“You need people like me, so you can point your fucking fingers, and say that’s the bad guy!”

If there was one gangster movie that I had to pick to be my favorite, it would definitely be Scarface.  (With my second favorite being “American Gangster.”)  Not because he was one of the first, (the first was actually “The Muskateers of Pig Alley” made in 1912) but because he had a different balance between good and bad that other gangsters didn’t seem to have, but then again maybe the timeline was a factor.  The 70’s had The Godfathe, where being a  gangster meant honor, loyalty, and kissing people on the forehead.  In the 90’s, gangster turned into an adjective; where “being” gangster meant wearing your pants below your underwear and walking with a tilt.  Shirt optional. In my opinion that was just all too common.  Now, in the new millennium you have your really cool and collective gangsters like Denzel Washington who in truth, all they really want to do is to do their business with as little confrontation as possible.  Tony Montana came between all that in the 80’s, a mixed breed, a combination of both total badassness and moral ethics.  Coming right after the Godfather movies,  he wasn’t a ruthless cold-blooded murderer with no conscience, but he wasn’t a pussy either.  Though he defiantly wouldn’t mind some.  Simply put, showing he has no class, with class.  The movie also caused extreme controversy, and was one of few films that actually got a rating of X.  (And not surprisingly, seeing as how standards change, is now just rated R today.)  While the violence does not even compare to today’s films, the swearing has become ironically a preview of what we got today.  (Pacino had evidently “layed down the fuck” 181 times in the movie, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,951028-3,00.html)  He’s become a pop icon in the recent years ever since they released a new edition DVD, and a video game.

It’s just too bad that his video game is extremely underrated.  “Scarface:  The World is Yours” is the official video game to Scarface, released around the same time the PS2 was just dying out.  It plays out an alternative to the film’s ending.  The game starts out near the end of the film, where Tony is trapped in his office with Sosa’s men just outside.  You come out and start blasting away and the enemies downstairs, only this time, providing your not actually  high as well as Tony is, the game gives you a chance to turn around and blast the fuck out of the movie ending Schwarzenegger wannabe.  For kicks, you can also just wait to die and see Tony’s death scene in blurry texture form.  That’s right, the game’s graphics is nothing to cry home to.  In fact you might be crying anyway that because the game is darn right ugly, even for it’s time.  The best graphic is Pacino’s ’s face, probably because we all recognize him, and it’s better looking than the women in the game, scars and all.

The game’s storyline adds a fourth step to the three steps to making it in the business: Revenge.  (Sadly, a lot of the content you see in this trailer didn’t make the final cut, including for some reason Motley Crue’s “Kickstart My Heart,” the song being played during it.)  You start by reclaiming your mansion, buying out different business to act as your fronts, and then finally putting a well deserved bullet to Sosa’s head.  (And then let’s you continue on playing so you can get $999,999,999 if your so inclined.)

But wait, haven’t we all played these kind of games before?  Yes and no.  Unlike the GTA series and Saint’s Row series, (as different as the two in terms of realism) this game is radically different.  And we need more game’s like this.  Often in a crime game, your a gangster who’s ultimate goal is to work your way to the top, whether it’s doing missions to earn money, beating up people, racing, robbing a bank, or even throwing feces at people.  This game’s main draw is drug trafficking.  While Saint’s Row does have drug trafficking, it’s only a mini-game.  The World is Yours uses this concept to the fullest.

What made this game different from all the others is what you could do while not a mission.  GTA and Saint’s Row all had minigames to do, but most of them were all optional and yielded very little money, (compared to story missions or property income.) They both had story missions that when completed, would earn you a fat wad of cash.  Both game also let you buy property that when bought, would net you income overtime.   In Scarface, a typical gaming session is usually a series of minigames but they all follow suit:  (remember this is NOT a story mission)

-You (Tony) call Felix to find a lead.  More or less, this is a randomized mission generated every time you want to make a deal, which is great so it’s different every time you do it.  These missions usually involve either assassinating targets, dropping off packages, or defending a target.  In exchange, you are hooked up to make a deal with someone.

