Scarface: The World is Yours

• Platform: PC, Xbox, Playstation 2
• Published by: Vivendi Games
• Developed by: Radical Entertainment
• Release Date: Oct 8, 2006
• Genre: Action
• Multiplayer: No
• Online: No

The Good

+ Interesting take on the GTA formula

The Bad

- Becomes overly repetitive

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Trailers and Footage

 

Scarface: The World is Yours Review

-- October 9, 2006 by: Chris Remo

In Wes Anderson's film The Royal Tenenbaums, novelist Eli Cash--described as the "James Joyce of the West" and played by Owen Wilson--summarizes the plot of his recent novel, Old Custer. "Everyone knows Custer died at Little Bighorn," he explains. "What this book presupposes is...what if he didn't?" It is impossible not to recall this satire of revisionist popular fiction when starting up Radical Entertainment's Scarface: The World is Yours (PS2, Xbox, PC), whose entirely earnest premise is that Brian De Palma's film's infamous and self-destructive protagonist Tony Montana escapes his epic demise and starts from scratch as a small time coke distributor. Like Custer's last stand, Tony Montana's final and fatal shootout in his lavish palace has become almost mythical, firmly ingrained into mainstream culture. For a film so heavily dated by the 1980s culture that produced it, it has shown remarkable staying power--so much, in fact, that it has justified a high budget video game adaptation over twenty years after its release.

Scarface: The World is Yours achieves its rather significant alteration by starting just before Montana's oft-quoted exclamation, "Say hello to my little friend!" After he takes out half a dozen guys with his grenade launcher, the player takes control with traditional dual analog stick third person shooter controls and is able to dispatch Tony's shotgun-wielding would-be assassin. From there, Tony makes his escape and is left homeless, penniless, and without a reputation, forced to rebuild his empire from square one. This followup to Oliver Stone and De Palma's screen story, itself a retelling of Howard Hawks' 1932 classic Scarface (in turn a loose adaptation of Armitage Trail's 1930 novel Scarface), will undoubtedly be met with a variety of reactions. Devotees of the film are likely to find it in poor form, as it blatantly stomps all over the film's crucial messages and themes of unchecked hubris and blind ambition, the attractions and dangers of a life of excess, and the self-destruction that frequently accompanies a meteoric rise to power. Then again, many diehard Scarface fans identify more with the gritty street smart take on an American Dream bootstraps tale. For them, this game's story, crafted by screenwriter David McKenna (American History X, Blow), may be ideal. Take your pick. Perhaps Tony's pseudo-resurrection is entirely appropriate for the video game medium, whose narrative bread and butter is superhuman one-man-armies able to plow through countless enemies while only briefly hindered by things like dying. Take from this what you will any further reflections on video game storytelling to date.

That scenario is certainly one depicted quite frequently in Scarface: The World is Yours, which will from this point on be referred to as Scarface in this review. Sorry, De Palma/Hawks/Trail. That opening scene has the player take out dozens upon dozens of henchmen sent by nemesis Alejandro Sosa, and it sets a precedent for many further encounters. Frequently when playing Scarface, you will find yourself singlehandedly taking on enormous numbers of enemy gangsters and cronies, numbers of which Hollywood's Scarface could have only dreamed. This is facilitated by a lock-on targeting system that, when activated, places the reticule roughly over the nearest enemy. The reticule can then be adjusted within a limited radius with the right analog stick, allowing aim to be adjusted or specific body parts to be targeted. It's a nice take on the standard Grand Theft Auto system, and makes auto targeting feel a little bit more active and a little less like autopilot. The game will courteously inform you what particular body part you have hit with every bullet, be it left kidney, head, right arm, and so on. Shooting enemies, as well as performing various other actions like punching them or taunting them, will--I swear to God--fill up your "Balls Meter." When your balls are full, you can unleash a Blind Rage attack that puts you into first person mode, applies some crazy color filters, makes you invulnerable, increases your damage, and boosts your life every time you hit an enemy. It almost feels like the designers wanted to make 800% sure that everybody who sees Scarface knows that it is indeed a video game and does not confuse it with a film or a fish tank or some other form of entertainment. When you are slaughtering numerous enemies in an invincible fury and your screen reads "+60 Balls" and "Left Nut" while the main character yells "Fuck you, you cock-a-roach!" and three decapitated guys have fallen to their knees with blood fountaining out of their necks, you can be reasonably sure you are playing a video game.

Structurally, Grand Theft Auto serves as Scarface's extremely present touchstone. The goal of the game is to own Miami, and this is done in a GTA-style open world mission-based format revolving around stealing cars, conquering plots of contested turf, acquiring local businesses, and--of course--doing a lot of deliveries. Where Scarface differs from most games of its ilk is that progression through its main storyline is almost entirely dependent on the player's ability to gain money, power, and reputation through a few key mechanics rather than following a linear or branching set of missions. The game tracks reputation points; the percentage of each of four main Miami turfs controlled by the player; the, uh, number of balls the player has; the number of grams of coke the player has at his disposal; total cash, including what is on Tony's person as well as what is laundered in a bank account; and the number of exotic objects, vehicles, and businesses controlled by the player. Reputation points are the key metric, and what allow the player to progress through the eight levels of reputation that push the story along. Reputation is gained by completing missions and purchasing exotics, which takes money, which in turn comes from dealing drugs and various other secondary sources. In a clever touch, the player starts out with massive stats across the board--millions of reputation points, balls, dollars, and grams of drugs, 100% of the turf, and dozens of exotics--but after the necessary exile from the mansion, everything clicks steadily down to zero.

To climb back up from zero, you must first pay off a pair of vice cops to get your mansion back, then start acquiring wholesale shipments of coke from producers and intermediaries, and spreading them to small time dealers throughout the city. Every time you sell drugs to a dealer, you must negotiate a dollars per gram price. This is done via a golf swing-like meter with failure on one extreme and the best possible rate on the other. Failure means the dealer tries to kill you. This generally isn't a big deal, seeing as Tony is practically the Terminator, but you get the mechanism down pretty quickly which means that on the rare occasions when you fail you aren't expecting it. When you die, you lose all of the money you have on your person (ie, not in a bank) as well as all the drugs you're carrying, which can set you back quite a bit if you aren't careful. The same golf swing system is used for various other parts of the game. It negotiates you a lower percentage rate when you give your money to the bank to be laundered and held, and it is used to intimidate cops and gang members and reduce your heat with them. At all times you have Gang Heat and Police Heat ratings; each one determines how likely you are to attract gang or cop attention when trespassing on gang territory or breaking the law (read: just about always). These ratings can be lowered by paying off the appropriate parties. This is something you'll want to do, as higher amounts of heat negatively impacts things like your money laundering and drug selling rates.

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