“Say hello to my little friend!” That famous line marks the beginning of
the end for Scarface in the movie, as after much bloodshed and cursing Tony
Montana is finally iced by one of his attackers. This line also marks the
beginning of the Scarface game, which you’d think would make for a
spectacularly violent but exceedingly short game. That would be the case if
the game followed the movie’s plot, but things work out a little differently
for Tony in the game. The game takes an alternate reality approach to the
storyline in which Tony successfully fights his way out of his home invasion
predicament and survives to rebuild his empire. This is a clever way for the
game to recreate the Scarface experience without forcing the player to retrace
the events of the movie and it’s ultimately tragic outcome. Well, tragic for
Tony Montana that is. He was a murderous drug kingpin after all and I have to
say that he pretty much got what he deserved. But I digress, the real issue
here is whether or not it is fun to be Tony Montana strictly in a video game
sense. So pull that octopus out of your ears, er, eyes, and let’s see if
that’s the case in Scarface: The World is Yours…
If you had to sum up Scarface: The World is Yours in a few words, you’d be
tempted to say that it’s “GTA: Vice City with Tony Montana.” While it is
certainly true that Scarface bears an almost doppelganger-like resemblance to
Vice City, calling the game a GTA clone would be selling it short. In the GTA
games the free-roam component is more the star of the show than the story, while
in Scarface the opposite is more of the case. All of the activities in the game
are tied to the overall goal of rebuilding your empire and taking your revenge
on Sosa, the man who ordered the attack on you that almost left you dead.
The World is Yours puts you in Miami in the early 1980s, recreating the
streets and neighborhoods of that city and challenging you to corner the drug
market as you knock of rival gangs and amass vast amounts of wealth. This is
primarily accomplished by the game’s story missions which can be activated at
any time by visiting a key location marked on your map and initiating the
mission. When not in a mission, you can look for the hangouts of rival gangs and
go in guns blazing. Knocking rival gangs out of their haunts helps you to
establish territory and gain more power, but it also has a tendency to perturb
the other gangs to the point where they will begin to shoot you on sight. You
can also earn yourself some extra cash by finding a drug supplier and then
passing the yeyo on to street dealers. If you’re willing to do a little more
legwork upfront, acquiring businesses and using them as a front for your drug
operations is a great way to earn even more income.
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