Scarface: The World Is Yours

"Hello, Little Friend! Not a Complete GTA Knock-off."

Scarface: The World is Yours is a game that follows the most badass Cuban Drug lord in all of existence. The one and only, Tony ****ing Montana, it starts out as a “What if?” Scenario. Instead of getting shot in the back, Tony is able to fight his way out of the mansion, the game starts. You'll find yourself doing the same missions over and over, but don't let that stop you from playing a good game.

The graphics are a major improvement from the Grand Theft Auto series. They don't exactly push the PS2 to its limits, but for a fairly large game, it does have a nice presentation. Tony looks a lot like his actor counterpart, as do the rest of the characters. The blood effects are a tad bit exaggerated, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. An example would be shooting someone with an SMG, usually if you shoot someone in the head with 250 shots, their head won't explode in a volcano of blood, every shot. But the blood does look good, and there is quite a bit of dismemberment, if you know where to shoot them.

The sound is done fairly well. My biggest disappointment is that Al Pacino doesn't voice Tony, due to excessive smoking. However, the replacement does an excellent job. All the guns sound realistic and the voice acting is (Fairly) close to the movement of the mouth. Throughout gameplay and cinematics, you get Tony's wit and charm- well, his wit anyways. At the start of the game, you get to hear his classic “Say ‘ello to my lil' frien'!” So that was a nice touch.

The Gameplay is a huge improvement in terms of shooting and controls. The thing that got to me was how there is little to no free-roam aspect of the game. It gets old pretty quick, as it's nearly impossible to have a shootout with the police (I'll touch back on this in a second.) or kill people as Tony. You do have the option to become an Assassin or Enforcer, and you can kill pedestrians that way. But it doesn't have the same effect as killing them as Tony. Although, this does stick to the movie, as Tony said, he never ****s with anyone who didn't have it coming. The cars control very smoothly, but can get clunky at times, there's also the fact that it's not pressure sensitive. So even lightly pressing it will cause you to go at full speed.

The shooting aspect gives you full control over shooting. You can either use it freely, to gain more Balls, or lock on and stay locked on to a single target. Once locked on, you can then aim at any body part on your target. Depending on where you hit them, it boosts your Balls Meter. The Balls Meter is a small gauge that when filled, allows you to enter Blind Rage mode. BR Mode will cause you to go into a First Person Shooter mode, you have Infinite Ammo and Health, and every kill you get gives you health. My only qualm with Gameplay would be the Health Meter. It's simply a circle filled with red, and it decreases every time you get it. My problem is that if you're in a shoot out, it gets difficult to see it, so you usually end up dead. As stated in the paragraph above, the only time you can really have a shootout with the police is when a building is nearby. You can take them out as they come in, or kill them from the safety of inside. Either way, if you're outside, you have no chance to survive. (Make your time. Somebody set up us the bomb! Yes. I had to throw this in.)

The story, as said in the first paragraph, takes place after the movie. The game opens and you're in the shootout with Sosa's assassins. With the help of his men, Tony escapes the mansion just as the police arrive. Tony is left with nothing, and the point of the game is to get it all back and get revenge on Sosa. Throughout the game, you'll be doing missions for Felix and buying property. Some people are happy that Tony isn't dead anymore, but some are also angry because the end of the movie has been changed. There are a few returning characters, but the majority of them are simply NPCs that, really, serve no purpose. Oh, and by the way, there are no Motorcycles or Air-vehicles.

The replay value isn't as great as in GTA. Like I said, you can't kill Peds as Tony, and you can't exactly have a shootout with the police. You can drive around the nice sized map, but that gets old quick. You can buy exotics to decorate your mansion, but an annoying glitch will periodically remove everything you have in there. So that's pointless in a sense, the most you can do after you beat it is buy everything, and do Felix Leads (Small missions where you buy/supply drugs, kill a gang, or protect someone.) It's occasionally fun to see how long you can last against the police in the Ariel MK III.

Graphics: 6/10.
Sound: 7/10.
Gameplay: 7/10.
Story: 8/10.
Replay Value: 6/10.

Overall: 7/10.

Scarface: The World is Yours is hardly a GTA Rip-off, albeit my comparisons. It's simply the closest game I can compare Scarface: TWiY to. It's a good game with a few fun parts, but it can (And most likely will) get old quickly. But hey, it's Tony Montana. For that reason alone I'd say it's worth renting at the very least. I know I was happy with the way the game was presented.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/08/07