-You then find that dealer, who’s location is also randomly generated.  Upon confronting him, you’re shown a meter that fills up when you hold down a button.  When it reaches the top, it starts over from the bottom, going faster and faster each round.  When you let it go, the meter stops growing.   The higher the meter is when you stop it, the less you have to pay to buy the “yeyo.”  The lower it is, the more you pay.  If it’s too low, the deal is off all together, and a fight breaks out.
-If you managed to strike a deal, you can then go to random crackheads and sell them your yeyo, using the same meter minigame mentioned before.
-Go to a bank to launder you money, and save the game.  (Any money and yeyo grams you have on your will disappear when you die.  Saving the game puts all that money in the bank.)
-Further into the game you can do these same deals again, only to buy kilos instead.  When you buy kilos, you store them to one of your storehouses, possibly being attacked while doing so.
-Kilos are the big kahunas, the real money makers.  A kilo distribution run makes you go to all the business buildings you own for you to sell your kilos to them.  (So they can do some “under the table” work on the side.)

These missions don’t further the storyline, but they are required to do.  You need money to buy exotics.  Cars, boats, investments, fine china, all that good stuff.  Buying exotics give you respect.  Gaining respect, furthers the game.  (It’s just too bad that most of these exotics you buy are just furniture.  The game has a “The Sims” like store section in which you can exotics all over you mansion, but aside from that, sitting there is all they do.  You are rarely home in your mansion as it is.)  In addition, the quality of all these drug deals factor in “heat.”  The game has Police heat.  Police heat is usually a meter that fills up when you cause trouble, and the higher it gets, the more difficult it is to avoid the police.  This game handles heat differently.  Police heat only rises when you successfully evade police.  While you are being chased, a separate heat meter shows up.  If this meter goes all the way and you still haven’t evaded the cops (shooting them all day will solve nothing) a huge “YOU ARE FUCKED” sign shows up on screen and it’s game over instantly.  So what’s so bad about the permanent police meter?  It affects your interest rate at banks.  When you save your game at banks, the same meter minigame pops up.  The higher you stop it, the lower the rate you have to pay.  If your police rate is too high, the maximum and minimum rate you can possibly pay increases.  The same goes with Gang heat and making deals.   Gang heat is accumulated from shooting gang members that randomly attack you, or during kilo distribution runs.

This is where Tony’s henchman come into place.  You can use these henchman to do different kind of missions that actually lower your police or gang heat.  Unlike Tony, the henchman can actually harm innocent civilians.  Tony cannot, will not, and will even cuss you out, the player, for trying so.  This is another thing that I like about The World Is Yours.  You actually have threats.  Shooting innocent civilians who can’t fight back is getting old.  There is just no challenge to it.  Then I have to fend off police men that will increase in numbers if I try to defend myself.  I haven’t played a single GTA game where people will actually come up to you and start attacking you, giving some kind of threat or green light to make it feel ok to actually shoot them.  This game will have gangsters attack you providing your gang heat is high enough, and they drop money, ammo and sometimes even yeyo.  And even if you defeat all the gang hideouts, you will still run into them in the never ending mini games.

Somehow I don’t feel the game got the respect it deserves.  The game was horribly ported to the PC.  Not just in optimization, but the controls, were rather…odd, and even after a patch, it didn’t fix the problem.  Not to mention this game doesn’t work anymore on Vista, until someone found a workaround.

I certainly wouldn’t mind a sequel to this game in the near future, hopefully with better support.   The whole drug trafficking thing to me is done really well here.  It needn’t be Scarface again, as I am a bit tired of the 80’s, and it would be hard to continue his storyline once again, but another one of these gems is just begging to be made.  Until that happens, though, it’s time to say good night to the bad guy.