For the past week I’ve been playing “Scarface: The World is Yours” on the PS2, avoiding the heavily buggy PC version, and I’ve been incredibly impressed and have thoroughly enjoyed the game.
You control Tony Montana from the final scene’s of the Brian De Palma movie, and asks the question “What if… Tony had survived?”. After surviving the attack by Sosa’s hit squad you have to rebuild your entire Miami-based empire from the ground up. From doing small drug deals, to buying up Fronts to increase your turf there are plenty of GTA-like missions where you will have to deal with vicious gangs to attack helicopters, and even the police.
For those wanting a GTA-like clone, where you can fly, ride motorbikes or do all the stuff that you expect from GTA: San Andreas – you will be disappointed. Sure, you can’t jump, ride a bike, play basketball or fly a plane — but since when did Tony Montana do any of these?
Many detractors from the game claim it’s yet another GTA clone, at in parts it is, but I find it to be much more rewarding than San Andreas. Why? Well for starters there isn’t a pleathora of easter eggs to collect, or inane basketball games or BMX tricks to pull, I mean in San Andreas none of those things were even necessary or relevant to the plot; whereas in Scarface nearly everything is.
Building an empire in Scarface is pretty straight-forward. By taking over fronts (businesses) and grabbing the local storehouse you can start distributing lots of drugs from big-time suppliers. A big flaw in the game is that your fronts will be attacked from time-to-time, sometimes on the other side of the island where you know you can’t reach it in time.
Some of the missions and sub-missions are quite repetitive and I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t do long-term deals with big-time suppliers (ie: Move x to y over the next few days and I’ll rep you more), and in order to increase your reputation amongst big-time suppliers is to buy very expensive pieces of art, property and cars, some of which are just plain tat, but I guess it is supposed to represent Tony’s lack of taste, and just wants it because it is expensive.
The AI is pretty tough, the missions can be frustrating and although there is a bit of repetitiveness in the missions, I really enjoyed Scarface — if they had put a little more work on the missions, added a little variety, perhaps added a bit of negotiation and perhaps made the Sandman turn on Scarface at the end, rather than being his buddy it would be a much better and longer game.
Overall, a really enjoyable game.
8.5/10.