Scarface: The World is Yours Review (WII)

I’m Tony Montana! You f**k with me, you f**kin’ with the best!

I’ll start with a confession: I’ve never seen the movie “Scarface”. Terrible I know, but it came out when I was two years old and (quite rightly) my parent’s didn’t think it appropriate for me to watch. Since then it’s just not something I’ve gone out of my way to see. Basically what I’m trying to say is I don’t really know anything about the background/storyline but maybe that’s a good thing from a review perspective.

Scarface: The World is Yours is set after the end of the movie but instead of dying (as I’m informed happens in the film) Tony Montana escapes with nothing to his name except his life. The aim of the game is to rebuild your empire and take your revenge, and your first task is to actually escape from your mansion. On first sight Scarface is very obviously based on the Grand Theft Auto series of games, but with a much tighter storyline and more defined goals. Throughout the game you must build your reputation from scratch by dealing cocaine, buying businesses (to act as fronts for your cocaine empire), and taking on missions. Oh yes, and by a rather bizarre feature called “Pimp my Mansion”.

The control method makes pretty good use of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk combination – you control movement with the nunchuk and you control the camera view, aim and fire with the remote. Targeting enemies is made simple by utilising a lock-on button the nunchuk to snap your aim to the general direction of the target and then fine-tuning your aim with the remote. It will never beat keyboard and mouse, but it is functional. My main gripe is that I often found the camera would start spinning away when I was moving around because I wasn’t keeping the remote pointed properly at the screen. A nice feature is the ability to press down on the remote’s D-pad to spin 180� – very handy when surrounded.

One of the central features to the game is your testicles. Well ok, “Balls”. Killing bad guys and taunting folk fills up your balls meter. In fact, shooting someone in the balls will give you a little increase in your own balls. Taunting is performed by flicking the nunchuk up much as you would if you were actually gesturing at someone, and I was actually quite impressed at how the taunts are appropriate to the situation. If you are walking past a woman on the street when you taunt, Tony will make suggestive comments. If you are taunting some you just shot it will be suitably profane. It’s quite enjoyable to do at first and like I mentioned it will increase your “balls” but after a while I just started to forget about doing it at all.

Wow, never thought I’d say “balls” so much in such a short space…

Going back to your testes, sorry – balls, once you have filled the meter you have a new feature at your disposal. If you shake the nunchuk around a bit you will enter “Rage” mode where your view will switch to a first person perspective and you will have 25 seconds of infinite ammo and invulnerability to take advantage of. This comes in handy when you have a whole load of enemies to deal with but it does make some missions stupidly easy if you have the balls, and near impossible if you don’t. Wow, never thought I’d say “balls” so much in such a short space…

Like GTA you will need to do a lot of driving and you can jump in any car you want on the street. Sadly though (and unlike GTA), for a sandbox game there are surprisingly few options open to you when you want to move from one area to another. Most of the different sections in the game only seem to have one connecting road between them, so while you can drive freely within a neighbourhood, if you want to go to the next one there is only one road to get there. On the plus side though, one of the features of the game is the ability to hire henchmen and, in particular, a driver. I found it was always best to call your driver and have him bring one of your cars to you rather than stealing one, as the police invariably came to the scene every time I tried.

Another good feature of the driving aspect is the “drive-by” vehicle combat. When you are driving normally you control the steering with the stick and accelerate/brake with buttons on the remote. As soon as you hit the lock button to aim at someone though, the car engages cruise control allowing you to concentrate purely on steering and shooting rather than having to worry about pressing more buttons than you have fingers…

As I have already said, Scarface is all about drugs and money, and selling drugs to make money. If you are unfortunate enough to die or get caught by the police (or as the game puts it – “You’re f****d!”) you will lose any drugs and “dirty” money in your possession. To make sure you hold onto your cash you need to visit the nearest branch of your bank (where you have convinced the manager to launder your cash) and make a deposit, but the bank will want a cut. To negotiate a rate you there is a sort of mini-game where you have to hold a button and fill a meter, then let go at the right time. If you do it right the banks cut is minimal. This is also the way drug deals go down in the game – if you get the timing right you score more money from the dealers. It’s a little disappointing to be honest as it’s very easy to get it right and it becomes very repetitive since it is used for a number of different “negotiation” style elements of the game. I should also mention here that the bank doubles as a handy save point, so you can launder your money and save all at the same place.

Scarface: The World is YoursGraphically, Scarface looks very much like GTA but I often found myself thinking it was slightly below par and “blocky”. That said it certainly doesn’t look bad and it is probably about as good as the Wii can handle. As far as audio goes – prepare your ears for an onslaught of cursing. It’s almost as if the developers are children who just learned how to swear, but it does fit in with the story. The voice acting is top notch even if Tony’s voice wasn’t performed by Al Pacino, and ambient sounds are as you would expect.

While I have thoroughly enjoyed playing Scarface, I can’t help but have this niggling thought at the back of my mind – “It’s just not GTA”. It is a very good game but overall it doesn’t feel fresh enough even though there are a lot of tweaks. My main problem is that although the story is much clearer than GTA, there are parts where even the side missions become compulsory because you need more respect to do a main mission, or you need to go out and earn some money to buy a front before you can continue. I find it a little boring because the side missions are all “much of a muchness” and get boring after you’re just done your eleventy-millionth identical drug deal. Overall this is a good (and unique) game for the Wii, but in the grand scheme of things it falls short of the mark.

The Good: Good storyline and good use of the Wii Remote
The Bad: Side missions are repetitive, doesn’t add an awful lot to the genre


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Silver Y AwardSilver Y Award
4 4 / 5

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