Everytime you turn around, there seems to be another GTA clone hitting the shelves. You look at the game, and know exactly the kind of game your going to play. But how many of those games can honestly say that GTA ripped THEM off? Scarface: The World is Yours is the only game that can claim that with a more than an ounce of truth. Tommy Vercetti was a copy of Tony Montana (probably why Tommy is such a better character than CJ), his mansion was a near complete rip of Tony’s mansion, and GTA 3 had a radio station which stole almost the complete soundtrack of Scarface. Yeah, GTA owes Scarface a lot, so its no suprise that Scarface has a lot of elements from GTA built into it. However, what Scarface does is take those elements GTA is weak at and improve on them. Can Tony Montana finally be the one to unseat the might GTA from its throne?
The game takes a somewhat revisionist version of the movie. Instead of Tony getting shot in the back by The Snake, Tony whips around and blows him away. His rage, coupled with a large gun, allows Tony to survive the gunfight and live to fight another day. The bad news is, Tony is broke, has no respect, no women, and no power. Now Tony wants two things: To get back what he lost and to get revenge on Sosa. Starting out with, literally, nothing, you take Tony up from street nothing to coke baron. This is one of the things the game gets spot on. When you start, you have to jack a ride just to get around. As you progress, Tony has his car, complete with arsenal in the trunk, brought to HIM. Thats right, no more hunting around for a pay and spray, no looking for a Friendly Fire or Ammunation, Tony gets the stuff brought to him. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but in practice, its the difference on setting what is near being driven by a civillian and that sweet hot rod you invested in.
Cars aren’t the only thing Tony can get either. Once he gets a mansion, he can renovate it to his liking, as well as fill it with all sorts of rich junk. Juke Boxes, Cigar Cases, Champagne fountains, and Women. As Tony goes forward, he can charm women to come to his mansion to be just the extra decoration he needs. This doesn’t leave out the important stuff either. Henchman can be purchased. As an example, the arms dealer, played by guitar legend Lemmy of Motorhead, is usually only found in certain places in the world. For a short investment of 15k, Lemmy becomes a phone call away. Need someone killed in a flash? Hire an assassin. That will make short work of anyone.
Of course, all this requires money. Tony does things differently then CJ, Claude, or Tommy. When you first start out, your buy cocaine in small amounts from distributors. You then have to take that out and sell it. once you get enough cash, you can purchase a storefront. With this in hand, you now can sell larger amounts of coke right to them. Buy enough businesses, and you may even pick up a distribution front. With this, you don’t deliver coke, you pick up money.
Natrually, opposing gangs take offense to this, so they may attack your fronts in an effort to drive them out of business. Tony isn’t stupid though. He can cover them himself, but thats not what a coke baron does! Tony can invest in cameras, security equipment, and fire alarms, all in an effort to stop the attack before it begins. And should someone be stupid enough to TRY and attack, Tony doesn’t have to go himself, he can send one of his henchmen to cover it. This is a far cry from the gang wars of GTA: SA and gives a much greater sense of being a coke baron, as opposed to a foot soldier.
All of this generates illicit cash. Dirty money isn’t any good, so Tony has to clean it. Tony does this himself, and this also serves as a save spot for the game. Take the cash to the bank and Tony will bargain with the teller behind the counter to clean it. The bank always takes a cut, and the cuts get larger as Tony’s money goes up. You may start out trying to clean 10k or 20k for a paultry 1% bank cut, but you’ll move on to hundreds of thousands of dollars at once. The bank will gleefully charge you up to 10%, but its a small price to pay for clean cash. All of this is done with a simple mini-game. When you start out, you see a bar wrapped around a circle. Holding down the B button will fill the bar. you have to try to get it as close to the top as possible, WITHOUT going over. Do too little, and the bank takes a lot. Too much, and the bank won’t deal. Is a simple mini-game, that keeps the story flowing along nicely.
This same mini-game is used to intimidate gang members and fast-talk cops. The penalty is much more severe for these. Screw up with the cops, and they may confiscate and drugs and illicit money you haven’t gotten rid of yet. This could be a lot of cash lost in an instant if your not careful. Similarly, failing to intimidate a gang member could turn a chance encounter into a all out gunfight.
Tony is no slouch when it comes to gunfighting, and Scarface gets this part down pat. The targeting system is MUCH better than any GTA game has had. You can either shoot from the hip, or use left trigger to lock on. Once locked on, the right analog stick can be used to move a smaller reticule around an enemy’s body. Hitting specific points on an enemy’s body builds ‘balls’ (more on that in a moment), which allow Tony to enter a rage mode. Aiming without use of auto-lock generates this faster, but nothing builds it faster than taunting.
Hitting the B button just after shooting or hitting an enemy makes Tony stop a moment and cuss them out. No one uses his mouth like Tony, and this proves he has a lot of ‘balls’. This fills up a meter in the corner of the screen, as does driving aggressively, and chatting with people on the streets. Once filled, Tony can go into a rage mode. In this mode, he has infinite ammo, is invincible, generates health with each kill, and never reloads. this keeps the gunfights going without having to hunt down health kits, and is a fun feature.
Special mention should also be made of Tony himself. The animations and mannerisms are perfect Montana, but the voice actor who fills in for Pachino (who only allowed use of his likeness) has nailed Tony dead on. Its said in the collectors edition video that Pachino himself helped picked the actor, but he may have coached him as well, as this guy has Tony Montana down perfectly. Other famous people lend their voices to the game as incidental characters. To name a few: James Woods, Robert Loggia, Michelle Phiffer, Jason Mewes, and Tommy Chong all fill some small but necessary parts in the game. The best is Richard Roundtree running a drive-in movie theater which just happens to be playing a Shaft marathon. The worst is Jason Mewes as a FBI agent (Sorry, Jay. Thats not really your part. You should have been arguing with Tommy Chong about weed). The game also supports one of the best soundtrack options to date. While it doesn’t allow custom soundtracks, the sheer number of selectable tracks rivals Saint’s Row for variety. And unlike Saint’s Row, all the songs in Scarface are top quality. A nifty feature is to only play the game using the original film score. This makes for some very cinematic moments, but isn’t a feature most will use.
To be fair, the game has some problems. First is some dated graphics. This game was obviously built for running on a PS2 and ported to the Xbox. The game also doesn’t come in a collectors version for Xbox, which is almost insulting. Faster load times are great, but not enough. Another really big issue is the city layout. This city is laid out horribly. Its nothing more than a series of tiny islands with one way in and out. This makes for some terrible scenery and the drive to Tony’s mansion more annoying than it should have been. Last, Tony can’t jump. This overlook makes the game a bit more restricting than it needs to be, as small obstacles have to be run around. It’s just a bad oversite not to give a character this ability, and should have been one of the first moves Tony got.
Still, the game manages to almost perfectly capture the feeling of Scarface, and manages to improve on almost every aspect of GTA in the process. This is a must buy for any Scarface or GTA fan.
