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It’s very nice to see a Grand Theft Auto type game (we won’t say clone or knock-off, that would be really degrading) make a solid effort to innovate on the now-tired form of gameplay that pervades the “free roaming” or “open world” games that should be classified as knock offs or clones. Scarface: The World is Yours brings plenty new to the table, and reforms enough of the genres silly clichés to establish itself as its own experience, free to be judged on its own merits and not compared to Rockstar’s epic franchise. The fact that it’s also a movie-based game that doesn’t suck is borderline miraculous, considering the rubbish gamers have had to wade through in that subgenre for years.

Once you get the power…

What makes Scarface more than just a remake of GTA: Vice City with an actual movie license, is its overall focus on acquiring power, money, women and especially cocaine. The Miami of Scarface is not a giant sandbox, rather it’s a big p***y waiting to get… no, actually it’s a series of neighborhoods that you must take over by eliminating roving gangs and acquiring and buying “fronts” from which to distribute yeyo. These are the building blocks of your empire, and after you acquire all the fronts in a certain neighborhood, you can then begin doing distribution missions, which involve smuggling the coke to your warehouse, distributing it to fronts and collecting money. These missions can be extremely hairy, with cops and other gangs trying to thwart your dreams of conquest.

After you capture a couple neighborhoods though, these missions start to get a little tedious. They’re the only way you can make enough money to buy the cars, weapons and henchmen you’ll need to keep completing these increasingly difficult missions. It’s like that old anti-drug ad from the 80’s with the guy in the rumpled suit saying: “I work harder so I can make more money so I can do more blow so I can work harder so I can make more money so I can, etc., etc.” The repetitiveness can either be annoying or addictive, depending on the kind of gamer you are, but the leveling up you do through the game unlocks more stuff for you to buy and increase your reputation, not to mention, your balls. Yes, balls are a resource in the game, and we’re not talking tennis or golf.

Say Hello To My Little Friend

The other highlight of Scarface’s improved gameplay is the shooting, something that open world games and third person action games in general have trouble with. Scarface uses a lock-on system with the left trigger that can then be fine tuned by the right stick. This allows you to go for head shots if you have the time, or just a guaranteed body shot if you don’t. Access to your weapons is easy too, with every car delivered to you by your driver (another nice touch that eliminates constant car jacking) is a weapons locker in the trunk with access to your arsenal. It’s just too bad the explosion effects aren’t better.

Hey Baby, Want to Get Some Ice Cream?

If you’re a fan of Tony Montana, especially impersonating his thick, pelican-infused Cuban accent, you’ll have a good time with all the extra lines of dialogue that have been written for the character. You can go up to almost any npc on the street and initiate a conversation that will actually go back and forth and make sense. Tony also has a taunt feature after he kills someone that helps him boost his rage meter (a sort of beserk mode that’s a great help in large battles) as well as make you occaisionally laugh out loud. He even picks up on women, with sweet talk to get him back to his mansion. Of course, once their installed there, he’s verbally abusive to them. Oh Tony, when will you learn to love again.

Scarface: The World is Yours is hardly perfect, and doesn’t supercede any of the GTA games. But it does make some improvements to the style of gameplay that’s often seen in the genre, and it’s got Scarface flavor out the yin yang. Most importantly however, Scarface doesn’t take itself as seriously, and that is probably the biggest quality that has set the GTA series apart over the years. It’s nice to see someone else learn that lesson. 

Article by: Tom Price
Video produced by: Ross Beeley