt enemies (though does get repetitive)
Blind Rage mode
Being able to swim
Entering and leaving buildings without waiting to load
Great start and end to the game.
Soundtrack, and being able to select and play exactly what you want, when you want.

CONS:
Repetitive missions
Lack of side missions
Not enough vehicles
No aircraft
No bikes
Driving physics
Viewpoint
Cannot jump or climb
Difficulty of some of the missions
Cop system is a bit erratic.
Nothing to do once game is completed.
"Pimp my mansion" mode
Vehicle damage
Repair shops won't repair your vehicle at critical moments
While somewhat true to the film, other parts aren't.
Often and excessive loading times.

To conclude this review, if you are interested in the game, it would be worth renting it or borrowing it off a friend first before you buy. It might be your ideal game, and it might not be. The above is just my opinion.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 12/04/06