Scarface: The World Is Yours – Review (PS2, box)

Due to the holiday (and becuase I’m feeling lazy), I’m gonna skip this week’s $20 Game of the week and lost classics columns. Don’t worry though, I’ll have twice as much content for next week. Until then, check out this review.

In 1983, director Brian DePalma created a film starring Al Pacino that would forever change the way we would think about drug dealers, cocaine, Cubans, immigration, and pelicans. This film would be known as the story of a man named Tony Montana. It was the chronicle of his journey from yet another Cuban refugee looking for the American dream to the biggest drug dealer in all of Miami, all the way to his violent end as a desperate man consumed by a coccaine-fueled blind rage. This film would be the stuff of legends, serving as inspiration to entire generations of rappers, actors, gangsters, and other entertainers. This film is called Scarface. Nearly 2 decades later, Tony Montana’s story would continue on as a video game courtesy of Vivendi Universal.

Taking place in an alternate universe where Tony manages to not only survive Sosa’s wrath (the first level of the game even takes place during that fateful final scene. tip: look behind you as soon as the game starts!), but make his way to safety where he plots revenge. However, he must first regain the empire he lost, and that means making drug deals, purchasing new store fronts, laundering money, and going to war against rival organizations. After the mandatory training sequence which takes place during TOny’s days in the army, you’ll be treated to a pretty wicked intro recaping events from the film. You’ll spend much of this game building your reputation, and purchasing things from your exotics catalog. These items range from simple decorations for your mansion to cars and boats, (which your driver can deliver to you at any time) and even henchmen which you can take control of.

If for nothing else, this game will be remembered for being the first to have a ‘swear’ button. By hitting this button, you’ll either make a wisecrack or send out a profanity-laced taunt. Why would you want to do this? Intimidating someone or taunting a dying enemy will cause your ‘balls’ meter to fill up faster. (I swear I’m not making this up.) A maxed out ‘balls’ meter will allow you to trigger Tony’s infamous “Blind Rage”, which briefly puts you in a first person view, gives you unlimited ammo for whatever weapon you’re carrying at the time, and restores a small amount of health for each foe you kill during this period of time.

As one would suspect, this game takes several pages from the Grand Theft Auto playbook. This would be expected though, as GTA is in no small part influenced by the film, so it would be surprising if Scarface didn’t share any similarities with Rockstar’s franchise. Like the other big GTA-inspired game that came out this fall however, this game addresses some of the shortcommings from GTA. The aiming system for starters, allows you to lock on and manually adjust your shot for precision shooting. ALso, this game does an excellent job of making you feel as if you’re building an empire instead of being a mere henchman. Every investment you make has a benefit. Stores act as fronts to distribute your coccaine, and companies you own unlock extra features.

Also worth mentioning is that it’s hard to simply cause random chaos. Tony’s moral code prevents him from shooting innocent civilians. DOing things like driving crazy and flashing your weapon will increase your police visibility, too much of which will bring the boys in blue down upon you, and it’s much harder to evade them than in GTA. In fact, the game is over if you don’t get away from them in a certain amount of time. Your only option is to pay them off to avoid heat. The golf-swimg mechanic used to govern everything from money laundering to drug deals is also pretty intense as well. A well timed release of the button can decide weather you make a good deal or blow thousands of dollars on a drug deal gone wrong.

Fans of the film or even GTA will be smart to add this to thier collection. With Scarface, the days of bad games based on licenced properties are slowly comming to an end. It might not be by the end of 2007, or even by the end of 2008, but soon the day will come when our favorite movies, TV shows, comic books, and novels are treated with the respect they deserve, and developers with start to put as much effort into the gameplay as they do with the atmosphere of the game.