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Dom Robinson reviews

Scarface: The World Is Yours

for Microsoft Xbox

Distributed by
Vivendi Universal Games

game pic

Game:
DVD:

  • Price: £39.99
  • Players: 1
  • Widescreen: Yes
  • Dolby Digital 5.1: Yes
  • Xbox Live content: No
  • 60 Hz: No

Grand Theft Scarface?

That's the first thing that sprang to mind when I first saw screenshots for this title and it'll allow fans of the GTA series to get straight into it. However, does it reign as supreme as those games?

game pic I have to confess that I've never actually got round to watching Scarface, the movie itself, but apart from the apparent fact that some of the dialogue and characters turn up in this video game spin-off, no previous knowledge is necessary to get into the spirit of it all. In fact, it's unavoidable to mention the fact I learned when reading up about Scarface: The World Is Yours which is that Al Pacino's character, Tony Montano, died at the end of the film and this title plays out a 'What if he had survived?' style of continuation as the cops seize your mansion and you have to escape back onto the streets and work up your empire from scratch again.

The first thing that happens is the 'Boot camp' section which takes you through the basics of how to aim and lock-on to an enemy as well as hiding behind cover and edging along before looking round a corner to cap the bad guys in their respective asses. You'll also learn that you can shoot the enemies a limb at a time, and if you catch their head then blood starts to gush a la GTA before they finally collapse.

You can also taunt them and build up your 'Balls'-o-meter. When he does this, Tony slows down as he shouts out a succession of profanities since it makes him stagger while saying them. The idea with this is that it builds up some kind of respect in the game when facing the enemy but as you get into it you'll find yourself using it less and less because you just want to get the missions completed. There's also the option to hold down 'B' for Blind Rage mode to sort out the baddies as it sort-of pauses them as the game goes into first-person mode and allows you to blast away ridiculously effectively.

Once this section is complete, you'll be leading a linear route as you start to regain your empire and build it up again, but after that you'll be able to select your own missions from what's available. To get to this point should take about 90 minutes.

game pic Once you've got yourself out of your mansion, you start in Little Havana, doing drug deals and taking over the turf from rival gangs before moving on to other areas and doing more of the same. It may seem a bit of a tall order to take on several baddies at once but before you get to the lynchpin they only tend to come at you 2 or 3 at a time so are quite easily dispatched.

Bear in mind that if you drive like an idiot or shoot people in broad daylight and you'll attract the attention of the cops. Get busted by them and you'll lose all your money and drugs. Therefore, it's wise to make frequent trips to the bank where you can save your game and also deposit money there.

Your aim is to build up businesses and your reputation, the former being achieved by buying property here and there to act as your 'fronts' in different parts of the city. You must do deals successfully and negotiate bank transfer rates by holding 'B' as a red line completes an onscreen circle and then release the button. It takes a couple of attempts to get it right, but after that it'll rarely cause you problems. Also, it might sound a bit odd to describe but you'll get the idea once you start playing.

About the driving, what I don't like is that if you don't escape the cops in a certain amount of time, it simply declares "You Are Fucked" and then bullets rain down out of nowhere either causing your vehicle to catch fire, or if you then step outside the same bullets will ricochet around your body and kill you. There's no escape. It was never like this in GTA and it's not a welcome twist to proceedings.

In fact, cops are after you way too often, just as soon as you step into someone else's car, for example. You can call your driver over but then a car can quickly get damaged so you may as well nick one rather than waste a few bucks getting it repaired after the last altercation.

Also, you can't jump or vault over walls to escape cops when they're bearing down on you, and given the problems of getting away from them anyway this is a big headache.

game pic One thing I did enjoy is that it's as much fun riding a bus in this game as it was in any GTA episode. Also, GTA on the Xbox had some serious control issues, mainly because I was so used to playing the game on the PS2 and the Xbox control doesn't have two sets of shoulder buttons, but Scarface doesn't feel like it has any such problems and looks fantastic. There's no obvious clipping as you drive around and it contains very fluid movement as you walk and run like any GTA fan would expect.

However, in the driving sections I wish I could alter some of the buttons such that accelerate/decelerate were controlled by the shoulder buttons while driving and not A and X.

It could also do with extra side-look buttons and one for seeing behind you while driving, rather than it doing the latter automatically only when you reverse as it's good to keep an eye on cops when they're following you to work out a clever way to ram them off the road.

game pic The music is a great feature of this title with it coming from the likes of Iggy Pop, Georgio Moroder and Blondie plus many more in several playlists that can either be selected one at a time or altogether and also randomised. Okay, so it seems odd to listen to '80s music while starting off running round in '70s Cuba but it still sounds cool. Also, the sound FX are extremely loud and proud.

And I know I keep mentioning GTA, but one element where that has set the trend for story-based action games is to attract big-name stars and this one has a cast as long as a very long arm. Key names include James Woods, Robert Davi, Robert Loggia, Cheech Marin, Jay Mohr, Michael Rapaport, Ice-T, Michael York..., even Ricky Gervais is in there. He wanted to buy some drugs off me but sadly didn't do the dance from The Office :)

There is, however, one serious omission. It is NOT Al Pacino doing the voice of Tony Montana, but some guy called André Sogliuzzo, whose IMDB filmography appears to have him mostly doing video game voiceovers. Nice work if you can get it.

As a brief aside, the CGI cut-scenes do have an option for subtitles, but these often run faster than the speech for no apparent reason; it's amusing when you die that it proclaims, "You fucked up!"; and you can't shoot innocent people (Tony growls, "That's not my style, man."), but you can run them over?!

Overall, Scarface: The World Is Yours is great entertainment for a few hours but after that it starts to get rather repetitive. It's better than Driver: Parallel Lines but still doesn't hit the mark of the market leader that is the Grand Theft Auto series and if there's one thing that does make you want to turn this game off it'll be the endless police hassles whenever you're trying to go about your business.

GRAPHICS
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
GAMEPLAY
ENJOYMENT


OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2006.

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Andy Serkis Batman Benedict Cumberbatch call of duty Calvin Harris Chris Hemsworth Dave Bautista doctor who Domhnall Gleeson doom Drake E3 2017 E3 2018 Eddie Marsan Ed Sheeran grand theft auto Grand Theft Auto V GTA gta 5 gta5 gta v Idris Elba Inside No.9 Jenna Coleman Jennifer Lawrence Jess Glynne Justin Bieber los santos Michael Fassbender Murray Gold Oscar Isaac Peter Capaldi Reece Shearsmith rockstar Sam Smith Samuel L. Jackson Sia Stan Lee Stanley Tucci star wars Steven Moffat Steve Pemberton Taylor Swift Toby Jones Woody Harrelson

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