Scarface: The World is Yours

Tony Montana, one of film’s loudest and most obnoxious icons, had never been recreated into a video game form until last year. Sierra and Radical Entertainment’s Scarface: The World Is Yours was a solid open-world action game whose focus on building a massive empire and being incredibly violent appealed to a lot of gamers. The success of the last-generation original spurred Sierra to move their game to another success–Nintendo’s Wii.

Scarface: The World Is Yours was a risk on Wii. The controls could have been an abomination. The last-generation visuals, if poorly ported, could degrade the experience. What about incentive? Why should gamers spend $50 on a game that could be found cheaper on the PlayStation 2 or Xbox? I’ll tell you why: Scarface is a blast, and even more so on Nintendo Wii than ever before.

In Scarface: The World Is Yours, Sosa’s goons didn’t finish the job. The cocaine kingpin Tony Montana escaped alive and pissed as ever, hell-bent on rebuilding his drug kingdom. All sorts of characters pop up in the story, but the best part of the story is that Tony Montana’s sound-alike and Radical’s animators all did a fantastic job remaking his character. The cut-scenes are some of gaming’s best, excellently capturing the same mood of the film. I must credit Radical, this presentation pushes Scarface’s values further than what actually meets the eyes. The visuals are good enough even without pushing the Wii. Capturing a mood like this is incredibly difficult and I can’t punish Scarface for looking like a mid-life PlayStation 2 game.

Moving onto the gameplay, Scarface feels properly like a first-person shooter. The game played with the standard double-sticks configuration on PS2 and Xbox, so it is nice to see this recreated on Wii. The infrared aiming makes shooting even more visceral; especially with the lock-on function, it is simple enough to locate and overpower your foes. Speaking of overpowering, Tony’s Blind Rage ability (initiated after earning “Balls”, which I’ll describe later) is a lot of fun to use and works very well. The player doesn’t need to worry so much about accuracy, aiming in the general direction of enemies and opening fire will usually result in a room full of slayings. Driving feels surprisingly tight and responsive, and doesn’t use any hokey motion-sensing junk that other driving/racing games have attempted. Rather, all cars are controlled by the analog stick and the A/B Buttons. Tony can shoot in all directions while driving, and as an extra perk, he can initiate cruise control if the player holds down the Z button. This makes drive-by shootings and pursuits more exciting than ever.

The mission structure in Scarface is interesting. Tony can access his “Business” from a menu that comes up when the player presses the 1 Button. From the menu he can initiate storyline missions as well as Felix Leads. These leads take Tony to cocaine buyers, dealers, and other targets–following these leads generally gets Tony closer to more suppliers and buyers. Also, as Tony completes missions and earns money, he can purchase properties that act as fronts for his business. He can also take over storehouses to keep his product safe and sound. The constant money-making and property-taking makes Scarface’s flow feel incredibly fluid. Players can accomplish a lot and blatantly see the accomplishment as Tony begins to own the Little Havana, Downtown, North Beach, and South Beach districts.

The only complaints I had involved the Balls system, and some of the missions. Firstly, Tony earns “Balls” as he kills enemies brutally, and by pinpointing specific parts of their body (head, groin, etc.). He can also earn Balls by driving like a maniac. Earning Balls is vital because using Tony’s Blind Rage power is almost required to complete some of the more intense missions. Unfortunately, when Tony dies, he loses all of his Balls. This makes some of these missions even harder, resulting in reloading files and experiencing all sorts of trial-and-error. Annoying! Furthermore, a lot of the missions in Scarface feel...well, let’s just say we’ve all been there, and we’ve all done that. Thanks, Grand Theft Auto, True Crime, Mercenaries, Godfather, Saints Row, etc...

Overall, Scarface: The World Is Yours is an action game that appeals directly to fans of the Scarface film, the mafia and crime genres, and action video game fans. The recreation of the Tony Montana character is spot-on, the driving and shooting are a blast, and there’s a ton to do–all of the markings of a great action game come to play here.